VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2014-08-25
By using a proven high-quality cooling system and also adding a few bonuses like a custom backplate, HIS is releasing a pre-overclocked R9 290 which trades punches with the Nvidia GTX 770. While the factory overclock is quite mild, we will be able to raise the clocks even further in order to enhance the gaming experience even more.
At first I would like to thank HIS for offering a sample of their R9 290 iPower IceQ X2 OC 4GB GDDR5 Video Card for testing and reviewing.
“HIS - Hightech Information System Limited is an internationally acclaimed graphics cards company. Time and time again, HIS were compared and tested by hundreds of worldly renowned critics. The results are phenomena, HIS have proven to offer far superior, cooler, quieter, and faster graphic cards than any other leading rivals. Up to the fourth quarter of 2011, HIS has won over 1600 awards with AMD graphic solution from major media worldwide. HIS is being recognized by providing performance leading and award-wining products: IceQ, IceQ X and Turbo Edition.
HIS was established in 1987 with the mission to produce the highest quality PC products in the industry. Besides strong devotion to excellent products and services, HIS has been conducting business with the aim to "Glorifying God". Honesty and integrity are the two key principals of how HIS are conducted. Ethical business practice has been an everyday commitment to our clients, vendors, and investors.
Headquartered in Hong Kong, and with sales offices and distribution networks in Europe, Middle East, North and South America, Asia Pacific Regions; our worldwide customers benefits from efficient and localized services. ISO Certified, HIS's manufacturing facility in China is managed by a team of professionals with expertise in quality control and production planning. Working with world-class clients, HIS has been consistently meeting high quality standards and fulfilled volume order in short lead-time.
HIS is proud to be AMD's Authorized 1st Tier AIB Partner, Certified Partner and Launching Partner. Long term and favorable relationship with AMD, enable HIS to work closely with AMD to promote the HIS AMD Graphics Board; and to strive for best value on the marketing and sales of HIS AMD Product Line.
In Sept 2003, HIS incorporated the state-of-the art Supreme Cooling Technology in the award winning HIS 9800Pro IceQ, which caught the attention of worldwide media. Since then, HIS IceQ series and the latest IceQ X series has been the limelight in the market for its outstanding performance and features over the other rivals.
Today, HIS continues its avid commitment to quality product and service. HIS is certain to be Your Choice of Graphics Board Supplier.”
iPower for More Voltage, More Overclocking
iPower design allows the card to carry more voltage, expanding overclocking capability to a new level!
IceQ X² – Cooler, Quieter
Cooler
With IceQ X², the card is cooler than the reference cooler.
Quieter
IceQ X² is one of the quietest coolers, making the card quieter than the reference cooler. The card is below 28dB when watching movies, surfing Facebook, working. The card remains quiet whether you are gaming, online socializing, entertaining or working.
OC is Faster
The card has the latest OC technology, providing extra performance for the most demanding games and applications!
Fan Design
The super large 2x 89mm dual axial fans draws massive amount of cool air to cool the GPU directly.
The Q&C fan blade increases air velocity make cooling more efficiently while keeping noise level at minimum.
The fan is extremely durable with a life span of up to 50,000 hours.
The 2x 8mm and 3x 6mm wide heatpipes optimize cooling performance by removing heat from the core area.
The extra large 40x47.5mm copper heatsink provides a large area to dissipate heat efficiently.
The new black handle makes you easy to carry the card.
The card also carries memory and MOSFET heat sinks to provide extra heat dissipation from these areas.
The card also features fan control and monitoring, you are able to read fan speed & Asic temperature from iTurbo or other software.
Backplate Design
The backplate designs to reinforce PCB, keeps PCB more long lasting and not easy deforming.
Long Lasting Design
Built for Crossfire
CrossFireX Ready!
The card is armed with 2x Crossfire Connectors and is ready for up to 4-way crossfire for strengthened performance!
New Technology, New Experiences
GCN
With AMD 2nd generation GCN technology, the card optimizes DirectX® 11.2 gaming performance automatically up to 2.5 times faster! It also offers up to 4.5x compute performance and up to 95% lower GPU Idle Power Consumption!
Apps Faster & Smoother!
The card enables a “quality graphics” experience on everyday applications, giving huge performance boosts on image processing, file compression, media converter apps, and a lot more!
AMD TrueAudio
AMD Eyefinity
Set up Eyefinity on 3 displays with No ACTIVE DisplayPort Adapter is needed.
PCI-e 3.0 Support
Armed with the latest PCI-e 3.0 bus design maximizes performance by delivering double bandwidth per lane of PCI-e 2.x. Paired the card with the latest platforms and get the ultimate performance!
More Graphics, Less Power!
The new architecture of the card gets more usable processing power for your money, enabling better frame rates in the latest games at high resolutions. In addition, with AMD ZeroCore Power & AMD PowerTune technologies, you can optimize the balance between performance and power consumption of your system by adjusting the engine clock during runtime of the card. Manage the power and keep your wallet loaded!
See More, Enjoy More!
The card supports 30” LCD monitor and any large size TV up to 80" feature with 16:9 ratio in amazing 4096 by 2160 resolution. Up-scaling your computer into a multimedia center with the biggest display!
Enjoy HD Beauty
With Full HD 1080p support, the card delivers high quality 1920X1080 graphics, enabling seamless full-screen video playback. See HD, hear HD and feel HD - Enjoy the beautiful graphics now with the card!
Enjoy Copy Protected Movies
The card is HDCP complaint, enabling users to play copy-protected content, such as commercial DVD movies.
Enjoy True to Life Graphics
ULTRA HD videos have resolution four times that of current HD videos, meaning images too clear that may deceive your eyes! With the card, you are set for getting the movie theater experience to your home. You may be able to watch a video shooting the Eiffel tower and zoom it in to see your friend’s face clearly from the top! Get your eyes impressed and enjoy mind-blowing graphics with extreme clarity, depth and texture!
See More, Win More!
The card is capable to turn your computer into a super gaming machine. Enjoy the latest 3D games with stunning graphics and effects that your enemies cannot match! Get an immersive experience with AMD Eyefinity!
Expand your game across up to 3 displays while your opponents have one monitor. Along with all-new support for stereo 3D, universal bezel compensation and brand new display configurations, take the unfair advantage over your opponent and win more with the surround sight
View More, Work Better
Having one dedicated screen just for twitter or Facebook and a second for outlook is not a dream anymore. The card features a DisplayPort for enhanced workspace flexibility. You can easily connect to the 27” Apple LED Cinema Displays with the DisplayPort. The dual-link DVI port allows you connect to a 30” DVI display up to 2560x1600. Resolution can even reach 4096x2160 with HDMI® , good for TV up to 80"!
Hear Better in Video Conference
Most GPUs today support only one audio stream at a time. The card, however, has Discrete Digital Multi-Point Audio that can simultaneously output multiple, independent audio streams. Audio seamlessly follows the video, providing affordable multi-display, multi-audio conferencing for consumers!
Our missing part of the puzzle so far was the AMD R9 290 video card, which is based on the same Hawaii GPU as the R9 290X but with some functional units cut and lower clock speeds in order to cover another price segment. The card is based on the revised GCN 1.1, the GPU has a total transistor count of 6.2B and also supports TrueAudio, as the 260X and the 290X.Compared to the 290X, we have 40CUs instead of 44, disabling 1 CU per each SE. We have the same number of ROPs though, same memory bus width and speed and also same VRAM quantity. On the stock models, we will find a boost clock of 947MHz, down from the 1GHz clock of the R9 290X; HIS has decided to include a mild overclock from the factory, so we will find the stock clock sitting at 967MHz.
The HIS 290 video card is shipped inside a pretty large cardboard box with a familiar design, which shows logos of the supported technologies and here we will be also able to take a look at the new cooler design:
On one of the sides we have another set of logos:
The box contents list is featured on the opposite side, along with the System Requirements:
If we want to learn more details regarding the main product, we will have to check out the back side:
After the top packaging layer is removed, we will end up with a black box, which features a HIS logo in the middle:
Besides the card, which sits safely inside a foam mold, we will also receive one envelope and a small leaflet which advises on the card installation procedure:
The goodies envelope features on software installation disk, the Quick Installation Guide but also a small case sticker:
The card is quite massive and features two 89mm dual-axial fans which cool the large heatsink; through the heatsink we can see no less than 5 heatpipes of different dimensions:
On the metallic shroud, we will be able to spot the IceQ X2 logo along with the OC inscription, telling us that we are dealing with a pre-overclocked card from the factory:
Here are also some views on the laterals of the card; for this model HIS has chosen to include a small aluminum carry handle for easy manipulation:
The HIS 290 needs extra power from two 8-pin PCI-Express connectors:
On the back side of the card we have a custom shield which has multiple functionalities: for reinforcing the card but also for extra heat evacuation. During operation, the shield will become quite toasty so we would not recommend touching it with our bare hands:
The shield does not fully cover the card and it also aids on fixing the extra shields which are located on the top side of the PCB:
The handle can be left out by removing three screws:
As we have seen on the 290X from Gigabyte or the HIS 280X, the card is equipped with a dual BIOS switch; the one from the left is the Silent BIOS, which has the fan tuned for low noise operation, while on the right we have the Standard BIOS, which is recommended to be on while gaming:
As outputs, the card is equipped with two DVIs, one HDMI and one DisplayPort:
In order to remove the large cooling system from the card, we only have to remove the GPU backplate, which is held in four spring-loaded screws:
The frontal shield is not unified, which comes quite as a surprise; we have two main components, one of which covers a part of the VRM from the left side of the PCB along with the memory modules; the GPU VRM is cooled by a separate black heatsink:
In the middle we have the Hawaii GPU built on the TSMC 28nm process and this one is surrounded by 16 memory chips:
The chips are made by SKHynix and have the code name H5GQ2H24AFR, which are specified to run at 1500MHz (6000MHz effective):
With the first plate removed, we will be able to take a look at one of the VRM components along with the thermal interfaces which reside on the back of the shield:
Here is also a view at the custom-built GPU VRM heatsink:
Voltage regulation for the GPU is made with the help of the IR 35678:
Nearby we have the 4-pin fan connector which powers both 89mm fans:
A closer look at the bottom side of the heatsink reveals that we are dealing with 2x8mm and 3x6mm heatpipes:
In the middle we have the copper GPU plate:
CPU: Intel I5 3570K Retail @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 OC
RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)
Video: Currently reviewed card
Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
With the help of the GPU-Z 0.7.9 utility, we could extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:
To receive more in-depth information regarding the GPU, we have used the AIDA64 utility:
From the HIS website, we can download the iTurbo video card utility, which is very handy for customizing the fan speeds, monitoring several parameters or performing overclocking. The interface is user-friendly and presents itself like a wheel console, in its minimized mode:
The UI can open up in a larger form, in order to expose the full-sized interface. The menus can be accessed on top of the applications and these include Home, Info, Overclock and so on. In the Home tab we can find more news regarding the manufacturer, the ongoing promotions or the latest drivers:
The Info tab will display various hardware information regarding the card like card name, GPU series name, die size, memory size, bus width, ROPs and so on. In this case, the hardware details are not listed correctly, as we have seen in the 260X case:
The Overclock tab comes with adjustments for the GPU Clock, Memory Clock, Board Power Limit (also present in CCC), but also VDDC. These modifications can be saved by assigning them to different profiles or we can simply jump to the factory defaults; HIS does not seem to correctly detect the card, so we cannot perform modifications from here:
Same thing we can say about the Fan Control Tab:
The final tab, Settings, lets us adjust some of the global options like Load on Startup, Show memory clocks, Disable 2D clocks and so on:
For finding out the temperatures in both IDLE and Full Load with the fan set on Auto, we left the computer IDLE for about 25 minutes and then started monitoring with HWINFO64 and logged the values obtained while running Heaven 4.0 at the 2560x1440 (system) resolution for an additional 40 to 50 minutes, with details at Maximum and Tesselation set to Extreme. During this time, the ambient temperature was held steady at 29.5 degrees Celsius:
Before measuring out the noise the video card was producing, we have first measured the noise inside the room the tests took place and we found out it was 28.8 dBA (with everything turned off).
At all times, the sound meter was placed 20cm near the video card.
The GPU fan was controlled by the latest version of the HIS iTurbo utility:
As the HIS 280 before it, the R9 290 iPower IceQ X2 OC video card features a very solid cooling system with five heatpipes and the two fans blow air onto the large heatsink which exceeds the dimensions of the PCB. HIS has also added multiple shields, not only on the front but now we also have one on the back; these metallic parts help the PCB not to bend under the weight of the heatsink, but also evacuate heat more efficiently. Under operation, the bottom shield gets quite toasty so we would not really recommend touching it while gaming.
The fan comes with two preset profiles, which can be changed by using the hardware switch; HIS also has available the iTurbo software but it does not work well for this card; fortunately, we have alternatives like the ones from Sapphire or ASUS, which besides adjusting the fan profile, we can also perform overclocking with ease.
In its initial form, the card is able to trade punches with the GTX 770, meaning that most games at Full-HD are smooth even when switching to the highest detail levels, while at 2560x1440 sometimes we might need to make some adjustments in order to obtain 60+ FPS. However, the card is quite overclockable and thanks to its solid VRM build we were able to get a notable performance increase:
The HIS Radeon R9 290 iPower IceQ X2 OC video card is available online for about 320 Euros, placing itself in the lower pricing segment compared to other manufacturers, which is great. Besides our sample, the retail cards should also receive additional adapters like a CrossFire bridge, a DVI-to-VGA adapter and more.
We would like to thank again to HIS for making this review possible!