At first I would like to thank HIS for offering a sample of their R9 380 IceQ X2 OC 2GB Video Card for testing and reviewing.

 

 

About HIS:

 

“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.”

Product Features

 

The R9 380 IceQ X2 OC 2GB card from HIS is sporting the proven dual-86mm fan cooling system with a large heatsink and 5x 6mm wide heatpipes which help evacuate the heat from the core area.

 

The main cooling system is also accompanied by memory and MOSFET heat sinks to provide extra heat dissipation from these particular areas.

 

The power delivery is assured by a 5+1 phase system, while extra juice is supplied from two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. HIS cards are utilizing a Dynamic Phase control PWM IC to save power for better use.

 

CrossFireX Ready!

 

The card's is armed with Crossfire Connector, ready for CrossFire & strengthened performance!

 

New Technology, New Experiences

 

GCN

 

With AMD 2nd generation GCN technology, the card optimizes DirectX® 12 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!

 

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 monitors 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 theatre 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 4 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 2 Mini-display Ports for enhanced workspace flexibility. You can easily connect to two displays, including the 27” Apple LED Cinema Displays with the two Mini DisplayPorts. 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!

 

 

Product Specifications

 

 

 

We are moving on with another card released by HIS from the new AMD series, the Radeon R9 380 IceQ X2 OC 2GB; the card was mainly thought for the mainstream segment and also features a “refreshed” Tonga core (now baptized Antigua) on 28nm from Global Foundries. As technical specifications, we could remind of 1792 shader processors, 32 ROPs and 112 texturing units; the card is available in two versions, with 2GB or 4GB of memory buffer. While the Tonga core could be first found with the R9 285 cards, both are supporting Direct3D feature-level 12.0 .

 

While the AMD OEM card has core clocks of 970MHz and the memory runs at 1375MHz, we can see that the HIS variant has the GPU clock raised at 990MHz, while the memory has remained at the stock speeds.

 

Coming back to the packaging, we will meet again with the suggestive box art which tells us that the card should stay cool under stress thanks to the IceQ X2 cooling system:

 

 

 

Some of the card features are represented by small pictograms:

 

 

 

 

If we look on one of the box sides, we will find the inside contents listed:

 

 

 

The system requirements are present on the opposite side:

 

 

 

HIS wanted to offer even more explanations regarding the product features on the back side of the box:

 

 

 

After removing the top packaging layer, we will end up with one black box, which features the manufacturer logo on top:

 

 

 

With the top cover lifted, we will get to see a small leaflet with mounting instructions but also an envelope:

 

 

 

As before, HIS likes to include the driver disk inside the envelope, along with a quick installation guide and a case badge:

 

 

 

In order to avoid damages during transit, HIS is using lots of foam material; besides the card we will also get one DVI to VGA adapter, in case we want to use it with older monitors or LCD TVs which do not possess HDMI input:

 

 

 

The card is sporting the IceQ X2 cooling system which we have also seen at the cards from the previous generation; this combination of large 86mm dual-axial fans which allow cooling the heatsink and the top metallic shroud for guiding the air is a winning solution when discussing about cards with lower TDP since it succeeds to keep the card at very acceptable temperatures when installed inside a case with decent airflow:

 

 

 

 

With the new gen, HIS has also fitted a set of stickers, on the side of the fans, to make it look more aggressive:

 

 

 

 

A chromed IceQ X2 logo can be also spotted on the shroud:

 

 

 

On the sides of the card we will be able to spot the five 6mm wide heatpipes which help to evacuate the heat coming from the 60x62mm GPU copper plate:

 

 

 

If we look on the back side of the PCB, we will be able to spot the tiny GPU backplate and also that the cooling system exceeds the length of the board; taking this into consideration, the board has a total length of 27cm:

 

 

 

 

Extra juice must be supplied to the card via two 6-pin PCI-E connectors:

 

 

 

As outputs, we have one DisplayLink port, one HDMI and also two DVI ports:

 

 

 

Test Setup

 

CPU: Intel I5 4690K Retail @ 4.6GHz

CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX

Motherboard: BIOSTAR Z97X Gaming

RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 4x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)

Video: Currently reviewed card

Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W

SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB + OCZ Vertex 460

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

 

With the help of the GPU-Z 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:

 

 

 

 

Temperature tests:

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 1920x1080 resolution for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, with details at Maximum and Tesselation set to Extreme. During this time, the ambient temperature was held steady at 26.7 degrees Celsius:

 

 

Noise measurements

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 29.1 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 MSI Afterburner utility:

 

 

 

3DMark 11

 

3DMark 11 is a DirectX 11 video card benchmark test for measuring your PC's gaming performance. 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of DirectX 11 features including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 consistently and reliably tests your PC's DirectX 11 performance under game-like loads.

 

 

3DMark 2013

 

3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware in one app. Whether you're gaming on a smart phone, tablet, notebook, laptop, desktop, or a high performance gaming PC, 3DMark includes a benchmark designed specifically for your type of device. And it's not just for Windows. You can compare your scores with Android and iOS devices too. It's the best 3DMark we've ever created.

 

 

Unigine Heaven 4.0

 

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system's potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

 

 

Hitman Absolution

 

Hitman: Absolution is a stealth video game developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix. It is the fifth installment in the Hitman game series, and runs on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier 2 game engine.

 

 

DIRT: Rally V0.5

 

Dirt Rally is a racing video game developed and published by Codemasters for Microsoft Windows. An early access version of the game was released on 27 April 2015, via digital distribution service Steam.

 

 

Sleeping Dogs

 

Sleeping Dogs is a 2012 open world action-adventure video game developed by United Front Games and Square Enix London. It was published by Square Enix and Bandai Namco Games for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

 

 

Tomb Raider

 

Tomb Raider is a media franchise that began as a video game series and includes comic books, novels, theme park rides, and movies, centering around the adventures of the British archaeologist Lara Croft.

 

 

Sniper Elite III

 

Sniper Elite III is a tactical shooter video game developed by Rebellion Developments and published by 505 Games for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

 

 

Metro Last Light

 

Metro: Last Light is a single-player post-apocalyptic-themed first-person shooter video game with stealth and survival horror elements, developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver.

 

 

Bioshock Infinite

 

BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter video game developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K Games.

 

 

Crysis 2

 

Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek, published by Electronic Arts and released in North America, Australia and Europe in March 2011 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.

 

 

Batman Arhkam Origins

 

Batman: Arkham Origins is a 2013 action-adventure video game developed by Warner Bros. Games Montréal and released by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 video game consoles.

 

 

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

 

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is an open world action-adventure video game set within Tolkien's legendarium, developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

 

 

Alien: Isolation

 

Alien: Isolation is a first-person survival horror stealth video game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Sega.

 

 

GRID Autosport

 

Grid Autosport is a racing video game released by Codemasters for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 24 June 2014 in North America and 27 June 2014 in Europe.

 

 

HIS has currently two R9 380 video cards available for sale, one with 2GB buffer and the other with 4GB of GDDR5. The 4GB version is sporting the same core clock frequency, but the memory runs just a little bit higher and to be more exact 1425MHz. Considering that this card was designed for the mainstream segment, people won’t throw at it games at ultra-high resolutions and even if they would try in order to fill the extra 2GB of buffer, the GPU core won’t be exactly able to keep up reasonable FPS.

The card seems to run well most titles at Full-HD but it struggles quite a bit at higher resolutions, which basically means that if you are aiming at 2560x1440 you would need to adjust the detail levels accordingly.

 

Regarding the overclocking capabilities of the card, we were quite impressed by its potential since we have been able to raise the GPU clock to 1120MHz and the memory to 1520MHz:

 

 

 

The card is quite solid with the IceQ X2 implementation from HIS, being able to keep the components cool even during long gaming sessions.

 

The HIS R9 380 IceQ X2 OC 2GB video card can be bought online for about 220 Euros.

 

HIS R9 380 IceQ X2 OC 2GB Video Card is Recommended For:

 

 

We would like to thank again to HIS for making this review possible!