At first I would like to thank HIS for offering a sample of their R7 370 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 card features the proven IceQ X2 cooling system which sports two 90mm dual axial fans and a large heatsink for heat evacuation. The inclusion of the metal rib strengthens the PCB so it won’t bend because of the extra weight.

 

The anti-dust cover (metallic shroud) redirects the airflow to the desired areas, while the fans have a life time rated at 50000 hours.

 

To help with higher overclocking levels, the card is equipped with a 5+1 phase VRM. Also, the card is featuring Dynamic Phase Control PWM ICs to save power for better use.

 

Built for Crossfire

 

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 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 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:

 

By navigating between the low-end and mainstream segments we will find ourselves with another refreshed item of the R7 AMD series which is based on the old Pitcairn GPU architecture found with the Radeon HD 7800 cards. This GPU was also renamed with the R7 270 card as Curacao Pro and now it is baptized as Trinidad Pro; regarding the technical specifications, Trinidad Pro comes with 1024 shader cores, 64 TMUs but also 32 ROPs and its stock AMD OEM frequencies are 975MHz for the GPU and 1400MHz for the memory. Since HIS has released their offering as an OC component, the new clock for the GPU is 1000Mhz, while the memory has been left at the same value of 1.4GHz.

 

The card is shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard box, with a familiar box art, resembling the efficiency of the proprietary cooling system:

 

 

 

Also on the frontal side of the packaging we will get to see some small logos representing board features:

 

 

 

 

The system requirements are listed on one of the box sides;

 

 

 

If we check on the opposite, we will get to see the box contents:

 

 

 

A more in-depth explanation of the board features can be found on the back side of the packaging:

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

HIS has placed inside the box the documentation, along with the installation disk; we will also receive a small leaflet which instructs us on how to transport the system with the card installed:

 

 

 

 

In order to avoid damages during transit, HIS saw fit to include lots of foam material around the card; as an extra accessory, we will also receive a DVI-to-VGA adapter in order to use the product with older TVs and monitors:

 

 

 

The board looks quite similar to the HIS R7 380 IceQ X2 OC card we have checked out before, by using two 90mm dual-axial fans along with an anti-dust cover (metallic shroud) for routing the airflow in the right direction:

 

 

 

The included fans are durable with a life span of up to 50000 hours:

 

 

 

On the left and right side of the metallic shroud we will see some stickers attached, in order to make the card look more aggressive:

 

 

 

An IceQ X2 chromed logo is also sitting in the top left corner:

 

 

 

On the laterals we can observe the five 6mm wide heatpipes which are meant to dissipate the heat efficiently from the 60x62mm GPU copper plate:

 

 

 

 

The board needs extra juice from two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors:

 

 

 

On the back side of the PCB, we will get to see the Crossfire connector along with the tiny GPU backplate; the PCB does also come with a plate on the frontal side in order to avoid bending:

 

 

 

The cooling system extends a bit over the PCB dimensions, so the card has a total length of 27cm:

 

 

 

As video outputs, we will see on the I/O two Mini DisplayPort 1.2 ports, one HDMI and two DVIs:

 

 

 

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 26.6 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.

 

 

As we have mentioned before, the R7 370 GPU from AMD is basically one of the most refreshed components from the 300 series since we have seen it since Radeon HD 7850, then in the R7 265/270 cards and now again. While the speeds have been boosted, we have the same architecture involved which basically means that older game titles should work fine at Full-HD resolution but newer titles need to be dialed down at lower detail levels in order to reach playable FPS.

 

The sample we have received seems to work quite well in terms of overclocking capabilities, since we were able to reach 1176MHz on the GPU and 1490MHz on the RAM, for some extra speed boost:

 

 

 

The IceQ X2 cooling system is a bit overkill for this card considering the low temperatures we have obtained during high-stress testing, which means that HIS does not skimp on quality and features even on their low-end to mainstream cards.

 

This card is obviously meant for people with lower budgets which are not very serious into gaming or are playing titles which do not require lots of resources like current MOBA titles; others should think about getting at least an R7 380 or aim higher.

 

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