Manufacturer: HIS Price: $ 349 US Author: Steve Date: 04/03/2012

[ Conclusion ]

The HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo is a menacing looking graphics card thanks to that huge black fan shroud and thick copper heatpipes that loop out the side like some kind of robotic tentacles. There is no question that this is a bad ass graphics card that will undoubtedly turn a lot of heads, but is it as impressive as it looks? In terms of performance the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo performed as expected, matching the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC which boats the same 1.1GHz factory core overclock. This means that the 7870 IceQ Turbo was on average 6% faster than a standard Radeon HD 7870, making it just a fraction slower than the HD 7950 in most tests. However the really good news for potential buyers is that this extra performance really comes at no added cost, as the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo is currently retailing for $359 along with virtually every other HD 7870 graphics card. The real sweetener of course is that IceQ cooler, which when sitting next to any graphics card using the reference cooler looks massive (in fact our AMD reference sample felt so inadequate that it went and bought a Humvee). - - As massive as the cooler looks the heatsink itself isn’t as big as the version used by Gigabyte and the single blower fan doesn’t work as well as the triple-fan configuration either. In the end the results spoke for themselves, as we found the HIS card ran 18% hotter than the Gigabyte card which was disappointing. This could have also been a deciding factor in the overclocking performance, which again saw Gigabyte come out on top. Still the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo did fair very well and is certainly one of the best Radeon HD 7870 options out there, and certainly the most impressive looking example. Overall we were pleased with the Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo and believe it deserves our performance award.

<- Previous Page Table of Contents Introduction HIS 7870 IceQ Turbo in Detail Test System Specs & 3Dmark 11 Benchmarks: Aliens vs. Predator, Battlefield 3 Benchmarks: Crysis 2, Dragon Age II Benchmarks: Deus Ex Human Revolution, Dirt 3 Benchmarks: Metro 2033, The Witcher 2 Overclocking Performance Power Consumption & Temperatures >>> Conclusion <<<

emphus

Posted on: 04/04/2012 12:04 PM what a beast. I was seriously looking at buying a 7950 next week but this thing is so similar performance wise and looks so cool I might get one instead. what would have been perfect is if you had of reviewed this as well. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161407

ramjet

Posted on: 04/04/2012 02:43 PM I would like to see how 2 of these handle themselves in SLI **hint**hint**