The Radeon HD 7870 is becoming a popular choice among gamers as it provides a better price vs. performance ratio when compared to other 7000 series cards. When compared to its bigger brother, the Radeon HD 7950, it is just 8% slower on average yet it also costs a little over 20% less.

Meanwhile, the HD 7870 is also 12% faster than the GeForce GTX 570 and 10% faster than the Radeon HD 6970, and at launch all three cards shared the same $349 price tag. This forced Nvidia to reduce the price of the GeForce GTX 570 for the first time and now most cards can be had for $309.

Although we first looked at the Radeon HD 7870 at the start of March, this was only a paper launch as graphics cards featuring this new GPU were not set to become available until the 19th. It was that date that we tested our first production version which was designed by Gigabyte.

The Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC was an impressive card featuring a re-designed PCB, upgraded cooler and factory overclocking. Like today’s review item the Gigabyte card also hit the MSRP right on target, making it an extremely attractive option.

There are now plenty of Radeon HD 7870 graphics cards to choose from and very few are based on the AMD reference design. As unique as the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC was, the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo is just as unique and we are keen to see how it performs. But before we do let’s take a closer look...

The HD 7870 GPU is fabricated on a 28nm process, making it possible for AMD to squeeze 4313 million transistors into a 352mm2 die.

The GPU core is clocked at 1000MHz, 11% higher than the HD 6870, and the GDDR5 memory operates at 1200MHz (4.8GHz DDR), which is 14% higher than the HD 6870. The HD 7870 is paired with a 256-bit wide memory bus providing a theoretical bandwidth of 153.6GB/s or 14% more memory bandwidth than the HD 6870.

However HIS has overclocked their Radeon HD 7870 from a 1GHz core to 1.1GHz, which is a 10% increase. The GDDR5 memory has been left at 4.8GHz so it will be interesting to see how much impact the core overclock has on performance.

While the HD 6870 typically came loaded with a 1GB frame buffer, the 7870 has been upgraded to 2GB. We've found that when using multi-monitor setups at extreme resolutions, the larger buffer of AMD's cards provide a significant advantage over Nvidia's, which are limited to 1536MB for the most part.

The HD 7870's core configuration also differs from the 6870’s. The new card carries 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs, up 14% from 1120 SPUs and 43% more TAUs from just 56.

Like the Radeon HD 7970 flagship, the HD 7870 adopts the 28nm design process and is also PCI Express 3.0-compatible. The new interface spec doubles its predecessor's bandwidth to 32GB/s. Unfortunately, no current processor or chipset supports this technology, so we'll have to test it down the road.

What makes this HIS iteration unique is its IceQ solution with "Black Hole Impeller". The cooler uses a large 80 x 21.5mm blower fan which is connected to a custom shroud. In front of this fan is a massive heatsink which features two 6mm copper heatpipes along with two larger 8mm heatpipes.

Connected to the large copper base of the heatsink is unique RAM heat spreader which is designed to cool the GDDR5 modules. HIS claims that this cooler is up to 25 degrees cooler than AMD’s reference version.

To feed the card enough juice, AMD includes dual 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. This is the same setup used on the HD 6950, 5870, 6870 as well as the GTX 580 and 570 graphics cards.

Naturally, the HD 7870 supports Crossfire, so it has a pair of connectors to bridge two or more cards. The only other ports are on the I/O panel where you'll find a dual DL-DVI connector, a single HDMI 1.4a port, and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets.

All HD 7870s support a max resolution of 2560x1600 on up to three monitors. With a multi-stream hub, using the mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets, the card can power up to six screens.

Hardware - Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz) - x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600(CAS 8-8-8-20) - Crucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - AMD Radeon HD 7970 (3072MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 7950 (3072MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB) OC - AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB) - AMD Radeon HD 7850 (2048MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 6990 (4096MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB) - VisionTek Radeon HD 6950 (2048MB) - Asus Radeon HD 6870 (1024MB) - HIS Radeon HD 5870 (1024MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 (3072MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 (1280MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB) - Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79) - OCZ ZX Series (1250w) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit - Nvidia Forceware 295.73 - AMD Catalyst 12.2

The extreme 3Dmark 11 test saw the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo score 2232pts making it a fraction faster than the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC though with just 17pts separating them the results are very even. When compared to a standard Radeon HD 7870 graphics card the HIS version was 7% faster.

The Aliens vs. Predator results were not that exciting as the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo was just 1-2fps faster than a standard card depending on resolution. Therefore at 2560x1600 it was still 18% slower than the Radeon HD 7950.

The Battlefield 3 results saw the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo provide 2fps extra when compared to the AMD reference card. This allowed the HIS card to match the GeForce GTX 580 at 2560x1600 and despite seeing a 6% performance increase we are not sure how many gamers will notice the extra 2fps.

The HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo performed well at 1920x1200 delivering 3fps more than the non-overclocked reference card which was a 9% performance boost. This margin was reduced to just 1fps or 4% at 2560x1600.

When testing with Dragon Age II at 2560x1600 the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo delivered 12% more performance as it was 3fps faster than a standard non-overclocked card. It was also 1fps faster than the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC.

The Deus Ex Human Revolution performance at 2560x1600 was not all that inspiring as the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo provided just 1fps more when compared to the reference card. This was enough to see the HIS card match the GeForce GTX 580 but that was about it.

With an average of 49fps at 2560x1600 when testing with Dirt 3 the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo was 3fps or 7% faster than the reference card. This made it just 1fps or 2% slower than the GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards.

HIS’s Radeon HD 7870 OC graphics card delivered an average of 33fps at 2560x1600 making it just 1fps faster than a standard HD 7870. The margin at 1920x1200 was larger as the overclocked card provided 3fps more performance allowing it to overtake the GeForce GTX 580.

Finally when testing with The Witcher 2 the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo was 1fps faster than the reference card at 2560x1600 and 2fps at 1920x1200.

The 14% frequency boost over the factory overclock allowed for an additional 7% performance in Aliens vs. Predator, 7% in Battlefield 3 and 12% in The Witcher 2.

Despite being on average 6% faster than a standard Radeon HD 7870 graphics card, the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo consumed just 2% more power when testing in Crysis 2. The fact that this graphics card provided similar results to that of the GeForce GTX 580 in most tests while consuming almost 20% less power, really speaks for the efficiency of the new 28nm AMD graphics cards.

Although a load temperature of 65 degrees is actually very low we were a little disappointed with the HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo. The Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC operates a full 10 degrees cooler under load and we believe that card is also slightly quieter. Still with a load temperature of 65 degrees the IceQ Turbo card was 11% cooler than AMD’s reference card.

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).

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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.