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Introduction

The HIS 7870 IceQ, the latest 7870 to come from HIS, it features a custom PCB and cooler. At first look, the card looks huge! At 29.7 cm long it’s longer than even it’s much more powerful brother, the 7970.  The combination of a fairly low power 28nm GPU and a massive cooler should make for a very fun graphics card overclocking wise and hopefully, quiet too.

Specifications

Core Clock: 1000 MHz

Memory Clock: 4800 MHz

Memory Size: 2048 MB

Memory Type: GDDR5

Memory Interface: 256 bit

Interface: PCI Express 3.0 x16

Card Dimension: 14 x 4.4 x 29.7 cm (HxWxD)

Box Dimension: 34.85 x 18.45 x 9.45 cm (HxWxD)

Box and Bundle

When compared to the last product I received from HIS, the 6950 IceQ, this is far more interesting. The box looks excellent and describes many of the features that the card has.

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Similar to the front, the back also shows many of the features of the card.

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The bundle includes:

CD driver

Installation guide

Crossfire Bridge

DVI to VGA adaptor

It’s quite a small package; I’ve certainly seen more feature packed bundles anyway.

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Introduction

With the new line up of graphics cards coming from AMD and Nvidia, we can expect some nice price drops on the last generation as both firms and their partners attempt to clear old stock. This means it’s upgrade time whether you’re buying the latest cards or not, but not necessarily just for the high end.

Today I’m checking out a card that’s much more at home in an HTPC or low end gaming rig. It’s a dual fan 6670 from HIS with 1GB of onboard memory. Let’s check it out.

Features

Direct® 11 Evolved

• Take advantage of improved performance and realistic effects of Microsoft DirectXR 11 using AMD
• AMD’s second generation graphics solution offering full DirectXR 11 support
• AMD Radeon™ HD 6670 GPUS offer new tessellation capabilities. Let AMD Radeon™ HD 6670 Graphics give you the realism and detail in your games that you deserve

AMD App Acceleration

• Tap into the processing power of your AMD Radeon™ HD 6670 GPU to accelerate applications with AMD App Acceleration capabilities. It allows you to do more,and do it faster
• Enhance your Blu-ray movies, online streaming video and other HD content using your AMD Radeon™ HD 6670 GPU and get smoother – frame rate with improved image quality features
• Decode DolbyR TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio – for the ultimate in ultichannel audio delivering high quality surround sound over HDMI 1.4 for movie audio as it was meant to be heard

HD3D Technology

• Add a 3rd dimension to your games using AMD HD3D technology. Support for hundreds of games in full 3D
• Watch your 3D Blu-Ray movies in vivid color and rich detail using AMD HD3D Technology
• Wide hardware support for 3D HDTV’s, 3D Projectors, and 3D monitors, as well as supported Notebook systems.

Specifications

Today I’m taking a look at Sapphire’s Vapor X card. A custom PCB with high quality components such as the second generation Black Diamond chokes makes for what should be a great performing and highly overclockable card. The custom Vapor-X cooler has been designed to provide not only cooler temperatures but also much less noise compared to the reference design cooler. Let’s begin!

Specifications

Outputs

• 1 x Dual-Link DVI
• 1 x HDMI 1.4a
• 2 x Mini-DisplayPort
• 1 x Single-Link DVI-D
• DisplayPort 1.2

GPU

• Core Clock: 800 MHz
• Memory: 1024 MB GDDR5
• Dimension: 238(L)x98(W)x37(H) mm Size

Box and Bundle

The box is packed with logos, specifications and looks impressive with the blue and checker plate back ground.

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The rear of the box shows many specifications, the contents and the standards met by the product.

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The bundle includes:

• CD driver
• Installation guide
• Two Molex to 6 pin adaptors
• Crossfire bridge
• DVI to VGA adaptor
• DIRT 3 coupon
• HDMI cable
• Mini DP to DP cable

Not a bad bundle for a card. The adaptors and HDMI cables are useful features to include and the Dirt 3 coupon is also a very welcome gift.

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Today we’re looking at the HIS 6950 IceQ. It’s HIS’s take on a regular 6950, featuring a custom PCB and cooler. Running at the same speed as a reference card, there won’t be much performance improvement until we begin overclocking, where the custom cooler with its massive fan should come into play. Let’s see how it performs.

Specifications

Model Name: HIS 6950 IceQ 2GB GDDR5 PCI-E 2xDVI/HDMI/2xMini DP
Chipset: Radeon HD 6950 PCIe Series
Memory Size (MB): 2048
Memory Type: GDDR5
Engine CLK (MHz): 800Mhz
Memory CLK (Gbps): 5Gbps
Memory Interface (bit): 256
Power Supply Requirement: 500 Watt or greater power
Max. Resolution: 2560*1600 (Single Display)
Bus Interface: PCI Express x16
Mini Display Port: Yes
HDMI: Yes
DVI: Upper Single-link DVI-D + Bottom Dual-link DVI-I
VGA: No

Box and Bundle

The box is rather plain, only showing a HIS logo and DIRT 3 sticker on the front.

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The rear of the box is completely plain.

The bundle includes:

• CD driver
• Installation guide
• Two Molex to 6 pin adaptors
• Crossfire bridge
• DVI to VGA adaptor
• DIRT 3 coupon
• HIS weight lifter

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Not a huge bundle but it’s great to see things like the Dirt 3 coupon and HIS weight lifter included.

Here’s the weight lifter and pieces of paper it comes with.

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The weight lifter installed:

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The idea behind this is to take some of the weight off of the PCB of the card and the PCIe slot. While you rarely hear about damage to the card or motherboard from GPU weight, this is an elegantly simple solution that we applaud.

The Zotac GTX 590. It’s the Zotac revision of nVidia’s current monster dual chip card that no body is going to buy because it’s so expensive, more than you need blah blah blah. Despite that though, it’s always exciting to see what a GPU like this can do. It’s as fast and as powerful as you can get; let’s see it destroy out benchmark suite.

Specifications

There are many different companies trying to sell you GPUs out there and each one of them is trying to make themselves unique. Today we’re looking at an MSI card that does that in looks and name, the N560GTX-TI Twin Frozr II. It’s got a fancy looking cooler and 560GTX TI performance. It should be a good combination, let’s see.

Specifications

Features

Full feature list can be found here.

Introduction

We’ve done the GTX 580, we’ve done the GTX 570, but what about the little old 560? Well today Zotac have sent over the GTX 560 TI Amp edition. Lets see how it performs when weighed up against its bigger brothers.

Specifications

While we might have been reviewing some high end AMD gear recently, the nVidia camp needs representing too. Fortunately Zotac have sent through one of their more powerful cards, the GTX 580 Amp! Edition. Let’s see how it stacks up in our benchmarks.

Specifications

Introduction

Just to keep things fresh and prevent you all from getting bored with all the headset reviews we’ve been putting out recently, here’s something a bit more internal,a GPU from HIS. This is the IceQX variant of their HD 6870 Graphics card from AMD.

Specifications

Features

While there may be some missing images and feature run downs, here’s our review of the GTX 570 from Zotac. How will it compare to our previously tested HIS HD 6970? We’re about to find out.

Features and Specifications

• New ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 570 graphics card
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 570 graphics processor
• Engine clock: 732 MHz
• 480 unified shaders
• Shader clock: 1464 MHz
• 1280MB of GDDR5 memory
• 320-bit memory interface
• Memory clock: 3800 MHz
• PCI Express 2.0 interface (Compatible with 1.1)
• Microsoft DirectX^® 11 & OpenGL^® 4.1 compatible
• NVIDIA^® CUDA^™, 3D Vision™ Surround & SLI™ ready
• HDMI 1.4a compliant (xvYCC Color & DeepColor compatible)
• Hardware-accelerated Blu-ray 3D ready
• ZOTAC® Boost Premium software bundle included
• Prince of Persia®: The Forgotten Sands™ game bundle included