HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ Video Card

Written by Steve Hearst

Wednesday, 09 November 2011

Table of Contents: Page Index
HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ Video Card
Closer Look: HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ 1GB
HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ 1GB Detailed Features
Features and Specifications
VGA Testing Methodology
DX10: 3DMark Vantage
DX10: Street Fighter IV
DX11: Aliens vs Predator
DX11: Battlefield Bad Company 2
DX11: BattleForge
DX11: Lost Planet 2
DX11: Tom Clancy's HAWX 2
DX11: Metro 2033
DX11: Unigine Heaven 2.1
HIS Radeon HD6870 IceQ 1GB Temperatures
VGA Power Consumption
HIS Radeon HD6870 IceQ 1GB Overclocking
Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Page 11 of 18

DX11: Lost Planet 2

Lost Planet 2 is the second instalment in the saga of the planet E.D.N. III, ten years after the story of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. The snow has melted and the lush jungle life of the planet has emerged with angry and luscious flora and fauna. With the new environment comes the addition of DirectX-11 technology to the game.

Lost Planet 2 takes advantage of DX11 features including tessellation and displacement mapping on water, level bosses, and player characters. In addition, soft body compute shaders are used on 'Boss' characters, and wave simulation is performed using DirectCompute. These cutting edge features make for an excellent benchmark for top-of-the-line consumer GPUs.

The Lost Planet 2 benchmark offers two different tests, which serve different purposes. This article uses tests conducted on benchmark B, which is designed to be a deterministic and effective benchmark tool featuring DirectX 11 elements.

Lost Planet 2 Benchmark 1.0
- Moderate Settings: (2x AA, Low Shadow Detail, High Texture, High Render, High DirectX 11 Features)

Cost Analysis: Lost Planet 2 (1680x1050)

$139.99 Radeon HD6850 costs $5.22 per FPS

$159.99 GeForce GTX 460 costs $4.65 per FPS

$199.99 HIS Radeon HD6870 IceQ 1GB costs $6.11 per FPS

$199.99 HIS Radeon HD6870 IceQ X Turbo X costs $5.93 per FPS

$219.99 GeForce GTX 560Ti costs $4.92 per FPS

$229.99 Radeon HD6950 costs $6.51 per FPS

Test Summary: Lost Planet 2 is a tough cookie to crack, in our tests we had to use relatively moderate settings just to get some acceptable numbers. This game wants high level hardware to play maxed out. The overclocked HIS Radeon HD6870 IceQ 1GB delivers average frame rates at a mid/high cost/performance ratio.

Graphics Card	Radeon HD6850	GeForce GTX 460 (OC)	HIS Radeon HD6870 IceQ 1GB	HIS Radeon HD6870 X Turbo X	GeForce GTX 560Ti	Radeon HD6950
GPU Cores	960	336	1120	1120	384	1408
Core Clock (MHz)	775	715	900	975	822	800
Shader Clock (MHz)	N/A	1430	N/A	N/A	1645	N/A
Memory Clock (MHz)	1000	900	1050	1150	1002	1250
Memory Amount	1024MB GDDR5	1024MB GDDR5	1024MB GDDR5	1024MB GDDR5	1024MB GDDR5	2048MB GDDR5
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit

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Comments

# RE: HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ Video Card — Sun Down 2011-11-09 22:31

Great review of the card. Honestly, the name already gives away on how much it could be overclocked, you could use an air conditioner to push the card further. On your first point, saying the PC gaming is dead is like saying that every scientist in the world is dead. We're the pioneers of interactive graphics.

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# RE: RE: HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ Video Card — WhyNotV2 2011-11-17 03:37

Sun Down, he wasn't saying he believed PC gaming was dead, read the whole statement...

"A lot of people are speculating that the PC and PC gaming industry is dying but I beg to differ. I think the Tablet/Smartphone era is just a novelty phase. One problem lies with power delivery, and we all know that today's batteries just don't cut it when we want to use our devices for extended periods..."

Nowhere did he say that he himself agreed and actually said he disagreeed.

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# Info — Chris 2012-01-17 11:13

I have this motherboard:
##gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=1928#sp

I wanted to put this graphics card on my system with full 4gb of RAM. I already updated the bios system to hande 2.1 PCIe. Would it work on my motherboard? How would it run if so?

Thank you

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# RE: Info — Steven Iglesias-Hearst 2012-01-17 11:28

Your motherboard is fine and this card will run as it is intended to on it. Just make sure your PC case has enough room and that your power supply can handle the extra load.

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# RE: RE: Info — Chris 2012-01-17 16:08

Thanks Steven. Yeah I want to build a new pc but don't have the cash at the moment so I was looking into a new graphics card for now.
I was thinking about this HIS ice 6870 or this:
##newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102924
Which would you prefer? Or what other card would you consider?
Thanks

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# RE: RE: RE: Info — Steven Iglesias-Hearst 2012-01-18 16:32

The Sapphire card is OK buddy although it is $10 more. Maybe consider looking at some NVIDIA cards too - GTX 560, GTX 560Ti or GTX 560Ti 448

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# ok — Chris 2012-01-18 17:11

Thanks. I took your advice and looked into the Nvidia cards.
This is what I found that I think would go well:
##newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127608

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# not a bad time... — Pinakio 2011-11-10 14:41

Great review from BMR as usual, keep'em coming! Despite what most people say, this is good time for upgrading GPUs. The price has reached a level of tranquility and is quite reasonable than ever and we've a pretty good idea of the performance that we can expect from both camps. Surely one can wait for GCN (SI/Kepler) but that ain't happening before 2012 as we all now know. But what we have in the market is proven GPUs with custom designs like this one and MSI TwinFrozr II/III, which are great for OCing and bang for $$. These AIBs are doing a great job of making innovative and effective designs and they should not be afraid of dishing out some significant amount of factory OC. Also considering the number of big tittles that are to be released like BF3, MW3 and Skyrim- we shall see a surge in the sells of discrete GPUs!

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# Voltage Control — Chris 2011-11-17 12:32

That is an awesome overclock for not bumping the voltage. I'd love to see if you have control over this and see if you can get an even higher overclock. You can use ATI Tray Tools to get past the 1Ghz limit and you can punch in your own voltage. I have a pair of Vision#s and they will not allow you over mess with the voltage at all. Not even at the Bios level.

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# RE: Voltage Control — Steven Iglesias-Hearst 2011-11-17 13:23

I bumped the voltage to 1.3V to get that overclock and I was able to get past the 1GHz barrier by using the unofficial overclocking method whereby you modify the MSIafterburner.cfg to give more headroom. For all my efforts I couldn't get it stable beyond 1GHz. This was written in black and white in the overclocking chapter of this article.

"More overclocking headroom could be unlocked for the GPU Core and Memory speeds using the unofficial overclocking method in MSI Afterburner, but I wasn't able to keep this card stable during testing when I went past the previous limits. I bumped the vCore to the max 1.30V and was able to push the clock speeds to 1000MHz GPU and 1250MHz (5GHz effective) Memory and still remain stable during the benchmarking run."

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# This card awesome — Trevor 2011-12-01 21:28

This card is awesome... I don't need to overclock it at all... everything is good excepted it is big for my mid tower

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# Info — Hurricane 2012-09-12 04:47

I have this motherboard
#in.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8H67M_LX/

and wanted to know whether this graphics card would work on it .So will it work ?

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