| HIS Radeon HD6870 IceQ-X Turbo-X Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Steven Iglesias-Hearst | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 02 June 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Page 17 of 18
HIS HD6870 IceQ X Turbo X OverclockingBefore I start overclocking I like to get a little bit of information, firstly I like to establish operating temperatures and since we know the IceQ X cooler is quite capable we can quickly move forward. Next I like to know what the voltage and clock limits are, so I fired up the MSI's Afterburner utility. I established that vCore was adjustable between 800mV and 1.299V and clock speeds were limited to 1200MHz max on the GPU and 1250MHz (5GHz effective) maximum frequency for the memory. This is more than enough range to move forward with and I know I can squeeze every last drop of performance out of the HIS HD6870 IceQ X Turbo X. My preferred weapons are MSI Afterburner (v2.2.0 Beta 3) for fine tuning while using FurMark (v1.9.0) to heat the GPU.
The GPU-Z screenshot above serves as a reminder of the temperatures and speed the HIS HD6870 IceQ X Turbo X video card at its default settings. With my modified fan profile running I gradually bumped the vCore to max and was able to push the clock speeds to 1020MHz GPU and 1220MHz (4.88GHz effective) Memory and still remain stable while in FurMark.
With a 45MHz GPU overclock (120MHz over reference design) and a 70MHz memory overclock (170MHz over reference design) we went back to the bench and ran through the entire test suite. Overall there is an average 4.75% increase in scores (at 1920x1080 resolution). We also re ran temperature tests at the overclocked speeds with a slightly higher ambient temperature of 25°C. The IceQ X cooler on the HIS HD6870 Turbo X (with modified fan profile) once again pulled through and gave some good temperatures. At idle the GPU sat at 42°C (47% fan speed). Pushing the temperature up with FurMark saw the GPU load temperature rise to 72°C (73% fan speed) and cranking the fan on manual to 100% saw the temperature drop to 66°C. The two problem benchmarks (Vantage: New Calico and Unigine Heaven) required the fan to be running at 100% in order for the test to complete successfully under the overclocked settings, this means a more aggressive fan profile is needed to run this video card with a long term overclock, either that or just keep the fan running at 100%. That's all of the testing over, in the next section I will deliver my final thoughts and conclusion.
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Comments
All I know is that they are pretty damn good right now, noise and cooling wise.
bore bang for the buck .The color blue very pleasing to the eye and a 90mm fan heat sinks for cooling really doing a job that others leave to water cooling .. overall I would purchace this card ..
Just a note: had some pages of the review refused to load/display. Skipped ahead, or went back, restarted the browser. Didn't solve the problem. Couple of pages just plain missing?
Thanks everyone for the positive remarks.
My real question is does the 6950 version of this card have the same Fan profile issue as this card, 6870? I also took out of the review that this issue it not much of an issue. If I raise the fan speed will everything be fine?
Thanks.
Thanks.
The Hackintosh is stable...I'm still running the same hardware configuration I wrote about in the original article. I've been very happy with it and the only bump in the road was a system software update that killed the sound; a KEXT patch brought that back.
I plan to migrate the Hackintosh to the Sandy Bridge platform sometime this summer and will have a new article when that's ready.
Thank you for a deep review. The card looks neat, and it's pretty good performance-wise.
Lower temps not only give space for overclocking, but also helps hardware live longer.
Fan issue doesn't look good... oh well it's fixable.
But the main reason I want this card is that it's quiter than other models with similar performance.
54-56db instead of 69-74 of Nvidia 560Ti/480. Impressive.
I'm building a rig with the following configuration:
AM3 AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BOX BLACK EDITION (amd)
DDR3 4096M 1333 Mhz Kingston Original (KVR1333D3N9/4G/KVR1333D3N9/4G-SPBK) - 2 pieces
HDD:500.0g 7200 Serial ATA III WD 16MB Caviar Blue (WD5000AAK?)
S-AM3: Asus M4A88T-V EVO/USB3.
PCIeX: ATI HD6870 HIS IceQ X Turbo 1024MB/256bit/GDDR5/2xDVI/HDMI/2xMini DP (975/4600) (H687QNT1G2M)
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus (RR-B10-212P-GP)
Sony Optiarc LightScribe, Black, SATA (AD-7261S-0B)
Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus (RC-912P-KKN1)
ANTEC High Current Gamer HCG-620EC 620W v.2.3,Fan135mm, aPFC, 80+Bronze, SLI, Retail
All for less than 800 dollars!
Way to go ATI!
Warm greetings from Russia.
I have got 3 displays that I want to use with Eyefinity to play games like Bad Company 2 over 3 diplays to get a wider view. The problem is that my current graphics card does not support more than 2 displays. So my question is, does the IceQ X Turbo X support 3 displays? If it does, i'm probably going to buy one soon!
BTW very nice and thorough review!
Regards from Norway
Never tried to use more than 2, but I have no reason not to believe the specs from HIS site.
Don?t choose between play and work. Let up to 4 displays help you enjoy games, movies and the web at the same time.
##hisdigital.com/un/product2-593.shtml
Because of that I would like to know for sure that it supports three or four displays...
1x DVI or HDMI monitor connected to the DVI or HDMI port
1x DVI monitor connected to a DVI port
1x ACTIVE displayport to DVI adaptered monitor.
source: ##overclock.net/amd-ati/869715-radeon-6870-multiple-monitor-issues.html
I've just installed this card and found that it shuts down as mentioned.
I have tried the fix using afterburner that was suggested and F12010 crashes very quickly. The game runs on my computer with a previous graphics card installed
Has there been a permanent resolution to the fan issue?
Thanks in advance,
Egil