HIS HD7950 IceQ Turbo Detailed Features

In this section we shall take an in-depth look at the HIS HD7950 IceQ Turbo 3GB video card and see what makes it tick.

With the cooling assembly removed we can get a better look at the aluminum/copper heatsink. The high grade power delivery setup (VRM) also demands some cooling and is fitted with its own aluminum heatsink. The IceQ cooler is good but later in this article you will see that the Tahiti 28nm GPU gives it a good run for its money, I suspect that the IceQ X cooler from HIS might do a better job.

With the cooler assembly fully removed we also get a better look at the board. The overall layout of all the components is very tidy as we are used to on high end video cards. Advances in nano-scale manufacturing technologies mean that video increasing density memory can be squeezed into a much smaller package, here we have 12 memory modules serving 3GB, just two years ago 1GB video cards would have needed eight modules! All in all the PCB looks good with no real waste of space and the soldering quality is of a very high standard.

The back of the PCB is utilised mainly for resistors and the soldering quality is excellent for such tiny components. Man loses the war to the machine when it comes to detailed work like this. These days you won't generally see RAM on the reverse side of a video card thanks to the smaller manufacturing process that allows more density in a much smaller package.

The HIS HD7950 IceQ Turbo features a support brace that surrounds nearly 3/4 of the PCB and also incorporates the VRM heatsink. This design is better than nothing but still doesn't stop the PCB from flexing due to the overall weight of the assembled card pulling south. I much would much prefer to see the inclusion of the weight lifter support accessory that came bundled with the HIS HD 7870 IceQ Turbo model as in the long run I expect that warping will occur.

The HIS HD7950 IceQ Turbo uses 3GB of hynix H5GQ2H24MFR-TC2 memory divided between twelve modules, rated at 2.5GHz (5GHz effective) at 1.5V.

For voltage control HIS have utilised the CHiL CHL 8228G, a popular and feature rich voltage control chip in the Radeon HD 79XX series of video cards.

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