HIS 7870 IceQ Pro Reviews

This latest version of the IceQ cards from HIS gave me a big, shit-eating grin when I pulled it from the chunky packaging. The massive cooler strapped onto the PCB makes it look like a graphics card from 2005, when bigger was unashamedly better. The cooling array spreads out from the circuit board to house a large fan that's lifted away from the rest of the componentry. If space is at a premium in your build, this may not be the card for you. The 'Black Hole' impeller HIS uses on its IceQ card is a little smarter than you might give it credit for, though. The fact that it is raised away from the PCB means it can draw in air from both sides. Therefore, if you have another PCI/PCIe card pushing up against it, the IceQ will still draw in a decent air supply. It's not all about the chunky impeller though - there are also four big aluminium heatpipes going from the copper plate into the heatsink cooled by the Black Hole.

Like the HIS HD 7870 IceQ Turbo we looked at a little bit back, the non-Turbo model here today does an excellent job of impressing us thanks to its excellent overclocking ability. One could argue the non-Turbo model is slightly better because it comes in at a more aggressive price point. At $339.99 after rebate, the HIS HD 7870 IceQ 2GB represents some really good value and with the overclocking potential of the video card, the value is extended even further. This is our second HIS HD 7870 that was able to break 1250MHz on the core which as we saw in our Turbo review brings with it some awesome performance gains over a 1GHz clocked reference card. The package is a little on the weak side, but this is a trend that we see more and more these days as companies let the product do the talking instead of the bundle. Considering the more aggressive pricing of video cards these days as well, there's little to complain about.

Both HIS and PowerColor stand out in different ways. PowerColor’s PCS+ HD7870 is a rather straightforward upsell: for $20 (6%) more PowerColor will sell you a 7870 card that gets 5-7% more performance than a stock 7870. And because of their custom open air cooler, it can do this while being a bit quieter than AMD’s reference design. As has been the case with factory overclocked cards in the past this is really an individual decision – based on our limited data, it looks like most 7870s should be able to hit PowerColor’s factory overclocks – but if you just want a bit more guaranteed performance for a bit more money, PowerColor is happy to sell it to you. If nothing else the performance gain is large enough to justify considering it in the first place. HIS on the other hand makes things a bit more interesting, and a lot less clear. For their IceQ Turbo 7870 their upsell is $40 (11%) for roughly the same 5-7% performance improvement, and if all you care about is stock performance then it’s not a good deal. The real differentiating factor is the IceQ cooler; it’s simply leaps and bounds ahead of any other 7870 we’ve seen so far, though it gets there by using an extra slot in width. If for some reason you need its impressively effective cooling – say for overvolting in the future – then it’s a great candidate. Otherwise without with the prospect of overvolting it’s effectively limited by the AMD PCB and what Pitcairn can do on stock voltage, in which case its temperature advantage likely won’t translate into any material benefit. But then this is the advantage of the GPU partner system for consumers – a company like HIS can go out and create an overcooled card, even if it's for just a niche market.

The graphics performance of the HIS HD7870 IceQ Turbo is good enough for playing most games at 1920x1080 with the highest settings. There are obviously some games that will test it if you put everything on maximum. Its performance out of the box was exeptional which I expected, for me the HD7000 series represents what the HD6000 series could and should have been - a proper upgrade. The HIS HD7870 IceQ Turbo sits at the top of the pile in every test but does so at a much higher cost. The appearance rating of the HIS HD7870 IceQ Turbo is up for debate. There is not a lot I can say about a discrete graphics card that will get installed and then be out of sight. When we consider looking up close at the PCB cleanliness and the soldering quality then it does deserve a high rating. There are some that will surely disagree but thanks to the graphic nature of this review you can easily make your mind up for yourself. If anything lets it down it would be the untreated heatpipes Construction is excellent as you would expect from a company with a good reputation like HIS, despite the use of plastic for the fan shroud the whole package feels really solid. Taking the card to pieces and reconstructing it was a breeze and everything lined up perfectly, the IceQ HSF assembly is solid and is well made which reassures you that it is no fragile piece of hardware. It is really heavy but thanks to the weight lifter it can be supported from below to prevent warping of the PCB or socket.