HIS 7970 X Pro Reviews

The HIS 7970 X Turbo is available for $609.99, which makes it the most expensive Radeon HD 7970 based card available on Newegg. This is a full $40 more expensive than the MSI 680 GTX Lightning, which can be had for $579.99 after a $20 mail in rebate. Reference and other factory overclocked Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards can be found for as low as $449.99, which places the HIS 7970 X Turbo at a $160 premium. Compared to the reference Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, the HIS 7970 X Turbo represents a step up in performance across the board and is arguably the fastest video card on the market sporting a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition GPU. This video card really does have a lot going for it in terms of performance. It is one of the highest clocked Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition video cards we've seen out of the box. It overclocked extremely well for a GHz Edition video card. Typically, GHz Edition video cards haven't overclocked well, but this one went way up to 1245MHz, this is the highest overclock we've tested yet on a GHz Edition 7970. That's why it makes our conclusion about this video card difficult. On the one hand you have a great performing video card. On the other hand you have a $610 piece of video card with potential compatibility issues which you need to be aware of. At $610 you should not have these issues; you should be getting "the best." If the price were $100 cheaper, we'd have an easier time recommending the video card. The HIS Radeon HD 7970 X Turbo video card has solid potential, but in its current form we do not think it carries the value suggested by its selling price.

The HIS Radeon HD 7970 X Turbo comes with a large overclock out of the box that is higher than any other custom design HD 7970. That improvement nets the card a 6% performance advantage over AMD's HD 7970 GHz Edition reference design. This makes the card 10% faster than the GeForce GTX 680, which is NVIDIA's fastest single-GPU graphics card. I wish HIS had overclocked the memory as well for an extra performance boost at no additional cost. We've seen that approach on the ASUS HD 7970 Matrix, although it comes at a lower GPU clock. While the AMD HD 7970 GHz used a 6+8 PCI-E power configuration, HIS has opted for a dual eight-pin design that promises higher power capability, which could come in handy with overclocking. Despite its higher clock speeds, power consumption is almost the same as the slower HD 7970 GHz reference design, which is a good thing. Only our Furmark test shows higher numbers; a fringe-specific test that is barely relevant to typical use.

There's absolutely no denying that the HIS Radeon HD 7970 3GB X Turbo is a desirable card. It's quite possibly the fastest single GPU card available, and certainly the fastest we've ever seen, as it trumped the GTX 680 2GB in nearly all of our benchmarks. It also features excellent connectivity and a cooling system that strikes a wonderful balance between staying cool and quiet. However, though it's an improvement on the GHz Edition of the HD 7970 3GB, it's still not one that's worth £80, as the performance increases it offers are marginal at best, and as such it falls short of a recommendation. The GHz Edition can be found for just less than GTX 680 2GB cards at the moment and offers improved performance too. Even buyers who can afford the X Turbo, most likely those who like to game across multiple monitors, would probably be better off buying the standard GHz Edition or a pre-overclocked HD 7970 3GB and putting the money saved toward a decent water-cooling setup.

HIS Radeon HD 7970 X Turbo edition review We review the HIS Radeon HD 7970 X Turbo edition. With this card they took the new Tahiti XT2 and redesigned the R7970 board from ground up. though very long the end result is a 31cm PCB with mane power phases and optimizations. Fun to see are the voltage and FAN monitor LED options. Most impressive however is the sheer amount of monitor connectors HIS injected into this product, four DisplayPort connectors, one HDMI and a DVI connector. If needed you can go for Eyefinity6. Oh did I mention already that the factory set boost clock frequency is 1180 Mhz ?