# HIS Radeon HD 7950 IceQ X² Boost 3 GB



## W1zzard (Nov 28, 2012)

The HIS Radeon HD 7950 IceQ X² Boost comes with a large overclock, which increases its out of the box performance to GTX 670 levels. Thanks to a large dual fan cooler we also see great temperature and massive overclocking potential: +20% real life performance from overclocking.

*Show full review*


----------



## BigBenn1 (Nov 28, 2012)

*Insane*

What a great card, but it looks like Newegg has it posted for a bit more than what HIS promised, no biggie though, since when O/C'd it kicks butt. Great review W1z.


----------



## BababooeyHTJ (Nov 29, 2012)

Wizz, could you dump that bios?


----------



## mascotzel (Nov 29, 2012)

Hello!
I like your VGA reviews, especially the noise section.
Could you make an effort and post in them also what manual software control of the cooling can do related to noise& temperature?
Your review tells us that this card is very noisy, and I would never buy something like that.
But if manual control would allow me to change to noise without screwing the temperatures much, that would be another thing.


----------



## Dice (Nov 29, 2012)

Great review as always! 
So does this board have unlocked voltage control and would it fit a water block?  Getting itchy upgrade finger but am concerned about getting a voltage locked card,  seems to go against the point of a wc setup..


----------



## N3M3515 (Nov 29, 2012)

This cardis right there with the gtx 670, amazing.


----------



## 3870x2 (Nov 29, 2012)

Couldn't agree more with a 9.2.  This card is nicely priced, looks and plays excellent.  I wonder what overclocks you could achieve if you didn't overclock the memory at all?


----------



## ErthWen (Nov 29, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> To read this review go to: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/H...7950_X2_Boost/





> NVIDIA: 306.23 WHQL
> ATI: Catalyst 12.8 WHQL
> ATI HD 7000: Catalyst 12.11 Beta



WTF?

Bl1zzard, are you serious? You are testing a set of graphic cards with a new and beta driver (AMD cards), but with the nvidia cards, otherwise, you are testing them with a old and obsolete WHQL driver (not the last one).

W1zzard, make a fair play with the test procedure. If a set of cards have a new and beta driver, then the other cards too.

The 306.23 nvidia driver is in the wild very much time (september).


----------



## eidairaman1 (Nov 29, 2012)

good card actually. bet a few have stronger OC for the ram


----------



## Casecutter (Nov 30, 2012)

ErthWen said:


> WTF?
> Bl1zzard, are you serious?
> The 306.23 nvidia driver is in the wild very much time (september).



It hardly matters... even Steve Walton just compared the latest GeForce 310.61 update, against Catalyst 12.11 beta drivers and you can see the results.
http://www.techspot.com/review/603-best-graphics-cards/

On the first page Steve said "Around the same time, Nvidia released a new beta driver of its own (GeForce 310.33) which claimed modest gains for the GTX 680 and GTX 660 in several titles, and this driver has since been replaced by the GeForce 310.61 update, which made further performance enhancements. This is what we'll be testing today."

While in conclusion said... "At 1920x1200 the GeForce GTX 670 is 12% faster than _(referance)_ 7950, and just 2% faster than the 7950 with Boost _(almost indentical to W1zzards' here)_. However the GTX 670 is 27% more expensive than both cards, so whichever way you slice it the Radeon HD 7950 Boost is the better proposition and things just get worse for the GTX 670 as the resolution is increased."

Now I'm not defending W1zzard (while not a fan of Steve) but it takes a bunch of time to re-run all testing and collect date for minimal differences.  That said, I like to see after initial release reviews of a new series, which should show the new card as it sit in the past-present line up with the released drivers. Although when a card like this comes along I’d like to see just those cards in competition and in the current price structure.  I'd hope for a more of a concise snap-shot of the market today, but even that’s hard. 

I mean if we (like Steve found) looking at current market pricing would you compare this to a GTX 670?  Today for most good comparative quality builds are $360-390 –AR or like 25% more cost (identical performance @1920x) than the bulk of 7950 Boost models of this quality which are $280-310.  Sure as the member above indicated, Egg price (No Rebate) is higher than W1zzard posted, but knowing what we know this HIS… will get with the program quickly with a rebate.  

Heck in price 7950 Boost models are very much competitive with more the 660Ti that price in around $270-290 after rebates.  So paying about 10% more for a 7950 Boost yeilds a 15% in Fps that the real take away!


----------



## SonDa5 (Dec 1, 2012)

BababooeyHTJ said:


> Wizz, could you dump that bios?




That would be great.  Please.


----------



## ErthWen (Dec 3, 2012)

Casecutter said:


> It hardly matters... even Steve Walton just compared the latest GeForce 310.61 update, against Catalyst 12.11 beta drivers and you can see the results.
> http://www.techspot.com/review/603-best-graphics-cards/
> 
> On the first page Steve said "Around the same time, Nvidia released a new beta driver of its own (GeForce 310.33) which claimed modest gains for the GTX 680 and GTX 660 in several titles, and this driver has since been replaced by the GeForce 310.61 update, which made further performance enhancements. This is what we'll be testing today."
> ...



I don´t want the results of other site, I want the TPU! tests with fair conditions for all the cards.

Otherwise, I don´t know who is this new rookie of "Techreport" site, maybe I´m consevative, but I see in other forums images of the testing of this site, and sincerely, I don´t trust them very much.

The looong battery of tests of TPU! and the weighted mean calculation that W1zzard uses in his tests are why I read TPU!, not techspot.

With fair and newer drivers FOR ALL cards, the results will change.


PD: A fast look to techspot, and I see this:

Battlefield 3 performance:

GTX 680 99 fps.
GTX 670 82 fps.

This is a +18% of extra performance for the GTX 680, and this is practically impossible, the GTX 680 has only one advantage about the GTX 670, It has a extra SMX (+14% of shader and texturing power, maybe tessellation too, but +0% with all the rest of the chip and functionality, AND +0% of extra performance with the memory subsystem, a very important spot in demanding games). The practical and average clocks of the two reference cards, are very simmilar. This is very suspicious for a "serious" test.


----------



## Ravenas (Dec 3, 2012)

Wow.

Load temp 61 degrees C.
Load + OC temp 63 degrees C.

This card is awesome...


----------



## SonDa5 (Dec 4, 2012)

Please upload the BIOS.


----------



## SonDa5 (Jan 15, 2013)

N3M3515 said:


> This cardis right there with the gtx 670, amazing.




Looks better than GTX 670 to me.


----------



## BH.NomaD (Mar 1, 2013)

Here in the review it says this card came with dual 8 pin but in "hisdigital" site that is here http://www.hisdigital.com/gb/product2-731.shtml it says it has 8+6 pin. And also in all the other site they say it has 8+6 pin. Can anyone plz tell, what's the true config?


----------



## eidairaman1 (Mar 1, 2013)

BH.NomaD said:


> Here in the review it says this card came with dual 8 pin but in "hisdigital" site that is here http://www.hisdigital.com/gb/product2-731.shtml it says it has 8+6 pin. And also in all the other site they say it has 8+6 pin. Can anyone plz tell, what's the true config?



look at the card itself, possibly different skus have it


----------



## rjr2231985 (May 5, 2013)

mascotzel said:


> Hello!
> I like your VGA reviews, especially the noise section.
> Could you make an effort and post in them also what manual software control of the cooling can do related to noise& temperature?
> Your review tells us that this card is very noisy, and I would never buy something like that.
> But if manual control would allow me to change to noise without screwing the temperatures much, that would be another thing.





 Who cares about noise! Any extreme overclocker and gamer doesnt... you will never hear any noise if you game like most gamers do with a good pair of 5.1 headphones on... I personally overclock the most out of my GPU clock and memory clock and i turn my fan control to 100% duty and put my headphone on and go own some noobs in battlefield 3 and i dont hear 1 bit of noise from my gfx card or anything... i cant even hear a friend beside me talking to me.....


----------

