Thursday, September 22nd 2011
HIS Intros HD 6870 IceQ 1 GB Graphics Card
HIS today released its latest performance segment graphics card, the HD 6870 IceQ 1GB. This card makes use of the large IceQ cooler found on Radeon HD 6970-based IceQ graphics cards. Its cooler makes use of a large heatsink to which heat is fed by four exposed-copper heat pipes, and ventilation is care of what HIS calls "Black Hole Impeller", a blower that draws in air from both sides of the card (obverse, reverse), channels it though the heatsink, and out of the case. This cooler, HIS claims, can keep temperatures down by as much as 24°C, and noise levels down by as much as 10 dB, compared to the AMD reference cooler.
Under the hood is an AMD Radeon HD 6870 GPU, which follows reference clock speeds of 900 MHz core, and 1050 MHz (4200 MHz effective) memory. It is backed by 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. Perhaps the idea here is to let users take advantage of the cooler and overclock the card themselves. The HD 6870 packs 1120 VLIW5 stream processors, and is DirectX 11 compliant. The card draws power from two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include two DVI, one HDMI 1.4, and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 connectors. There is a single CrossFire connector, that allows you to pair with any other HD 6800 series graphics card. Expect the HIS HD 6870 IceQ to charge a small premium over the reference base model graphics card.
Under the hood is an AMD Radeon HD 6870 GPU, which follows reference clock speeds of 900 MHz core, and 1050 MHz (4200 MHz effective) memory. It is backed by 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. Perhaps the idea here is to let users take advantage of the cooler and overclock the card themselves. The HD 6870 packs 1120 VLIW5 stream processors, and is DirectX 11 compliant. The card draws power from two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include two DVI, one HDMI 1.4, and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 connectors. There is a single CrossFire connector, that allows you to pair with any other HD 6800 series graphics card. Expect the HIS HD 6870 IceQ to charge a small premium over the reference base model graphics card.
21 Comments on HIS Intros HD 6870 IceQ 1 GB Graphics Card
My 1950XTX's, 3870x2's, 4870x2's and now my 6970's were/are all reference cooling. Never had temperature issues. Seriously, the fan set to 100% is a tornado!
Granted, i dont care much for noise levels. That's probably because when it's time for the GPU to work, im too busy playing games, LOUDLY!
At the moment, on idle , my temps read;
GPU 1 :- 40c @ 42% Fan Speed.
GPU 2:- 39c @ 42% Fan Speed.
Dropping these temps by up to 24c seems unlikely for me.
The reason why both cards are set to 42% Fan Speed is because when i set it lower, the other fans sound louder at their minimum settings.
And remember, the reference cooler lets the GPU get up to 90°C when left alone on stock fan profiles(which I don't believe even let the fan pass 60%). So really the "cooler" could improve that by 24°C just by adjusting the fan profile and making it more agressive.
Though looking closely the cooler does have potential. First of all, the fan is actually bigger than the reference cooler's. Pulling images of the two up and adjusting them so they are at the same scale, and the fan on the IceQ card is about 1cm bigger. Plus it looks like the reference cooler only has 3 6mm heat pipes and the IceQ has 2 8mm and 2 6mm, though it is hard to tell what the reference card really has from the images I have available.
For anyone interested here are the comparisons I made:
This one is where I overlayed the reference card over the IceQ and adjusted them so they are both scaled the same, mainly by lining up the PCI-E connectors so they were the same size:
This second one I moved the reference overlay so the fan hubs lined up, and outlined the opennings, reference in red and IceQ in blue:
Not only is the IceQ fan bigger than reference, but the hub is smaller, giving even more openning for the air to get into the fan.Yeah, it sucked so hard it allowed the cards to bake when under load to the point that ATi/AMD put limits in the drivers to keep load down on the card and preven overheating and dead cards...:laugh:Oddly enough, I was just going to say that this reminded me of their old coolers. It is very similar to their old IceQ coolers that made them famous.
They should ban open cooler designs. They are killing ma CPU :cry::mad::banghead:
www.pureoverclock.com/article1365.html
sure is copper ? or just galvanized.... like older ICEQ...
the fan is noisy but in the case of HD6870 it should be quiter