The HIS Radeon HD 6790 IceQ X Turbo is a well-improved version of the AMD reference design. Thanks to the new IceQ X cooler, the card runs at impressive temperature levels, which also have a positive effect on the card's power consumption. Despite the improved cooler and the reduced temperatures, the card emits roughly the same noise levels as the AMD reference design - I had expected better. If you are willing to do some manual fan control then this can be easily remedied as there is plenty of temperature headroom to quieten down the fan.
The card's overclock out of the box gives it a 5% performance boost over the reference design, which helps to improve playability on higher resolutions. Since the card is also about 5% more expensive, the price increase is justified when looking at price/performance. Should you want even more performance, then overclocking can be done easily. The card offers nice overclocking potential, even on top of the out of the box overclock. Voltage control is possible too, using 3rd party software.
Overall the HIS Radeon HD 6790 IceQ X Turbo is a solid implementation of the Radeon HD 6790 and can easily be recommended to all users who are interested in a card in this segment.