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Many months after the initial launch there are a wide variety of HD6970's available on the market, some with custom coolers and others with enhanced PCB designs. Today we are looking at the new HD6970 board from HIS, which features both.
The HIS HD6970 IceQ Mix is the latest high end board from HIS which utilises their funky ICEQ cooler. We have reviewed several of their IceQ products in the past and they have been surprisingly, and consistently good.
While this card features a custom heatsink, cooling solution and PCB design, it is supplied at reference clock speeds of 880mhz core and 1375mhz GDDR5. Bizarrely HIS also include the Lucid Hydra chip on the PCB for ‘mixed' graphics card configurations.
| Product | HIS HD6970 IceQ Mix |
| Core Clock speed | 880mhz |
| Primitive Rate |
2 prim/clk
|
| Shader Architecture |
VLIW4
|
| Stream Processors |
24 SIMD/1536 ALU
|
| Texture Units | 96 |
| ROPs/Z-Stencil | 32/128 |
| Frame Buffer | 2GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Width/Speed | 256 bit, 5.5 Gbps |
| Power Connectors | 8 pin & 6 pin |
| Display Outputs | 2xDVI + 2x mDP + HDMI |
Nice card, but that cooler really is ugly as all sin.
His produce some good designs but i see no logical reason to include lucid on such a card. Its probably adding 15 to the price too……
Their iceq cards are really very good models but i dont think they have a good reputation in the uk at all. No one i know has even contmplated buying one of their products.
Id love to kmow their uk warranty system, have they a dedicated team handling rmas ?
I thought it would cost more due to the Lucid crap installed, but its not much more than a card with a standard cooler. seems pretty good all round, although I dont know why they didnt overclock it to something better
If the price was higher then it would deserve a lower score, but regardless of how sucky hydra is. its £25 more than a reference card (I saw a sapphier one on OCUK with dirt 3 for £300). If you feel the cooler is worth £25 then its a pretty good deal.
Don’t HIS always overclock their ICEQ cards however? bit weird on that front
The cooler is very good, ive read reviews of it on other cards and it seems about 10-20c lower than stock cooler, depending on the card.
bizarre idea, but it looks like HIS aren’t charging much for hydra. thank god, no one give a toss about it.
Id love to know who thought that was a smart move. would anyone have a GTX580 laying around, not being used? even a GTX570 or GTX560? cant get my head around it.
im looking at it from two ways. first, its a talking point. people are talking about it already. people in the know will immediately think ‘this wont work, it never does!’. and right enough it doesnt.
So it won’t be used, and the price is the deciding factor. I would guess the cooler is costing HIS £8 extra over a reference cooler (en masse). they can sell it for £15 more and still make a profit. £10 would pay Lucid for Hydra.
The consumer is getting hit a little with the extra chip. Its daft, but I still think its reasonably good value as an overall product.
That said, It would prove to me however that HIS really don’t have their finger on the pulse for this audience. Not like Sapphire or XFX.
I have a 5870 and would like an upgrade, but don’t feel like shelling out too much, and dont feel like buying an extra 5870, so I’m wondering how this card would be in crossfire with my 5870….