Performance alone isn't everything, it's also important to be as energy efficient as
possible. Not only does extra power consumption cost money in electricity bills, but
puts out unwanted heat that may shorten the lifespan of some components and causes extra
noise.
Again the HD6870 IceQ X Turbo X compares very nicely with its Nvidia competitor, at
load the AMD card draws 40 watts less power. Considering the cards pack about the same
performance this is a significant difference. Compared to the stock card the overclocked
edition draws 10 watts more, and compared to the more powerful HD6950 some 20 watts
less. These numbers are really good and in fact if you look at performance per watt, the
HD6870 is a great choice.
The IceQ X cooler is also easily enough to cope with the heat output and during the
testing the card remained very quiet. At idle the cooler is virtually silent and under
load it makes a gentle swoosh.
Conclusion
PROS
Fastest HD6870 on the market
Quiet & Effective cooler
Performance per watt
CONS
-
Gold Award!
Before the review we thought we'd already covered the Barts-cards, but HIS has come
up with a very tasty edition of the HD6870. At stock speeds the card can't quite keep up
with the GTX560, but with the high factory overclocks it becomes a real match for the
Nvidia card.
Not only is the IceQ X Turbo X the fastest HD6870 out there, the cooler is also a
very nice addition. The reference design HD6870 isn't really the noisiest card on the
market, but the IceQ X cooler is still a huge improvement both in temperatures as well
as noise.
The bundle of the card doesn't pack any surprises and there isn't really overclocking
potential left, but other than that it's a great card and worth our Gold award.
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