HIS HD6970 IceQ Turbo Fast but quiet gaming GFX card

Author: Jouni 'Jipa' Vasama Published: 27.06.2011 Manufacturer: HIS Product Group: Graphics cards In English Suomeksi

Overclocking

Being Turbo-model the card is slightly overclocked out of the box, but these numbers are just 20 MHz on the core and 25 MHz for memories higher than the reference clock speeds for a HD 6970. Using MSI Afterburner we finally got the GPU to a stable 960 MHz and the memories at 1450 MHz (5,8 GHz effective).

Benchmarks

• Processor: Intel i7 870 (@4022 MHz)
• Motherboard: MSI P55-GD80
• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 2*2 GB DDR3 2000 CL9
• Hard drive: Seagate 7200.10 250 GB
• Power supply: Xigmatek NRP-HC1201
• Case: Open air test bench

To test the performance of the HD 6970 IceQ TurboX we used the same rig as before. In the last graphics card review the HD 6950 already blitzed most of the tests, and with the HD 6970 being even faster it's really just a question of how much faster it is that any other single card we've reviewed, which is why we also included HD 6850 and HD 6870 Crossfire-setups in the graphs. Anyway when comparing the single card results to the CFX-sets one should still keep in mind that the scaling depends on the game.

3DMark11

Kicking off with the 3Dmark11 test and the HD 6970 is 12,6% faster than the second fasts card and 13% faster than the HD 6950.

Still it's no competition between the HD 6970 and the CFX-sets with the HD 6850's being 23% and HD 6870's 34% faster.

3DMark Vantage

Older 3Dmark and now the difference to the HD 5870 is 9,1%. Overclocking the card boosts the result by a nice 16%, and considering how easy it was to just crank the GPU-clockspeed up by 60 MHz this sort of difference is easily worth the effort.

Heaven

Last synthetic benchmark and again the HD 6970 is the fastest. This time the second fastest card is the HD 6950 and the difference to it is quite massive 20,5%. When the GPU of the HD 6950 is clocked to the same 900 MHz speed the difference is 10,9%, which is caused by the disabled stream-processors and lower memory clock speeds.

Here the Crossfire score excellent points in the DX9-test, but fall behind in the more demanding DX11-test.

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