HIS R9 280X IceQ x2 Turbo Review

With silent yet powerful IceQ x2 cooling and a factory overclock, HIS unleash their interpretation of AMD’s R9 280X. Read on to see how it fares…

Product on Review: R9 280X IceQ X2 TURBO 2GB
Manufacturer and Sponsor: HIS
Street Price: £299.99 inc. VAT (GBP)

We’ve sampled a couple of AMD’s R9 280X models so far and neither products have blown us away. Being that they are essentially a re-badged HD7970, the flagship Radeon card from the previous generation, it is hard to be impressed. Nonetheless, the HD7970, sorry, R9 280X has more than enough grunt to compete with the best cards out there. There are a few minor tweaks to the architecture but none that make the 280X as ground breaking as its bigger brother, the 290X. In short with the R9 280X you are getting a HD7970 GHz edition with a few extra bells and whistles. Whether these additions present any tangible benefits we will leave for you to decide.

The model we are sampling today is the HIS R9 280X ICEQ X2 3GB GDDR5. HIS have made some big improvements to the ICEQ range of coolers, not least the x2 version we are examining today. First off, the old bulbous, translucent plastic has been replaced with the very cool metal frame and as the name suggests, there are twin fans keeping the heatsink cool. The card itself is of the ‘Turbo’ variety meaning it is factory overclocked. At 1050MHz however, it is not the fastest 280X out of the blocks being some 100MHz off the fastest available but still, it hits the middle of the range of pre-overclocked R9 280X cards currently available. How much of a difference this will make to its market position we will endeavour to find out however one thing is for sure, at £299 it is among the most expensive so it has it’s work cut out!

About HIS

HIS is proud to be AMD’s Authorized 1st Tier AIB Partner, Certified Partner and Launching Partner. Long term and favourable relationship with AMD, enable HIS to work closely with AMD to promote the HIS AMD Graphics Board; and to strive for best value on the marketing and sales of HIS AMD Product Line. In Sept 2003, HIS incorporated the state-of-the art Supreme Cooling Technology in the award winning HIS 9800Pro IceQ, which caught the attention of worldwide media. Since then, HIS IceQ series and the latest IceQ X series has been the limelight in the market for its outstanding performance and features over the other rivals. Today, HIS continues its avid commitment to quality product and service. HIS is certain to be Your Choice of Graphics Board Supplier.

Specification

A simple re-brand?

Above is a side by side comparison of the GPU-Z readouts from both the R9 280X (top most) and HD7970 (bottom). Aside from the clockspeeds and resulting texture results, the physical specifications are identical. Both cards use the Tahiti core, have the same amount of memory and bus width meaning for all intents and purposes, both cards attributes are identical. So are AMD simply re-branding the HD7970 and passing it off as a ‘new ‘ graphics card. Well yes and no.

The R9 280X features the same core, and with it the same features of the HD7970. This is no bad thing of course because the HD7970 was, and still is a fantastic high end graphics card capable of most situations you care to throw at it. With 3GB of GDDR5 it wants for pretty much nothing but add an increase in both clockspeed and memory speed as standard and what we now have is a flagship card that should still be capable of mixing it with NVIDIAs second tier of gaming cards. Yes, we would all prefer new technology but that will come with the R9 290X. What AMD have done with the R9 280X is nothing new, indeed NVIDIA use similar tactics when using up excess silicon. What is key is the price.

It is almost 2 years since we reviewed the HD7970 and upon release it was a circa £500 graphics card. We expect the R9 280X cards to enter the market at around £240, less than half the price of a once flagship product. This strategically places the card above the GTX760 price yet below the GTX770 (at the time of writing). Not a bad move at all considering the performance of the HD7970 that this card is expected to exceed. So what is so good about the Tahiti core?

The Tahiti core which is the successor to the Caymen core of the HD6900 family. The Caymen core was based on a 40nm manufacturing process so it is fair to say that perhaps the biggest improvement to the Tahiti core is the reduction to 28nm process. This has enabled AMD to cram 4.31 billion (4,312,711,873) transistors into the Tahiti core as opposed to the 2.64 billion on the HD6970 Caymen XT.

Comprising of what AMD calls ‘Graphics Core Next (GCN)’ architecture which is optimised for heterogeneous computing, the new Tahiti core has upto 32 CU’s (compute units) with dual geometry engines along with 8 back-ends comprising of 32 colour ROPs per clock and 128 Z/Stencil ROPs per clock. Each CU has a Vector unit and Scaler Co-Processor and can execute instructions from multiple kernels.

The VLIW4 SIMD has evolved to the GCN quad SIMD which equates to similar computational power yet grants better performance, threading and simplification. The GCN also has a new Cache hierarchy with 16KB instruction Cache and32KB Scaler Cache shared between 4 CU’s. The L2 Cache is accessible by each CU with it’s own separate process to ensure coherency. These changes increase the GFLOPs by 140%.

Tesselation on the Tahiti core is also enhanced by increased Vertex re-use off-core which theoretically at least, means the R9 280X has 4 times the throughput of the 69XX series. The are improved ansioscopic filtering algorithms too which come at no performance cost allegedly. These new algorithm improvement will allow the use of Forward Rendering with 1000’s of potential light sources and will also mean MSAA can be rendered easily.

Looking at the schematics above, we can identify the bulk of the GPU is taken up with the 32 CU’s. Above these are the geometry engines. To the left and right are the 8 Render back-ends, 4 each side. There’s 768KB of L2 cache along with 6x64bit dual channel memory controllers making a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface capable of delivering up to 264GB/sec. All of technology coupled together is transferred through a fully compatible PCI Express 3.0 x16 bus interface. Have no fear though because the cards are backwards compatible with PCIe 2.0.

HIS R9 280X IceQ x2 Turbo Specification

Model Name HIS R9 280X iPower IceQ X² Turbo Boost Clock 3GB GDDR5 PCI-E DLDVI-I/HDMI/2xMini DP
Chipset AMD Radeon R9 280X
Memory Size 3072 MB
Memory Type GDDR5
Core Clock 1000 MHz (Boost Clock 1050 MHz)
Memory Clock 6000 Gbps
Memory Interface 384 bit
Power Supply Requirement 750Watt (or greater) power supply with two 150W 8-pin PCIe power connectors recommended
1000Watt (or greater) power supply with four 150W 8-pin PCIe power connectors
Max. Resolution(per Display)
DisplayPort 1.2 – 4096×2160
HDMI – 4096×2160
Dual-link DVI with HDCP – 2560×1600
Interface PCI Express 3.0 x16
Outputs DLDVI-I + HDMI + 2xMini DP

AMD Zerocore Power Efficiency

AMD ZEROCORE POWER

ENABLING THE WORLD’S MOST POWER EFFICIENT GPUS

When a discrete GPU is in a static screen state it works to minimize idle power by enabling a host of active power saving functions including (but not limited to); clock gating, power gating, memory compression, and a host of other features. However, GPUs with AMD’s exclusive AMD ZeroCore Power technology can take energy savings to entirely new heights by completely powering down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active. Nearly all PCs can be configured to turn off their displays after a long period of inactivity. This is known as the long idle state; where the screen is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an active and working power state (ACPI G0/S0).

As soon as the system goes into long idle state and applications are not actively changing the screen contents, the GPU enters the AMD ZeroCore power state. In the AMD ZeroCore power state, the GPU core (including the 3D engine / compute units, multimedia and audio engines, displays, memory interfaces, etc.) is completely powered down. However, one cannot simply remove the GPU and its associated device context completely; particularly when it is the
only GPU in the system as is the case in many enthusiast platforms. The operating system and SBIOS must still be aware that a GPU is still present in the system. For this reason, the AMD ZeroCore Power state maintains a very small bus control block to ensure that GPU context is still visible to the operating system and SBIOS. The AMD ZeroCore power state also manages the power sequencing of the GPU to ensure that the power up/down mechanism is self contained
and independent of the rest of the system.

The enablement of the AMD ZeroCore Power feature is controlled by the driver. The driver monitors the display contents and allows the GPU to enter the AMD ZeroCore Power in the condition that the GPU enters long idle and subsequent work requests are no longer being submitted to the engine. If any applications update the screen contents, AMD ZeroCore Power technology can periodically wake the GPU to update the framebuffer contents and put the GPU
back into the AMD ZeroCore Power state. Furthermore, applications such as Windows 7 desktop gadgets are architected to minimize activity and save power in the long idle state. These applications are active during screen on mode to display dynamic content such as weather, RSS feeds, stock symbols, system status, etc. but also have the intelligence to suspend any updates and activity when the system enters long idle. These applications will not wake the
GPU from the AMD ZeroCore Power state in long idle.

AMD ZeroCore Power technology delivers tremendous energy savings. Many PCs remain in the long idle state for a variety of use cases that are highly relevant to everyday consumers, enthusiasts and professionals. In AMD ZeroCore Power mode, users can still enjoy non‐graphics activities such as file serving/streaming, motherboard audio and music, and remote access while the GPU core is essentially powered off.

GCN (Graphics Core Next)

Available on select, high-performance AMD Radeon™ R9 and HD 7000 Series graphics products, the Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture is a radically new approach to the design of a consumer GPU.

Designed to push not only the boundaries of DirectX® 11.2 gaming, the GCN Architecture is also AMD’s first design specifically engineered for general computing. Equipped with up to 32 compute units (2048 stream processors), each containing a scalar coprocessor, AMD’s 28nm GPUs are more than capable of handling workloads-and programming languages-traditionally exclusive to the processor. Coupled with the dramatic rise of GPU-aware programming languages like C++ AMP and OpenCL™, the GCN Architecture is truly the right architecture for the right time.

Performance

In simple terms, increasing the number of transistors in a GPU has a big impact on the potential performance of a graphics card-but transistors alone are not enough. It takes a truly great design, like the GCN Architecture, to effectively utilize that potential for real-world performance.

Below you will find just a few examples of how this truly next-generation architecture delivers on one very simple design goal: enable the world’s most powerful graphics cards.1

Starting with GPU utilization, AMD has taken great strides to ensure that the GCN Architecture is capable of efficiently using its hardware resources. This seems like such a simple idea, but designing a GPU to frequently approach its peak theoretical performance is a challenge the GCN Architecture tackles with ease.

The GCN Architecture is designed for improved utilization, which ensures that the GPU is making optimal use of its resources for maximum performance.

The GCN Architecture also benefits from dramatically improved tessellation performance. Games featuring this DirectX® 11 technology are considerably faster than they were on the previous generation of AMD Radeon™ products. There is also the new Mantle API which promises to dominate NVIDIA, especially in titles such as Battlefield 4. Project Mantle is one of AMD’s most innovative and game-changing features, delivered with the Radeon™ R9 and R7 Series product line. Mantle is a new application programming interface (API), leveraging the commonality between the next-gen consoles and Radeon™. It enables game developers direct communication to our GPUs, unlocking the true potential of GCN and resulting in significantly higher gaming performance at all segments. We will be looking at Mantle in a separate article but if what we hear is correct, Microsoft (who are responsible for DirectX) should be very worried.

Every gamer knows that the GPU’s clockspeed also has a big impact on the performance of a graphics card, and the GCN Architecture keeps that in mind.

But what many don’t know is that every graphics card is designed to draw only a certain amount of power from your PC’s power supply. This is called the Thermal Design Profile, or TDP, and it’s critical that the GPU architecture is capable of making the most of every watt. The GCN Architecture can do that thanks to a technology called AMD PowerTune technology.

AMD PowerTune is an intelligent system that performs real-time analysis of the games and applications that utilize a GPU. Examples of such software might include Battlefield 3 or Furmark. In the event that an application is not making the most of the power available to the GPU, AMD PowerTune can improve that application’s performance by raising the GPU’s clockspeed by up to 30%! Best of all, this technology is completely automatic and is designed specifically to improve gaming performance.

Available on all 28nm AMD Radeon™ products, AMD PowerTune is designed to enable significantly higher clockspeeds in your favorite games-automatically!

Image Quality

But performance is not enough for today’s demanding gamers. Image quality, or the clarity and accuracy of textures and effects, is equally important. The GCN Architecture is equipped with three key technologies that dramatically raise the bar in this regard.

Partially Resident Textures (PRT)
Even in the latest titles, gamers may have noticed that games often re-use or repeat textures, particularly on the ground or in background scenery such as mountains or trees. This is because increasing the physical size or number of textures in a game can have a negative impact on the performance of a GPU. PRT is a radical new technology that hopes to break this cycle.

PRT can utilize absolutely enormous texture files, up to 32 terabytes large, with minimal performance impact. PRT accomplishes this by streaming small bits of these massive textures into the GPU as needed, giving compatible games a virtually endless supply of unique texture data it can apply to the game world. The GCN Architecture in 28nm AMD Radeon™ products is the first GPU design to feature a hardware implementation of this technology.

Partially Resident Textures (PRT) enables future games to utilize ultra-high resolution textures with the same performance as today’s small and often repetitive textures.

Improved Anisotropic Filtering (AF)

Available on every modern GPU, anisotropic filtering is a technique that assists the GPU in making sure textures in your favorite games remain razor sharp, even at a distance. Most games now offer the ability to enable this feature, and the AMD Catalyst™ driver suite has long provided players with the option to force enable anisotropic filtering for all of their games.

Where every GPU design differs, however, is in the way the anisotropic filtering is actually executed. The GCN Architecture has been specifically optimized to produce superior results when AF is enabled.

Improved anisotropic filtering in products like the AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 Series ensure gamers get sharper, better textures when this technology is enabled.

Improved DirectX® 11 Tessellation
As DirectX® 11 titles become more mature, game developers are naturally pushing the envelope of realism by utilizing a greater degree of special rendering effects. One such effect is tessellation, which can dynamically generate additional detail in a scene on the fly.

A wireframe scene of a rally car in DiRT 3 driving through water. On the left, notice there are no ripples. On the right, after tessellation, there is new and dynamic detail in the game.

As with anisotropic filtering, tessellation is not new to GPUs, but the manner in which tessellation is executed can have a large impact on the gaming experience. Because of this, the GCN Architecture has again been optimized to deliver up to 4x the performance of the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series in heavily-tessellated games.

Packaging & Accessories

The familiar ICEQ packaging has been carried over to the latest range of AMD cards by HIS. Not that this is a bad thing as the packaging design is most certainly eye catching. Amongst the standard set of R9 280X features , the front of the box also has a couple of add-on stickers to distinguish this model from others in the ICEQ X2 range, namely the two Turbo emblems which tell us this is HIS’ premier model.

The rear of the packaging gives us a basic run down of the main features while also identifying the key elements of the ICEQ X2 cooling design.

The included accessories are basic. For your money you get a VGA/DVI adaptor, Crossfire bridge and basic instruction manual. There was no CD containing driver/software and surprisingly no included power adaptors, which as this card requires 2x8pin power plugs may be a rationing too far for HIS customers.

First Look

We love the new ICEQ cooling design which is a great step forward in our eyes from the older model. The sleek black looks with honeycomb centre inserts certainly make the card stand out but not for all the wrong reasons like previously.

Spoiling the design, HIS have stubbornly kept the blue PCB of yesteryear. While it understandable HIS wish to remain ‘iconic’ with a traditional blue PCB, we can’t help feeling black would have been a much better choice for a card of this calibre.

The card is quite a long beast measuring 31.1 x 15 x 4.2 cm so expect some overhang over a standard ATX size motherboard. The overhang is made worse thanks to the extended heatsink shroud which doesn’t seem to serve any use other than to enhance aesthetics.

The I/O area features a Dual link DVI-I port, full size HDMI and twin DisplayPorts.

From a profile angle we can see the card sports a few heatpipes hinting at some serious cooling power with the ICEQ design. We also appreciate the discreet HIS logo rather than on over zealous attempt at product identification.

To power the card, you will need twin 8pin PCIe power ports. This is a strange step by HIS given that few cards, let alone the 280X require such power. To make matters worse, because there was no included 8pin power adaptors you must provide these yourself if your PSU does not have an adequate supply of these connectors.

Like the HD7970, the R9 280X is capable of CrossfireX meaning multiple cards from the same family can be added to your setup for enhanced performance.

Closer Look

The I/O area features a Dual link DVI-I port, full size HDMI and twin DisplayPorts.

To power the card, you will need twin 8pin PCIe power ports. This is a strange step by HIS given that few cards, let alone the 280X require such power. To make matters worse, you do not get any power adaptors with this product!

The mammoth ICEQ x2 is made up of an off-centre copper core contact plate soldered to an aluminium frame, in turn soldered to 5 heatpipes which dissipate heat across the huge aluminium finned heatsink array.

The baseplate has a brushed finish rather than mirrored yet appeared to be very flat and judging by the thickness of the copper and holding brace will not bow under pressure.

The card has a very thick midplate which serves two purposes. The first is to act as a heatsink to both memory chips and VRM areas. Secondly, the midplate will brace the card preventing unwanted bowing under the enormous weight of the heatsink.

The VRM is made up of seven power phases and comprises of solid state capacitors and Coiltronics inductors.

Controlling the voltages is the CHiL CRL8228G controller.

Thankfully the memory hails from Hynix which carries the product code of H5GQ2H24AFR R0C which should mean we see some good memory overclocks.

Finally, we reach the core of the card. The Tahiti core is a tried and tested design which is not only a capable performer but also responds well to overclocking.

Like the HD7970, the R9 280X is capable of CrossfireX meaning multiple cards from the same family can be added to your setup for enhanced performance.

Test Setup & Methodology

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphic card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and where possible the same drivers unless a newer driver rectifies an issue we have encountered or significantly improves performance to such an extent that continuing with an outdated driver is not feasible.

Frame Time Analysis
We have also seen the emergence of frame time analysis. We covered this in a separate article here: GPU Reviews: Why Frame Time Analysis is important so we won’t go into the reasoning again but to summarise, our testing comprises both FPS testing and perhaps arguably more importantly, frame time analysis. We also look at overall performance by equating averages across the games and finally before concluding our review we take a look at value for money.

HardwareWith the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X58 setup to the new X79 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to 4.5GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB of ram on board there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

High End Graphics cards on test:

HIS R9 280X ICEQ X2 TURBO 3GB GDDR5

(CAT 13.11)
GIGABYTE R9 280X WINDFORCE 3X OC 3GB GDDR5(CAT 13.11)
AMD RADEON R9 290X 4GB GDDR5(CAT 13.11 Beta v5)
ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II 3GB GDDR5(CAT 13.11 Beta v1)
ASUS GTX760 DirectCU Mini OC 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
Inno3D iChill GTX 780 HerculeZ X3 Ultra 3GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
ASUS GTX770 DIRECT II CU OC 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
MSI GTX760 Twin Frozr Gaming 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
GIGABYTE GTX780 Windforce x3 OC 3GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
GAINWARD GTX780 PHANTOM ‘GLH’ 3GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
INNO3D GTX760 ICHILL HERCULEZ 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
GIGABYTE GTX770 WINDFORCE 3X OC 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
ZOTAC GTX760 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.39)
NVIDIA GTX760 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.39)
]NVIDIA GTX760 2GB GDDR5 SLI(Forceware 320.39)
SAPPHIRE DUAL-X HD7950 3GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 13.6 beta)
CLUB 3D HD7970 royalAce 3GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 13.6 beta)
GAINWARD PHANTOM GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN SLI 12GB(2x6GB) GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GTX680 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
AMD HD7970 3GB GDDR5 (AMD CAT 13.3 beta)

Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 1200W
Hard Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler – Corsair H100

Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we have chosen:

Battlefield 3
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
BioShock Infinite
DiRT: Showdown
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included 3 of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Temperature, Acoustics and Power Consumption

Power Consumption

To test for power consumption we use the included iPower Meter found with our Thortech PSU. As system load figures obviously differ from idle it is extremely difficult to get an accurate figure of system draw and then simply take this figure away from the overall amount because each game will generate varying levels of CPU and hard drive activity. Dynamic power adjustments which fluctuate in game will also affect accurate power figures thus rendering any such power consumption calculations redundant at worst and approximate at best.

We will therefore take our system readings averaged over a benchmark run of Tessmark (100% load) and after 20 minutes of being idle in Windows 7. These can then be used as a comparison to other graphics cards to determine how much more or less power you can expect a GPU to consume.

Power consumption was a little higher than it’s competitors consuming around 10W more power on average. This does however lead us to question the need for dual 8pin power ports if it only uses a little extra than the cards which utilise an 8+6pin design?

Temperature

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we would normally run Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained however we found that this throttled the card and resulted in spurious results. So we set Heaven running continuously for 20 minutes and used this as a temperature result as the card did not throttle with this application.

We didn’t expect another cooling design to better the GIGABYTE Windforce cooler for some time so you can imagine our surprise when we found the HIS cooler to be ever so slightly more efficient at wicking away the heat from the card. Besting the best is an achievement that deserves much praise. Well done HIS!

Acoustics

The card was very quiet in auto configuration while being a bit ‘whiny’ in manual (100%) mode. It is certainly not loud by any stretch of the imagination.

Overclocking

For overclocking the HIS R9 280X ICEQ x2 Turbo we will be using AMDs Overdrive utility.

Above is a screenshot of GPU-Z showing the reference clockspeeds. It is worth pointing at this point that the card is pre-overclocked at the factory to an already fast 1050MHz on the core so while we are impressed with the factory overclock, we hope to see some overclocking headroom left for us to play with.

We managed to prize a further 130MHz out of the core and 150MHz on the memory. While it could be pushed a little higher for a few benchmark runs any further than this and the card failed our stability testing. Rather than give you a false impression of the cards overclock ability, we prefer to give you a truthful reflection of what to expect.

As with all of our overclocks, we like to ensure they are stable and to do this we leave Unigine Heaven 4.0 running for a number of hours, heating the card up to its full operating temperature then make a further benchmarked run to compare the stock vs. overclocked results seen above.

Gaming Experience (Frame Time Analysis)

Here we take a look at both average (black) and 99th Percentile (coloured) response times of the graphics cards. It is highly unlikely a user will notice any micro stutter (also incorrectly referred to as lag but the effect can be interpreted to be similar) at anything below 30ms but every gamers perception differs.

Comment

The graphs above may appear very daunting however, what you want to see is a smooth line (not fuzzy) with very few peaks and troughs. While you are unlikely to notice peaks and troughs below 30ms, any peak above 30ms may be seen as a stutter during gameplay. This will however depend greatly on your own perceptions. Multi card setups are more likely to show frame lag due to the nature of cross communicating to render frames.

Average and 99th Percentile response times (Frame Time Analysis)

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike (Synthetic)

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Unigine: Heaven 4 (Synthetic)

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

Unigine: Valley (Synthetic)

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Battlefield 3 (FPS)

Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next installment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.

Crysis 3 (FPS)

Crysis 3 from Electronic Arts is the fourth instalment of the Crysis franchise and sequel to Crysis 2. It uses the CryEngine 3 gaming engine which is perhaps the most advanced gaming engine to date and therefore the most demanding. The meme ‘Can it run Crysis’ has never been so apparent…

Far Cry 3 (FPS)

Far Cry 3 is a tropical survival shooter video game from Ubisoft Montreal and Massive studios. It’s open world design has similar traits to it’s forbear Far Cry 2 but it does it all so much better. With stunning visuals and settings to bring a PC to it’s knee’s, this game is so much more than the ‘just another console port’ it was reported to be.

BioShock Infinite (FPS)

Set in 1912 during the growth of American exceptionalism, BioShock Infinite is a thrid person shooter developed by Irrational games and published by 2K Games. It is the third instalment of the BioShock franchise. the game utilises the Unreal Engine 3, modifying it with their own lighting engine to present a visually stunning experience like no other.

DiRT: Showdown (FPS)

DiRT Showdown is the new arcade racing game from the team that brought you the award-winning DiRT series, uncaged in 2012. Pick up and play controls combine with electrifying events, frenzied crowds and stunning graphics to deliver high octane, dive in and drive thrills from event one.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (FPS)

Skyrim is not a direct successor to the very popular Oblivion. Instead it takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The non-linear playing that made the Elder Scrolls such a popular series does however make a return along with the beautiful scenery the encompasses the world of Skyrim.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.

Overall Performance

Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

Conclusion

The HIS R9 280X ICEQ x2 Turbo is a good card of that there can be no doubting. It sits directly between both the ASUS and GIGABYTE models we reviewed previously when overclocked and exchanges blows with both cards in standard form despite being a little lower clocked with the ASUS running at 1070MHz and the GIGABYTE at 1100MHz. The card just manages to cool better than the GIGABYTE card which is no easy feat which goes some way to concreting the HIS ICEQ cooler as one of the best custom coolers currently available. It also looks the business too thanks to the redesigned cooling shroud.

So, it’s all positive then? Well not quite. While it is cool, quiet and performs well, at £299 it is one of the more expensive R9 280X models available. Were it also one of the highest clocked out of the factory it could justify this high price tag but as it stands we believe there are better cards on the market at this price point, namely an overclocked 4GB NVIDIA GTX770. While you would be hard pushed to put a cigarette paper between both cards, pitch an overclocked 4GB GTX770 vs. a mediocre clocked R9 280X and the NVIDIA card would average out a little faster.

That isn’t to say the HIS isn’t worthy of consideration because it clearly is, especially if you can buy one on a ‘this week only deal’ with a special discount. As it stands though, it needs a little price reduction before we could thoroughly recommend it above all other options available.

To summarise:
With a moderate factory overclock and a high performing ICEQ x2 cooling design, the HIS is a card worthy of your consideration. That is if you don’t mind paying a little extra for such luxuries.

Pros
+ Best in class cooling design
+ Very quiet
+ Factory overclocked
+ Vast improvement over old design

Cons
– Based on ‘old’ tech
– Blue PCB