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HIS Radeon HD 6970 MIX 2GB Graphics Card Review

Final ThoughtsSadly that is the end of the review and you’re probably feeling as if we’ve left things a bit abruptly and more importantly a bit short and we have but we have very good reason to which we’ll explain a bit further down.

First I want to talk about the card in general, in regards to styling and performance and where oh where do I begin. The styling is nice but seems somewhat dated, and as much as I try to like it, it just doesn’t go with the rest of the system we used, and imagining it sitting in a case with a window would just make me hate it more and more as I’d notice it from the corner of my eye. No offence to HIS as I’m sure they thought this was what people wanted, but maybe take a leaf out of the books of Asus and Sapphire who make some truly stunning Radeon based cards.

Performance was hit and miss, whilst the card performed where it should be, and in some tests even close to 6990 territory, it seems that the 6950 was hot on its toes and being informed that the price will be a staggering £324 including VAT, I honestly don’t think that I need to comment any more on that aspect of the card. A field day for Nvidia? I think so!

Now moving on to the unique features that HIS have developed with this card, the first of which is the Eyefinity support through HDMI. Sadly we weren’t able to test Eyefinity and its functionality, but sadly you wouldn’t be able to do the same, at least for certain uses. I’m talking about Futuremark, which for some strange reason saw a lot of problems when the card was connected via HDMI, though DVI seemed apparently fine. The problems we were faced with consisted of crashing, freezing and generally not working, now whether this was a problem with the card, drivers of Futuremark is not confirmed, but we can confirm that HIS are looking into this for us.

Now the major problem with the card. When it was sent to us, no real guidance was included and with a new technology that is said to offer a hybrid pairing of competing cards, you’d assume that some form of instruction would be included. After many hours of testing and installation, it was apparent that a problem was present and that we weren’t alone as other partner sites were facing the same issues. We have been told that this is a driver issue and once again is something that HIS are looking into with the help of LucidLogix and AMD but we can assure you that when this is finally working, we will take a look at the performance of the HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ MIX being paired with a GeForce GTX 580, and yes, you did just read that right.

Overall it seems that HIS have made a few mistakes with this card, and for the moment we are going to be forced to give it a bronze award, though a part of me feels that even that is too generous based off the price and general performance of the card as a lone ranger. The value would be much better reflected if the MIX features were present and correct, but for us the hybrid graphics card partnering is the major selling point and if HIS can report back about this issue with some form of fix, we can revise our view on this card to give you the most accurate information, whilst remaining honest and more importantly unbiased.

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