HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost 2GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

In the UK the HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost 2GB graphics card is selling for £164.99 exclusively from Overclockers UK. In the USA it is selling for $199.99 which is bang on reference pricing. In Europe we have found the card selling for €195.

Overview 

This review is interesting for me in a number of ways but the main reason is because it is the first time we’ve started to integrated 3DMark temperature, noise and power results into our review alongside the Furmark results. Currently we don’t have a complete picture because most graphics cards are no longer available to retest for new results but what the new 3DMark results show are a more real world scenario for power consumption, temperatures and noise. I think these results are important because of the way some vendors (I won’t name any names) manipulate the way their cards behave under Furmark to reduce temperatures, noise and power consumption. Of course they wouldn’t dare do the same for 3DMark because reducing temperatures, noise and power consumption requires downclocking which would lower the cards benchmark performance.

What our results show is that in Furmark the picture isn’t that good for the HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost and had this been a past review we would probably of penalised this card for poor cooling and lots of noise. However, HIS are one of those brands that don’t interfere with how their card performs in Furmark hence why the results appear worse than other brands. That said moving onto 3DMark which is more realistic we can see that suddenly the HIS R9 270X is leaps and bounds better. Temperatures drop by a hefty 21 degrees and during gaming we were only seeing temperatures in the mid 50s which is highly impressive. The acoustic performance of this graphics card was above average. Over a reference card you’d certainly notice a massive improvement, though I think HIS would have benefited from a less aggressive fan profile as the thermal headroom is certainly there to facilitate quieter operation. In this regard the HIS card is quite loud if you can somehow replicate very intensive GPU load, but under most gaming loads it is barely noticeable – especially inside a case. With regards to power consumption we can also see that card is right about where we’d expect it to be given its overclock.

Next let’s move onto talking about performance and overclocking. Performance is a strange one because despite being 40MHz higher than the next fastest R9 270X we tested the HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost failed to break away like I would hope. Of course there is some minor variation between graphics cards which would account for this so I’m not too worried but I think there is room for improvement. HIS should push the memory on this card up further than 5.6GHz because they are using 6GHz Hynix memory chips. That probably would have counteracted the slight dip I saw. Moving onto overclocking and I think we were dealt a duff hand by the silicon lottery. Sadly the HIS card clocked the lowest out of all non-reference R9 270Xs we tested by 15MHz. The memory overclocked well but the end result wasn’t all that impressive. We didn’t really see a real world gain in performance that replicated the actual clocks, possibly because we pushed this graphics card too far and even though it was stable it may not have been “happy” with the set clocks. Either way though this graphics card will overclock but the gains will be limited because HIS have already pushed this card quite close to the limits of the R9 270X GPU – which is not a bad thing at all. There is ample memory overclocking headroom for anyone willing to get their hands dirty.

A final couple of points to consider are that this HIS graphics card in the UK comes with Battlefield 4, the Radeon Silver Reward (which means you can pick two games from a choice of Thief, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Far Cry Blood Dragon and Dirt 3) and the HIS Gamer’s Tool Kit (which includes a 4 head screwdriver tool, spirit level, dust cleaner and LED light). Of course I don’t see how Gamer’s will find a spirit level useful but the rest can be useful to installing and maintaining your gaming system. In the USA we can’t see any details of whether this card also gets the same treatment but we can imagine it does if you can find a participating retailer who are involved in the AMD game promotions. We think the extras go a long way to compensate for any deficiencies in the product, including the relatively mediocre 2 year warranty, I’d of liked to see 3 years. My feelings about this graphics card are that it isn’t that amazing relative to the competition. MSI, Gigabyte and ASUS all offer slightly more compelling options. However, in the UK at least, the HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost graphics card is an absolute steal with the generous bundle that HIS and Overclockers UK provide. In other regions where the same bundle isn’t offered the card might be a tougher sell. Though in the USA the price is significantly more competitive sticking to reference pricing whereas in the UK it’s about 10% over.

Pros

• Amazing bundle deal in the UK
• Excellent cooling performance
• Competitive price
• Highest out of the box clock speed we’ve seen for an R9 270X so far

Cons

• Only 2 year warranty
• Our sample had limited overclocking headroom and didn’t reap much of a performance gain from overclocking
• Could have a more relaxed fan profile, gets noisy at prolonged ultra-high intensity loads
• Game bundles and HIS Gamer’s Tool Kit do not appear to be available from all retailers – check before you buy
• Memory should be overclocked out of the box

Subjective Issues

• Blue PCB might put some people off

“The HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost graphics card has some serious cooling potential and a solid factory overclock that is one of the highest on the market for an R9 270X. For the price it is a graphics card that competes with the competition well but it is the AMAZING bundle, available when buying it in the UK, that sets this graphics card well ahead of the crowd in value for money terms. In the USA it also offers great value to consumers sticking to reference pricing. Competition is really fiercein the R9 270X market but we think the HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost graphics card has done just enough to clinch an award today. If you’re looking for an R9 270X then this is definite worth strong consideration.“

Thank you to HIS Digital for providing this review sample.