HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ MIX (Lucid) Review

👤by Richard Weatherstone Comments 📅13-07-11
Closer Look Pt.2

The cooler was very simple to remove with just four spring loaded screws holding the cooler to the card. A further aluminium heatsink is hidden beneath the mean cooler to provide direct cooling to the voltage regulators, attached by two screws with thermal pads used as an interface. The memory modules were also cooled directly with adhesive thermal strips providing contact to the main heatsink base.


Despite its bulk, the actual heatsink is relatively small in comparison so it is clear the HIS IceQ technology relies heavily on airflow. Four copper heatpipes (2x6mm and 2x8MM) extend out from the baseplate to the aluminium finned array, equalising heatdump along the heatsink for maximum effeciency.



I found the GPU contact to be very good and the paste appeared to be of high quality, certainly not the usual putty like material found on GPU's today but there did appear to be an excessive amount. I did wonder if this card had been tampered with previously as there appeared to be two types of thermal interface material used. Nevertheless, the spread was even across the core showing an even amount of pressure was applied by the spring loaded screws. The core itself, as per the norm on AMD GPUs, is exposed rather than having its own integrated heatspreader. The advantage of having an exposed core is more efficient cooling due to direct heat transfer to the heatsink. This advantage however can occasionally result in disaster for those clumsy enough to 'nibble' the core when replacing the thermal interface material themselves due to their being no protection. The surrounding metal frame on the GPU should however ease any mishaps, providing great stability and offsetting an potential uneven mounts.


The card has very good yet traditional layout with the GPU core being centralised surrounded by 8 memory modules. If you intend on using the above image for volt mod referencing, please be kind and link back to us.


Quality solid state capacitors are used throughout which are coupled with solid state chokes which maximise current capacity will aid any potential overclocking ability the cards has. This card using solid state chokes which will provide excellent power efficiency and hopefully ensure our overclocks remain ultra stable. Couple this with solid state capacitors and you can overclock safe in the knowledge that your card will not go 'pop' after the slightest voltage increase.


The HIS HD6970 IceQ Mix makes use of eight 256MB modules making up a very satisfying 2GB of GDDR5, perfect for high resolution gaming. The Hyundai (Hynix) H5GQ2H24MFR-ROC memory modules hail from the ROC stable meaning they are much more capable than the T2C variants found in the HD6950 we reviewed previously. The memory is rated to run up to 6.0Gbps with 1.6v so this cards memory speed of 5.5 appears very conservative. We therefore have high hopes of overclocking the memory as this type of module is among the very best GDDR5 available to date.



The 'CHiL' (CHL8212) dual loop, is a 2+1 multiphase PWM controller which operates from 200kHz to 1.2MHz per phase. It offers overclocking support with I2C voltage override and Vmax setting and efficiency shaping with Dynamic Phase Control(DPC. This enables the card to idle using just 0.9v and when placed under stress, the voltage will jump to 1.175v.



Finally, we come to the defining feature of the HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ Mix, the Lucid HydraLogix 200 SoC. The LT22102 chip itself is sealed behind a nickel coated copper integrated heatspreader but being that it only consumes 2W it doesn't need any active cooling and the extremely small power footprint will make little difference in the greater scheme of overall power consumption.

I believe that pretty much covers all of the physical aspects of the HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ Mix so it's time we got this show on the road and gave the card a thorough workout...

21 pages « < 6 7 8 9 > »

Comments