14 DAY TRIAL // HIS, one of AMD's most important graphics card partners, has just announced that it has expanded the availability of its Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X solutions, so that the cards can now be purchased by consumers everywhere in the world.
This graphics card line includes no less than three models based on the HD 6870 and all of them feature HIS's improved cooling solution that the company states it can lower the operating temperatures of the card with 15 degrees Celsius and it's also 15dB quieter than the reference AMD cooler.
In order to achieve this, the IceQ cooler uses four heatpipes that draw the heat away from the GPU and into an aluminum radiator which is then chilled by a 92mm fan.
Making our way to the top, the first graphics card that we encounter is the HIS 6870 IceQ X that follows AMD reference clocks for the HD 6870 as the GPU runs at 900MHz while the 1GB of GDDR5 memory has its frequency set at 1050MHz (4200MHz effective).
However, this is the only Radeon HD 6870 solution in HIS' IceQ range to use the stock clocks as the next in line graphics card, the HIS 6870 IceQ X TURBO, has its core and memory run at 920 MHz and 1120MHz, respectively.
Finally, the highest performing solution is dubbed the HIS 6870 IceQ X TURBO X and comes clocked 75MHz over AMD's reference GPU frequency while the memory runs at a full 1150MHz.
All the cards feature a pair of dual-link DVI ports, an HDMI connectors as well as two mini-DisplayPort video outputs.
The Radeon HD 6870 graphics card is based on the Barts XT core and it packs 1120 stream processors, 56 texturing units, 32 ROP units, and a 256-bit memory bus.
Pricing varies depending on region, but the cards should be available in retail as we speak.