HIS Radeon HD 7800 IceQ Series Cards Appear

Since Advanced Micro Devices has officially launched its graphics adapter based on the Pitcairn graphics processing unit (GPU), HIS offered its own two cents, so to speak.

HIS has announced the Radeon HD 7850 IceQ X, the HIS HD 7870 IceQ X and the HD 7870 IceQ iTurbo.

Given the special coolers and the propensity HIS has shown, in the past, towards the utmost high in terms of performance, one would expect there to be some factory overclocking involved.

Strangely, though, that is not the case at all, for neither member of the trio.

Even the HIS HD 7870 IceQ iTurbo leaves the 1 GHz clock of the GPU and the 4.80 GHz of the memory as they are.

With the large new cooling solution, we would have expected at least some tinkering, but nothing of the sort happened in the end.

Not even the huge aluminum heatsink and the four 8mm copper heatpipes were able to entice the company enough to play with the voltage.

We guess that HIS will meddle with the settings in the future, but right now it must feel that the parameters are more than enough.

For those that haven't read about AMD's original models, the HD 7850 features a GPU speed of 860 MHz and the same memory frequency as above.

Of course, there will be nothing to stop buyers from embarking on their own overclocking operations, assuming they are willing to take the risk.

It also bears noting that there shouldn't be many games out there, if any, capable of putting much strain on the Pitcairn devices, except maybe in multi-monitor setups.

We don't have the prices of these three PC parts, but they should not exceed overmuch the ones given by AMD: $249 / 188.72 Euro for the 7850 and $349 / 264.51 for HD 7870. Sales start on March 19, 2012.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview