The Card

Looking around you can see this video pretty much identical to the HD 7970 IceQ X2 we looked at a while back. We've got a massive dual fan cooler that hangs over the back and above the top of the video card. You can see we've got heatpipes coming out the top and bottom along with a massive heatsink. The X2 also stands for two fans which you can clearly see are sitting in the middle.

You can see power comes in the form of an 8-pin PCIe connector and a 6-pin PCIe connector. Staying across the top but moving to the front you can see we've got two CrossFire connectors allowing you to go down the path of two or three of these video cards combined together for extra performance.

Finishing off with the I/O you can see a Dual-Link DVI connector, HDMI port and two Mini DisplayPort connectors. Across the top you can also see a vent to help the hot air exhaust out of your case. This cooler doesn't push the hot air out of the case quite like the other IceQ design which offers more of a blower setup.

While not promoted extremely well the latest HD 7950 from HIS brings with it a non-reference design with its main features being the new iPower setup. This brings with it a few major features that as you would guess focus on the power side of things. Instead of a 6+6 Power Input setup which is seen on the reference HD 7950, this HIS variant comes with a 6+8. Along with that we've also got a 4+1+1 PWM Phase setup instead of the standard 2+1+1 setup that the reference card sees.

This helps bring a higher Current Output of 270 Amps instead of the standard 150 seen on the reference card. In turn what we're able to get is more voltage, which should help see a higher overclock; something that we'll be looking at soon. The main issue when it comes to iPower, though, is ultimately the lack of clear marketing for the product. Talking to HIS, though, it seems like this is something that will be amended soon.

Specifications

Out of the box the new HD 7950 with its "Boost" clocks carry a 925MHz clock speed on the core, while the 3GB of GDDR5 comes in at 5000MHz QDR. Out of the box the HIS card offers a boost clock to 950MHz while the memory stays at the same 5000MHz QDR.

Getting into the overclocking side of things you can see we managed to bump the core up to a respectable 1200MHz while the 3GB of GDDR5 was also slightly bumped to 5300MHz QDR.

These are some nice numbers and should bring some strong performance numbers.