HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 Native HDMI 1GB

HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 1GB

HIS are no strangers to Viperlair, and they’ve sent out over there HD 4870 with iCooler x3. Solid black cooler and very imposing, we find out if this card is as no nonsense as its appearance would suggest.

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About this time last year, it was common knowledge that AMD/ATI were not only back but doing very well indeed compared to the competition. So much so that NVIDIA adjusted it’s prices and also a few of it’s products to better fit in with the market. The 216 core GTX 260 replaced the earlier 192 core, muddying the waters when it come to purchasing a 260, but making it much more competitive with the HD 4870 from the red camp ATI’s response was already in the pipeline anyway; a new 4870 with 1GB of GDDR. The GTX260 and the 4870 1GB traded blows in the benchmarks but were quite evenly matched. The pricing of the cards, and also the closely performing 4850′s meant that we consumers, as long as we did our homework, had a good choice to choose from. Today, little has changed, and card makers are still churning out products based on these very good cards. However, experience has shown that the 4870′s can be noisy and quite hot under load. But the 4870 was always very good value for money too. have a cheap HD 4870 1GB card that aims to address the noise and cooling without increasing the price overly much. The is the card in question, so let’s take a look a good look at it.

Specifications

Model Name	HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 (Full HD 1080p) Native HDMI 1GB (256bit) GDDR5 Dual Link-DVI / VGA / HDMI (HDCP) PCIe (RoHS)
Chipset	Radeon HD 4800 PCIe Series
Pixel Pipelines	800 stream processing units* (Unified)
Vertex Engines	800 stream processing units* (Unified)
Memory Size	1024MB
Manu. Process	55nm
Memory Type	GDDR5
RAMDAC	400MHz
Engine CLK	750MHz
Memory CLK	3600MHz
Memory Interface	256bit
Max. Resolution	1920×1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560×1600 (dual-link DVI)
Bus Interface	PCI Express x16
Power Requirements	500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
Ports	1x VGA, 1x DVI, 1x (Native) HDMI

 

The box for the HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 Native HDMI 1GB GDDR5 is actually quite small, being large enough to fit the card and a few extras only; there is little wasted room inside. The outside of the box is also relatively understated but that’s in comparison with other HIS products we’ve seen. On a shelf with other cards, it’s clean appearance will likely get your attention and the product features are clearly marked on the front and the back in greater detail.

Inside is a second blue box which opens to reveal the card in a clear plastic tray. A few of the extras are also visible. HIS include two 2 molex to 1 PCIe 6pin power adapters, a standard Crossfire bridge connector, and a nice looking wallet that has the software CD, manual and a ‘Power Up!’ HIS case badge.

The software CD obviously includes the drivers, but you also get Bumptop – a 3D Desktop environment software package. Also included is a redeemable voucher for the game Stormrise which you can download and use the supplied key. I have to say that I like the idea of using digital distribution to include a game with the card. A shame about that game itself though as I hear it isn’t all that good. But at least you don’t have to pay for it!

The card itself is very prominent looking. The large solid gloss black cooler is not a subtle affair and looks wonderful in my opinion. There is plenty of room under the coolers hood too, so I would guess that more than a few modders could add this to a black themed case with or without various visual adjustments/lighting etc.

 

The coolers hood is highly reflective and styled with these grills on each side, as well as the HIS logo near the IO ports.

Centrally, you can see the fan which draws in the air used to keep the 4870 GPU cool. The fan’s blade design is not a standard look, with curled and shaped blades to further draw air into the cooler and keep noise levels down. Underneath all that black, the fan sits right above the GPU and cools the thick heatpipes by sucking air in. Warm air is pushed to either side, to rear and out of the case, as well as to the back of the card itself and into the case on the opposite end, cooling the fins as it goes.

The memory is covered by a black plated heatsink on the top of the card as well as on the back, but only the memory under the iCooler is air cooled, and then only by proxy of the air flowing through the cooler before it exits into the case. Also in this area is the two PCIe 6pin power headers.

The iCooler x3 is securely held in place with a cross shaped bracket on the other side of the card as this is quite a heavy set up. Indeed, the card itself is pretty heavy.

The IO options for the card are threefold (not including the PCIe and Crossfire headers of course). First, a DVI-I port. Secondly we have s 15pin VGA D-Sub. And a third option is a native HDMI port for carrying both video and 7.1 sound.

Overall the HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 Native HDMI 1GB GDDR5 card is a good looking card with a solid dark appearance to it that many will like. The cooler itself appears to be well designed and with very little flair or exuberance.

Testing

Testing the HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 Native HDMI 1GB GDDR5 consists of putting it through it’s paces in a few games and also seeing how far we can overclock it. For comparison, I’m using a 4850 512MB card. Obviously the 4870 is going to be the faster card here, but the 4850 will give us a reference to compare how much of a difference there is.

Test Setup: Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 @ 3.00GHz, 4GB of OCZ PC2-6400 Ram @ 900MHz, Asus Blitz Formula, Maxtor Diamondmax 10 7200 250GB HDD, Asetek Waterchill Watercooling, Hyper Type M 730w PSU. All latest drivers as of September 2009; Catalyst 9.8 was used for both cards.

Software

Left 4 Dead – Recording a custom demo on the No Mercy – Sewers level (outside in the rain), we used FRAPS to record frame rates as we played back the demo on both cards at same settings.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars – ETQW gives us our OpenGL test results as we run through a recorded demo on the Slipgate level. Settings for both cards were the same.

Crysis Warhead – We used the Framebuffer benchmark tool to run through the Ambush demo and recorded the results with FRAPS. Settings for each card were set to highest possible for that card.

Racedriver: GRID – Grid has some very good looking visuals. We used FRAPS as we took a Skyline for a test drive around the Ring. Settings for each card were set to highest possible for that card.

Assassin’s Creed – We headed for the nearest tower from the bureau roof in Acre and repeatedly climbed to the top. With 2 leaps of faith and a good look of the city from on high, we once again used FRAPS to record our framerates. Settings for each card were set to highest possible for that card.

Devil May Cry 4 (Benchmark) – DMC4′s benchmark provides a nice way of testing that anyone can do. Results are all from the benchmark itself, and include average framerates as well as 4 graphs for each level tested. Settings for both cards were the same.

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Left 4 Dead (DX9)

Left 4 Dead	Min	Max	Avg
HIS 4870 1GB	23	59	34.475
4850 512MB	17	31	21.642

We purposefully set our in game graphics to highest possible at 1680×1050, 4xMSAA with 8xAF for both cards so we could see a direct comparison between the two. With these settings, the 4850 struggles a little when the action gets going, although inside is pretty good (the 20-40 second points in the graph). The HIS 4870 does much better, although for both cards, I would personally drop the Effects setting to medium as it has little impact on the visuals, but quite a large impact on performance. Our frame rates here for both cards would raise an average 10-15 frames across the graph, and the puts the HIS 4870 into the 60 FPS average.

ETQW (OpenGL)

 

ETQW	Min	Max	Avg
HIS 4870 1GB	18	31	27.842
4850 512MB	8	31	27.183

ETQW likes a good graphics card but also relies heavily on a good CPU and subsystem to drive it. Very little difference is perceived while playing between the two cards although the average numbers are obviously higher with the 4870 during a timedemo. Also of interest, the initial map draw as you enter a game is faster with the 4870 than the 4850, probably due to the extra GDDR. Like Left 4 Dead, settings for both cards where identical at highest possible via in-game menus, both cards without soft particles, and both cards at 4xMSAA, 8xAF.

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Crysis Warhead (DX10)

 

Crysis Warhead	Min	Max	Avg
HIS 4870 1GB	15	32	22.575
4850 512MB	16	28	21.508

Crysis Warhead does like to punish graphics cards, but the visuals do look good there is no doubt. With Crysis Warhead, we concentrated on choosing settings that each card is capable of rather than matching settings between the two. Basically, the HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 Native HDMI 1GB GDDR5 gives you the extra boost you need to get a similar gameplay experience as the 4850 at Gamer settings, but at Enthusiast visual settings instead. It’s quite a jump visually, especially with water, although there are many little details that are enhanced.

Assassin’s Creed (DX10)

 

Assassin’s Creed	Min	Max	Avg
HIS 4870 1GB	25	77	46.933
4850 512MB	24	69	44.108

Our run through is manual rather than a recorded demo, but we stuck to a repeatable route that had the littlest interaction with random game elements. The spikes you see around the 35 second and 75 second marks are the points where we climb a ladder from an enclosed alleyway; the higher we get the lower the framerates become. From a settings point of view, the 4870 was at maximum, but we had to lower the 4850′s post processing from 4 to 3 to match the framerates.

Racedriver: GRID (DX9)

 

Racedriver: GRID	Min	Max	Avg
HIS 4870 1GB	55	70	60.95
4850 512MB	49	61	55.717

Like Assasin’s Creed, our run through is manual rather than a recorded demo, but there is no random interactions on the track during a test run as it’s just you and the ghost car. Again, everything was set to the highest possible in-game at 1680×1050. The HIS HD 4870 however allowed us to increase the 4xMSAA of the 4850 to 8xMSAA and get a slightly smoother game to boot. In reality, both cards do great here, but still … 8xMSAA and higher framerates for the win.

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Devil May Cry 4 (DX10)

 

4850 512MB left, HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 1GB right

The DMC4 benchmark isn’t completely repeatable as the scenes played are random, but the differences between runs are minimal so make the results valid enough. The 4850 gives us a B score at highest settings, 1680×1050, 4xMSAA. Only during really graphically intense scenes can you perceive a drop in frames below 60 without a framerate counter of some kind, and I would (and have) play the game at these levels throughout. The HIS HD 4870 on the other hand has no perceivable drops; I’ve never seen it as smooth at these settings before. We get a solid A here with the HIS HD 4870 and did every time we ran the benchmark (although obviously only one run through is shown for each card, but as with all our tests, three runs were made for each). With some games, you can get away with 30FPS or so, but DMC4 is not one of them. There is a drastic difference in perceived smoothness of gameplay at 30 compared to 60, and the HIS HD 4870 certainly lets you play with very high settings completely smoothly.

Overclocking

We used Ray Adams ATI Tray Tools to overclock the HIS HD 4870 as I rather like the program for all it’s other features as well. The card starts out at a reference standard 750/900 (GPU/Memory). I was hoping to (at least) reach the 800/1000 mark … and I did. It actually proved to be quite easy. Eventually I settled on 835/1056 and was all ready to use that (after extensive testing) as the final results but naturally the minute I’d decided it was stable Left 4 Dead crashed on me and the computer locked up. A few more tests and so far I’ve been running for a couple of days at 826/1047. It’s a shame I had to come down that far, but still, 826/1047 is quite respectable for a HD 4870 1GB, and afforded us another 6 fps on average in Left 4 Dead.

Final Words

One thing that may seem like an obvious statement is that the relies on a good airflow into your case to maintain it’s temperatures. Without it, you will know without looking at the temperatures that something is amiss as the card does tend to whine quite a bit when things warm up. Under load, the card can become a little noisy, but certainly it’s to a much lesser degree than that of a standard 4870 card. If you watercool the rest of the system, be assured though that this card will be the loudest item you’ll get.

have however got a nice balance between noise levels and temperatures with the iCooler x3. Yes, it can get noisy under load, but it’s quieter than a reference cooler and keeps temperatures lower; increased air flow would mean increased noise levels too. Temperatures never rose above 65C even while overclocking with the iCooler x3. It also looks good. There are no flashy lights or UV elements as found on some other (and non HIS) products, and it is basically a heatpipe cooling setup covered with a gloss plastic shell, but it looks fantastic and would fit into any black coloured/themed case setup very well.

The performance of the card is nothing to sniff at either. At one time, only a few years ago, we would have said that 1GB of GDDR on a card would be pointless, especially compared to 512MB. But times have changed and many games do benefit from a card that can handle everything without a need to draw from system resources. PC Games have however somewhat plateaued of late with many being little more than console ports, but often you can increase the visual appeal past that of the consoles, and of course we are not stuck with console resolutions.

The 4870 makes for a good 20″-24″ widescreen card and you can play with a quieter and cooler 4870 without having to spend much more than with a reference card. Many monitors in this range are these days showing up as 1080p with HDMI interfaces, and the fits in well with this setup with its native HDMI port to carry sound and high resolution visuals at the same time. The HDMI port also means you don’t need to have an adapter, and because the card also has a DVI-I port, you can still run a multi-monitor setup with digital connections. Of course, using your old VGA monitor and one of the digital connections is also possible, keeping your options open.

The makes a lot of sense. Prices are around the $150 mark and while not the cheapest 4870 going, most of the cheaper cards don’t have the cooling of this one. Even the cheapest reference 4870 with 1GB isn’t much less than this . Only you can decide if this is the card for you, but there is certainly no reason why it shouldn’t be on your list, and plenty of reasons why it should.

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