We've looked at the HIS Radeon HD 6970 Turbo, we've also looked at some IceQ variants of these Radeon HD 6800 series, but today the power of the IceQ and Turbo series combine to create the HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ Turbo. The IceQ series is a popular one for HIS and has always represented their best cooler in the line-up. Combined with the Turbo label, the card carries with it also a nice out of the box overclock. Today though, we have decided to ignore the overclock and instead make use of the cooler and overclock the card ourselves. The main focus is really on the cooling solution that should be superior compared to others, and would therefore hold higher overclocking potential as extra feature. - TweakTown

HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ Turbo 2GB Version Review

Looking at the HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ Turbo card, you can see the massive cooler that HIS have utilized. Everyone who sees it, including myself, seems to say the same thing. They're kicking it a bit old skool with the look of the cooler. It looks very much like the cooler we saw on their IceQ cards years ago when it comes to the general look and feel, but of course it's been heavily upgraded with heatpipes, new fan and a massive heatsink. The card looks familiar and it will be interesting to see what kind of performance we're able to achieve out of the model when it comes to overclocking especially seeing the improved cooling solution.

Looking around the card and moving to the top, you are not going to see anything that you haven't seen before when it comes to the overall design. We have got a single 6-pin and 8-pin power inlets at the back of the card, while closer to the front we have got a pair of CrossFire connectors. Without an extended CrossFire bridge, making use of one CrossFire connector may be a little hard. It would've been nice if HIS included one in the package like we've seen from MSI and the Lightning series in the past which used large coolers. Out of their box HIS have bumped the core up to 900MHz and the 2GB of memory to 5600MHz effective.

It's not the biggest overclock we could imagine, so because of that we've decided to fire up Afterburner and overclock the video card ourselves to see what kind of performance we are able to achieve. Now, with the core bumped up we managed to achieve a core clock of 1020MHz and a memory clock of 6200MHz effective. This is a strong overclock and should yield some strong performance. HIS have done a great job with this Radeon HD 6970 and while the overclock isn't huge, there's no denying that the card we're looking at today is all about the cooler. The overclock is just a little bonus which you simply get free of charge.

The cooler though, is fantastic and it's exactly what you would expect from a HIS card that carries the IceQ name. The look does resemble that of an older looking IceQ card from yesteryear, but of course has been pimped out with all the latest goodies that make coolers so great. Overall, the Radeon HD 6970 IceQ Turbo just hits the spot for people looking for a Radeon HD 6970 that moves away from the reference cooler. If you are a fan of the IceQ series, you'll no doubt love that HIS have finally gotten around to slapping this on the Radeon HD 6970. At $379 the IceQ Turbo version does carry a price bump over the reference models.

While the overclock might not be much over the default, the IceQ Turbo card is all about the IceQ tag and its cooler, more so than the Turbo suffix and the overclock. If you're happy to spend the extra money to get something that uses an improved cooler that will in turn allow you to achieve a stronger overclock, the HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ Turbo is a great choice.