HIS HD 5670 IceQ 512MB Video Card
Feb 13th, 2010 | By JaredManufacturer: HIS Digital
While HIS is no stranger at Overclockers Online, it has been over a year since we last had one of their products in our hands. In the past their IceQ video cards have raised the bar on cooling solutions by not only increasing the cooling but also lowering the noise.
Today we get to take the HIS HD 5670 IceQ 512MB for a spin. Since launching the HD 5xxx series, AMD has been releasing new models on a set schedule and the HD5670 is the latest. The HD5670 is the first video card to bring DX11 to the sub $100 market. While most companies will just follow along with the reference design, here we get to find out what HIS has in store.
The front of the packaging has a large drawing of the mythical sword Excalibur along with a quick rundown of some key features. The backside of the box goes into these features in a little more detail.
The sides of the box touch on some features and also show a drawing to help identify what a PCI Express slot looks like.
Included with the card are a driver disk, case badge, install guide and information packet.
When you open the box you find the HD 5670 IceQ enclosed in a plastic shell for protection.
Next we’ll touch on some features and specifications.
For specifications and features I grabbed a few highlights straight from HIS’s product page. For complete details and information you can go here.
Specifications:
System Requirements:
The IceQ cooler is a dual slot cooling solution that dominates the HD 5670. While the larger size of the IceQ cooler will take up an extra slot, it also provides better cooling at lower noise levels.
As you can see here the IceQ vents hot air out the back of the case keeping the hot air from re-circulating in the case. The HD 5670 IceQ has native HDMI, DVI and VGA ports.
You can see on the bottom the cooler is attached with four screws around the chipset.
Once the IceQ cooler is removed, you can see that it only makes contact with the chipset and not the memory. There was good coverage of TIM to ensure contact.
Here is a close up shot of the HD 5670 chipset.
I won’t bore you with the mundane of installing the HIS HD5670 IceQ. The card isn’t full sized so there should be no issues with fitting in any case. Unfortunately I don’t have a UV light as I’m sure it would look even better since the cooler is UV reactive.
Of course after installing the software, one of the first things to do is see how much we can overclock it. Unfortunately at the time of this writing the only tool that I was able to use was ATI’s Overdrive utility. Out of the box the HD 5670 IceQ runs at a core clock of 775 MHz and memory clock of 1000 MHz. Unfortunately we are limited to a max of 850 MHz core and 1050 MHz memory clocks in ATI’s utility which the HD 5670 IceQ reached easily.
The temperatures of the card under load using Furmark only increased by 2 degrees over the stock temperatures. Idle temperatures were the same as expected since the clock settings drop while not under load.
Now that we have toyed with overclocking, it’s time to throw some benchmarks at it and see how the HD 5670 IceQ performs.
Below are the system specifications that will be used for testing.
CPU: Intel E8400 @ 3.6GHz w/ Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
MB: Biostar TPower I45
RAM: G.Skill PI Black PC6400
PSU: Ultra X3 1000W
HD: WD 250GB SATA
DVD-Rom: Lite-On 18x DVD Burner – SATA
OS: Microsoft Windows 7
Ambient Temperature: 22-24C
GPUs:
HIS HD5670 IceQ 512MB (latest Catalyst beta)
XFX HD4890 1GB (Catalyst 9.11)
Biostar 9600GT 512MB (GeForce Release 196.21)
Sapphire Radeon HD4550 512MB (Catalyst 9.11)
All benchmarks were run a minimum of three times with scores being the average of those three runs. While a Nvidia GT240 would have been a more direct comparison, due to timing I had to use the Biostar 9600GT 512MB that I had on hand which typically performs around the same level as a GT240. Also while not a fair comparison I threw in numbers for the XFX HD4890 1GB and Sapphire Radeon HD4550 512MB to show the performance difference between the top and bottom of AMD’s HD 4xxx series. Well that’s enough with the introductions, let’s run some benchmarks.
First out of the gate is the suite of 3DMark benchmarks, while a synthetic benchmark they are widely considered the standard. Synthetic benchmarks don’t necessarily translate to real world performance, but give us a good comparison between cards with a standard scoring system. First I ran 3DMark06 on stock settings and then moved on to 3DMark Vantage. I ran Vantage on the following presets at default settings; Entry, Performance and High.
Here the HD 5670 IceQ hangs with the Biostar 9600GT even though the Nvidia card gets a bit of a boost with Physx though that advantage disappears at the High performance preset which runs at a resolution of 1680×1050. What is also nice to see is fairly decent gains from the small overclock on the card.
Next on the block is Furmark. Furmark is an OpenGL benchmark that renders a large ring of fur to stress and test the GPU. Here I ran at a resolution of 1680×1050 with 0 MSAA.
The HIS HD5670 IceQ easily outpaces the Biostar 9600GT and we again see a fairly decent gain (3 fps) when overclocked.
Enough with the synthetic benchmarks, time to throw some real games into the mix.
Games are a big factor in many consumers’ purchasing decisions. And while the HD 5670 may not be the hardcore gamers choice in cards, that doesn’t mean it can’t play games.
The first game up is Left 4 Dead 2. The Left 4 Dead series lets us live out our zombie apocalypse fantasies and the second in the series comes with a tweaked Source engine for better visuals. We have seen in the past that the Source engine is quite efficient on all levels of cards. For the testing I used a recorded timedemo from The Park chapter of The Parish campaign. All settings were set to high with 4x AS and 4x MSAA.
Left 4 Dead 2 is where we find the biggest gains from overclocking. At 1280×1024 the HD 5670 IceQ comes close to even the XFX HD 4890.
Next we will hit a slightly more demanding game in Company of Heroes. I used the built in benchmark and set everything to high and let it rip.
Very solid numbers here though I think it’s safe to assume that the CPU is becoming a bottleneck in this test.
The final test will be with Crysis. Crysis obviously needs no introduction as a system killer when it comes to performance. All settings were set to high with no AA and the built in GPU benchmark was used.
Results here show a back and forth with the Biostar 9600GT and the HIS HD 5670 IceQ. While the numbers under the higher resolution are not really playable, you can easily reduce some visuals to be able to play smoothly. These are pretty impressive performance results for an entry level card.
I really was impressed with the performance and value of HIS’s HD 5670 IceQ 512MB video card. HIS always has had a different approach on video cards that makes them both more attractive and good cooling with their IceQ line and the HD 5670 IceQ is no exception. With native HDMI and DVI it makes a compelling card for a HTPC or desktop alike.
On the flip side the HIS HD 5670 is far from a top gaming card but that is ok. It offers pretty good performance at its price point and the great thing about it is that it requires no additional power aside from what the PCI Express slot supplies.
The HIS HD 5670 IceQ 512MB card offers all the features of AMD’s latest chipsets at a price that is easy to swallow.
- Advantages
- Good performance for entry level card
- DX11
- Native HDMI
- Quiet
- Disadvantages
- Not the strongest in games
Overclockers Online would like to thank HIS for supplying the HD 5670 IceQ 512MB for review.