[section_title title=”A Closer Look”]
Having gone through the masses and masses of information on the box, it’s time to take a look at the actual card. The first thing which you may notice is that it has a blue PCB. Enthusiasts around the globe seem to have a passionate hatred for this colour. Everyone wants a black PCB, it’s all the rage! Let us move forward and not make too much of a fuss about this. As we can see, the card features a dual fan design as mentioned previously, hence the X2 naming. They sit above a dense heatsink design which should mean that the heat should be dissipated quickly and effectively.
Flipping over the card obviously reveals the back of it. One thing to note here is that HIS have not stuck any stickers over any of the screws, which means that you can take off the cooler to change the thermal paste or even fit a water block if you wish. However, as always, this is done at the users own risk and HIS do not have to warrant a repair if something should go wrong with the card so bare that in mind.
To power this card, it requires a single 6pin PCIE connector as well as an 8pin PCIE connector. HIS state that you need a power supply with at least a 500W capacity and with at least one of each of the connectors. I would not recommend using anything else other than quality manufacturers though. Power supplies should not be skimped on, especially when you consider that if it pops and it doesn’t have all of the protection features; it could ruin the rest of your system as well as your new 7950! Brands such as Enermax, Corsair, BeQuiet! and so on are ones which get the thumbs up from me.
If you are after a bit of multi GPU action, you’ll be glad to know that there are two CrossFire links on this card which means that you can run up to four of them in CrossFireX. Also in view is the dual BIOS switch. These are becoming more and more common on graphics cards and it’s nice to see it included. It allows you to flash one BIOS whilst keeping the other one completely safe in case of failure. However, please note that flashing the BIOS is done at your own risk and it isn’t covered by the warranty.
Finally, we have the outputs on this card. This card has two mini DisplayPorts, a HDMI port as well as a DVI port.
[…] will be taking a look at today features their IceQ X2 cooler and if we go back to my review of the HIS 7950 IceQ X², you’ll notice that the cooler is more or less identical to that. In fact, it is the same cooler […]