HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo review

1. Introduction2. The HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo3. Testin Configuration4. Resident Evil 55. Batman: Arkham Asylum6. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat7. Left4Dead 28. Colin McRae Dirt 29. Crysis Warhead10. 3d Mark Vantage11. Thermal Dynamics12. Noise Levels13. Power Consumption14. Manual Overclocking15. Closing Thoughts16. View All Pages

KitGuru has been concentrating recently on many mid range boards, however today we are going to be looking at the high end custom HIS HD5870 graphics card, a product we know that will get you excited.

The HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo is completely redesigned and it ships with a iCooler V heatsink and a customised PCB layout which offers a more cost effective production. The core speed is increased by 25mhz and the memory also gets a 100mhz effective bump. If you like free games then this bundle also ships with the excellent Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The icing on the cake is that the card is only £20 more expensive than the reference design, so on paper it appears to be very good value for money.

	HD5850 Reference	HD 5870 Reference	HIS HD 5870 iCoolerV Turbo
GPU	Cypress	Cypress	Cypress
Shader Units	1440	1600	1600
ROPs	32	32	32
Transistors	2154m	2154m	2154m
Memory Size	1024MB	1024MB	1024MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit
Core Clock	725mhz	850mhz	875mhz
Memory Clock	1000mhz	1200mhz	1225mhz
UK pricing	£225	£320	£340

The HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo is supplied in a tower shaped box with rather dramatic war artwork, promoting the free game, Modern Warfare 2.

I would assume most people have this game by now, but if they don't it certainly adds value to the overall package.

Inside the box you get a driver CD (well out of date), DVI to HDMI adapter, Crossfire bridge, 2x PCI-E power cables and a coupon for the free game.

The iCooler thermal assembly (surely not an ihomage to Apple?) is a proprietary design by HIS and it looks rather impressive. They are also using a bigger fan to help with cooling and to lower noise.

The fan is a subtle blue colour which looks quite attractive – it is a nine blade system.

The cooler envelops the whole PCB area, expanding right to the edges. This should offer substantial cooling capabilities.

The card is supplied with two DVI dual link ports, an HDMI port and one Displayport. There is also a vent to help the card to vent hot air outside the chassis. All of these cards feature support for HDMI 1.3a which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3 and DTS with up to 7:1 channel audio – 192 khz/24 bit support.

The card requires 2×6 pin PCI power connectors which remains true to the reference design.

When testing video cards, it is important to use a system which would suit the target audience. For this review we are using a Intel Core i7 980x processor paired with the excellent, KitGuru award winning Asus Rampage III Extreme Motherboard – check out the review here if you missed it.

We will compare the card to the reference HD 5870 model as well as a reference HD5850 and pre-overclocked Sapphire Toxic Edition HD5850. A very small percentage of the audience (1%)  use a 30 inch screen so we like to include 24 inch resolutions when possible (1920×1200). Keeping in HD5850 results is also a good indication of what people can expect if they sold a 5850 and wanted to upgrade to the higher end model.

Test System:
HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo
Sapphire HD5850 Toxic 1GB Edition
AMD Reference HD5870
AMD Reference HD5850
Intel Core i7 980x
Coolit ECO A.L.C.
Asus Rampage III Extreme Motherboard
6GB Corsair DDR3 1866mhz Memory
Intel 160GB SSD Drive
Lacie 730 30 inch screen.
Western Digital Raid 0 (2×1TB Drives)
Enermax 1250W Revolution PSU
Lian Li Armorcase

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit – all newest patches applied
Fraps Professional
Catalyst 10.5 driver

Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Digital Sound Level Meter (Bruel & Kjaer)

Resident Evil 5
Batman Arkham Asylum
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
Left 4 Dead 2
Colin McRae Dirt 2
Crysis Warhead
3dMark Vantage

All the latest bios updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru test all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

All game settings were set to maximum and we used 8x anti aliasing for the results with Resident Evil 5.

At 1920×1200 all the cards can deliver solid frame rates with our stressful testing environments. Moving up to 2560×1600 however shows that the HD5850 starts running out of steam, although the overclocked Sapphire card manages to increase the min frame rate above 25fps. The extra bandwidth with the HD5870 series helps at the higher resolution.

Batman: Arkham Asylum, written by veteran Batman writer Paul Dini, is based on the long-running comic book mythos, as opposed to most other Batman games which are adaptations of the character in other media besides the source material. The Joker, Batman’s arch enemy, has instigated an elaborate plot from within Arkham Asylum where many of Batman’s other villains have been incarcerated. Batman investigates and comes to learn that the Joker is trying to create an army of Bane-like creatures that threaten Gotham City, and is forced to put a stop to the Joker’s plans. The game’s main characters are voiced by the actors from the DC Animated Universe, namely Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin reprise their roles as Batman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn, respectively. The game is played as a third-person perspective action-adventure game with a primary focus on Batman’s combat abilities, his stealth and detective skills, and an arsenal of gadgets that can be used in both combat and exploration.

To test we cranked all the settings to full and toggled on 4xAA as well. we took average results from 3 sections of gameplay across various levels. This would really be a worst case scenario.

The HIS and reference HD5870 really deliver the goods with this game in our stress testing showing the extra bandwidth of the more expensive cards.

The events of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat unfold shortly after the end of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl following the ending in which Strelok destroys the C-Consciousness. Having discovered the open path to the Zone’s center, the government decides to stage a large-scale operation to take control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

According to the operation’s plan, the first military group is to conduct an air scouting of the territory to map the anomalous fields. Thereafter, making use of the maps, the main military forces are to be dispatched.

Despite thorough preparations, the operation fails. Most of the advanced helicopters crash. In order to collect information on the reasons for the operation’s failure, Ukraine’s Security Service send their agent (protagonist – Alexander Degtyarev) into the Zone. From now on everything depends on the player.

The player must traverse through the Zone and investigate the crash sites. As the player progresses he starts learning how the helicopters were shot down. The climax of the story begins when the player reaches Pripyat to find survivors of the helicopter crashes. The player eventually meets Strelok from the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game (Shadow of Chernobyl) and learns of the secrets behind the Zone.

This game uses the XRAY 1.6 Engine which allows for advanced graphics features through DX11 such as real time GPU tessellation. We set MSAA to 4x and enabled tessellation. Ambient Occlusion was also enabled.

The HD5870 cards have slightly more legroom over the HD5850 series cards, although the massively overclocked Sapphire Toxic is putting in class leading performance for a 5850 series card. The HD5870 cards really do excel with this particular engine however.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead. The game launched on November 17, 2009, for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in the United States; it launched November 20 in Europe. It builds upon the cooperatively-focused gameplay of the original and uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine, the same game engine used in Left 4 Dead. The game made its world premiere at E3 2009 with a trailer during the Microsoft press event.

In a similar fashion to the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale.

The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

We performed testing today at 2560×1600 with 8xAA and 16xAF – all other settings were pushed to the max.

Valve's Source engine is a rather easy test for all the hardware on show today. If Left4Dead2 is all you play, then the HD5850 is more than enough!

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.

This engine support DX11 and was one of the integral releases for ATI when they launched the 5xxx series cards a while ago. Hardware tessellation is used on the crowd, as well as water and cloth objects. DirectCompute 11 accelerated high definition ambient occulsion is also integrated with full floating point high dynamic range lighting.

We enabled maximum settings, including hardware tessellated animated crowds and dynamic water via ULTRA settings.

The only card on test which dips below the 25fps ‘red line' is the reference HD5850 card. The highly overclocked Sapphire Toxic manages to squeeze 3-5 fps extra across the range. The HD5870 cards breeze through the test without ever dropping below 30fps.

Crysis Warhead, like the original, Crysis, is based in a future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered beneath the Earth on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of (Former SAS) Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns.

In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield. Like Crysis, Warhead uses Microsoft’s new API, Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering.

The ever demanding Crysis Warhead shows the benefits from purchasing a HD5870 series card. The increased clocks of the HIS, help to push an extra 1fps during various parts of the level. It is unnoticeable however and only documented by our recording software.

3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation (formerly MadOnion, formerly Futuremark) to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities.

The measurement unit 3DMark is intended to give a normalized mean for comparing different PC hardware configurations (mostly graphics processing units and central processing units), which proponents such as gamers and overclocking enthusiasts assert is indicative of end-user performance capabilities. Between 3DMark99 and 2000, MadOnion created a simpler 3D benchmark, which played only a DirectX 7 demo sequence at 640×480, with no extra tests. It was called XL-R8R and was aimed at providing upgrade information, based on the results of the benchmark.

We used the Extreme settings for testing with a resolution of 1920×1200.

The results fall in exactly as we expected with a close call between HD5870 series cards.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

To measure temperatures we let the machine idle in Windows for 30 minutes, then loaded a scripted run of Crysis Warhead at maximum settings.

The results for the HIS card are very impressive indeed with a reduction of around 13c over the reference HD5870 we have here.

As we recorded on the last page the HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo has a formidable cooling solution which offers huge reductions against the reference solution.  We measure noise from a distance of around 30 inches – our Lian Li case is closed as this mirrors a real world situation.

At idle the HIS HD5870 fan is spinning faster than the reference design which helps to reduce temperatures but it also increases noise, it is noticeable under lab conditions. Back in the real world it really wouldn't be that obvious, especially if your computer room has other background noise. Personally in a high end gaming system I prefer to see slightly reduced temperatures so this trade off is acceptable to me. If I was building a media center however I wouldn't be happy … that said, I wouldn't be using a HD5870 for a media center anyway.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. The best way to get maximum load results is by using Furmark, and even though it is not indicative of a real world situation it shows the limits the card can theoretically demand.

The HIS card is taking a little more power than the reference design although it is only a few Watts more under load. It is worth pointing out that when playing a game the power drain is significantly lower than 217 watts. Crysis Warhead for instance only demanded 140w at maximum settings. Furmark is purely synthetic but interesting regardless.

Overclocking the cards properly mean we need to look elsewhere for software and although ATI supply Overdrive within the driver it does not always allow us to crank the card to the maximum speeds we can achieve. We used the combination of MSI Afterburner and AMD GPU Clock tool which means we can enhance both clock speeds and increase the fan speeds of the card.

We were very pleased to see decent headroom from the HIS card – an increase of 105mhz on the core with memory now running at an effective 5600mhz. With this overclock it is important to check temperatures – we retested by running Crysis Warhead at Enthusiast settings for 30 minutes.

Temperatures rose by 8c under load which is not bad considering the overclocked speeds.

The HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo is a well designed 5 series card and performed slightly better than the reference design throughout our testing. The iCooler design is a bit of a mixed bag, it cools much more efficiently than the reference design, but there is a noise penalty to be paid … which while only slight, is still noticeable.

If we had a complaint we would actually say that HIS have been too conservative with their clock settings. We noticed no additional noise from manually overclocking the card, and while not every board will hit the heights we achieved, we feel clocks of 925mhz on the core and 1275mhz on the ram would be safe.

In regards to pricing the HIS model is only £20 more than a reference design card in the UK right now which makes it an extremely viable purchase, especially when you factor in the free Modern Warfare 2 game.

Everything considered we can really recommend the HIS card, it is well priced, runs cool and the bundle is impressive. If they had overclocked it higher out of the box and managed to get the noise down a little it would have walked away with our top score. As it stands, it is still worth buying.

KitGuru says: This card is a good choice, just be sure to overclock the nuts off it.

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