HIS has a new and unique graphics card in the form of Radeon HD 6970 IceQ MIX. The card builds on a regular Cayman XT GPU, but also a bridge chip from LucidLogix, which makes it possible to connect with other non-CrossFire compatible cards, even cards from NVIDIA.
HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ MIX premiered earlier on our Facebook site, and even if we promised we would not tell more then we will show you later this week.
With a Cayman XT GPU and 2GB GDDR5 memory at stock frequencies the card looks on par with the reference models of Radeon HD 6970, but HIS has made some changes. Besides the integrated Hydra bridge chip there is more power for the CPU and rigorous cooling with four big heatpipes, heatsink and radial fan. The cooler will according to HIS bring up to 23 degrees lower temperatures over AMD’s reference, something we will investigate of course.
The Hydra circuit will enable users to mix and match graphics cards any way you like. The 3D image is divided into two parts where the cards simply render each part. The card can use the Hydra technology to combine graphics cards from different generations or series, e.g. HD 6970 + HD5870 or HD 6970 + HD 6870.
HIS also pointed out that the card works with NVIDIA GeForce series and grant access to NVIDIA exclusive technologies like PhysX and CUDA. The card will be a limited edition with only 500 samples, which makes it even more exclusive.
Besides the mix-multi-GPU support HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ MIX also supports Eyefinity 5 without the need for active DisplayPort adapters. The price is around 330€, a couple of tens more than the regular HD 6970, but then you get LucidLogix technology and lots of adapters. DVI-to-VGA, HDMI-to-DVI, Mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort, a regular HDMI cable and a code to download DiRT 3.
More information on HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ MIX here at NordicHardware in the near future.
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