HIS AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB – Our First Review

Graphics Card

In the above picture, you can see the graphics card itself, HIS AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB.

HIS is still using a reference cooler for this product. We recorded a maximum temperature of 83 degree Celsius during full load and 46 degree Celsius when idle. This rather worrying temperature is caused by the fan’s low RPM rate when set on “Auto” mode. It was only working at 35% of its maximum capacity as the graphics chips gets under full load, just enough to keep the temperature from going beyond 83 degree. When everything settles down and the graphics card was reverted to idle state, the fan drops back to 24% working capacity. By increasing the fan’s spin rate to 50%, we managed to press the temperature down at the cost of louder noise. Increasing that number further to 100% will cause the fan to generate intolerable noise, in our opinion.

The PCI Express x16 2.1 connector on the lower side of the graphics card.