We will continue with our journey and this time we will take a look at the R9-280 IceQ X2 OC video card from HIS, which features the solid cooling system we have also found on their 7950 and R9 280X offerings; because of this the card is kept cool at all times and also allows quite a bit of overclocking. HIS has released not one but two cards which look pretty much the same with the R9-280 GPU, one having a maximum frequency of 953 MHz for the core and 1250MHz for the memory, while the Turbo model is overclocked up to 1050MHz for the core and 1500MHz for the memory. Specification-wise, the R9-280 is a re-branded Radeon HD 7950 which had a very good price/performance ratio at launched and continued to be the same way with the price drops. The AMD R9-280 OEM model has released with a 933MHz frequency on the core so we can say that the card we are reviewing at this moment only features a very mild overclock, while retaining the same memory speed.

The card gets shipped inside a pretty large box, with the IceQ X2 logo in the middle along with iTurbo, the utility which simplifies the overclocking procedure:

On one of the box sides, the manufacturer has placed a list with system requirements:

The other side is populated with a list of box contents:

Some of the product main highlights are described in more detail on the back side of the enclosure:

After removing the top layer of the packaging, we will end up with a black box, which features the HIS logo in the middle:

The card is fully enclosed with a foam mold and on the top we will get to see a leaflet showing the mounting procedure, along with the well-known envelope with goodies:

The envelope provides us with the installation disk, one Quick Installation Guide in multiple languages, but also a small case sticker:

Besides the card, we will also get a DVI to VGA adapter for older displays: