INTRODUCTION
With the eyes of every gamer and enthusiast all over the world turned towards the brand new ultra-high-end GeForce GTX 1070/1080 graphics cards by NVIDIA and the upcoming high-end RX 4xx series by AMD noone seems to really focus on the lower-end models aimed towards casual everyday users who care not about equipping their systems with one of the fastest models around. This became obvious to me a couple of months ago when a friend of mine was looking to build 5 desktop computers for his office and since instead of going with onboard graphics he was looking for something slightly faster, better and with relatively low power consumption with which he (and the people in his office) could also watch movies during lunch break he asked if i had something in mind. Now as you all know "Green" cards are not popular amongst gamers and enthusiasts but that's what my friend was after so after looking around for something ideal we came across the latest Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB by our good friends over at HIS.
HIS - is an internationally acclaimed brand of graphics cards. Time and time again, HIS were compared and tested by hundreds of worldly renowned critics. The results are phenomena, HIS have proved to offer far superior, cooler, quieter, and faster graphic cards than any other leading rivals. Up to the first quarter of 2015, HIS has won over 1700 awards with AMD graphic solutions from major media worldwide. HIS is being recognized by providing performance leading and award-winning products: IceQ, IceQ X, IceQX2, IceQX2II, OC and Turbo Edition. HIS was established in 1987 with the mission to produce the highest quality PC products in the industry. Headquartered in Hong Kong, and with sales offices and distribution networks in Europe, Middle East, North and South America, Asia Pacific Regions; our worldwide customers benefits from efficient and localized services. HIS's manufacturing facility in China is managed by a team of professionals with expertise in quality control and production planning. Working with world-class clients, HIS has been consistently meeting high quality standards and fulfilled volume order in short lead-time.
Since the Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB is based on the Tobago core by AMD (renamed Bonaire core) it too features 768 stream processors, 48 TMUs (texture mapping units), 12 compute units and 16 ROPs (raster operators) and comes outfitted with 2GB of GDDR5 memory (128 Bit). It also offers complete support for DirectX v12, OpenGL v4.5, OpenCL v2.1 and Shader Model v5.0 (it also supports AMDs FreeSync technology) but unlike all the Radeon R7 360 cards out there the Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB by HIS doesn't require an extra 6-pin power connector and because of that not only does it have a TDP (thermal design power) of just 50W at load (most similar models need over twice as much) but it should also reach lower temperatures by even 10 degrees Celsius. Now of course we don't expect miracles from a Radeon R7 360 card but it will be very interesting to see just how good a graphics card powered just by the PCIe slot can be.
SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES
PACKAGING AND CONTENTS
HIS send the R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB inside a box that has several stickers and drawings at the front that showcase its main features.
The bundle contents, available card memory and PCIe slot supported are all present on the right side of the box.
Moving to the left side we see contact information for HIS and the type of slot this card is compatible with.
At the rear of the box HIS has placed the product specifications, features and system requirements.
The card is placed in a thick cardboard box and wrapped inside a thick black bubble bag.
Not much in terms of a bundle so along with the card you will just get the quick installation guide and the driver/software CD.
THE RADEON R7 360 GREEN ICOOLER OC 2GB
The Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB card is a relatively small dual-slot card that measures just 182mm in length and 125mm in height.
For cooling HIS has used a 90mm sunflower design fan (specially designed blades increase air pressure and reduce noise).
Although i can't speak about its performance yet still the cooling system is very basic and includes just a large heatsink placed under the 90mm fan.
At the rear of the card we see that the black PCB is not protected via a backplate like with the more expensive cards.
The front of the card has one HDMI port, one DisplayPort v1.2, one DVI-D port and one DVI-I port.
TEST BED
TESTING METHODOLOGY
Starting from scratch is not easy so as expected our GPU database will not include models not in our procession any longer. Of course all tests were performed using the latest drivers this time over but due to time issues and also because some older models are no longer in our hands sometimes this will simply not be possible (the drivers used will always be placed next to each card). The cards tested today and currently in our database are the following ones:
Gainward GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST 2GB GS - ForceWare v353.30
Gainward GeForce GTX 670 Phantom 2GB - ForceWare v353.30
ASUS GeForce GTX 960 Strix 2GB - ForceWare v353.30
MSI GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 2GB - ForceWare v353.30
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW ACX 2.0 4GB - ForceWare 353.30
ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II 3GB - Catalyst 15.6 Beta
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 970 WindForce 3X OC 4GB – ForceWare v353.30
Inno3D GeForce GTX 980 iChill Ultra 4GB – ForceWare v353.30
MSI Radeon R9 380 Gaming 2G – Catalyst 15.8 Beta
ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX 4GB – Crimson 16.3.2
HIS Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB – Crimson 16.6.1
Once again the screen used for all the benchmarks is our primary NEC 30" 3090WQXi LCD with a maximum resolution of 2560x1600. However we decided to change things to make it easier for us to perform tests so our testing methodology now includes a total of 5 games benchmarked in two different resolutions (2560X1600 and 1920X1200) and with all quality settings set to maximum (AA and AF are not applicable in our tests). The 5 game titles we're currently using consist from both old ones we've used in the past and new ones including Alien Isolation, Bioshock Infinite, Battlefield 4, Metro Last Light and RYSE Son Of Rome (all games are updated to their latest versions). All tests are repeated a total of 6 times and in a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1 installation. Room temperature is as usual controlled and steady at 23 degrees Celsius for all tests and to record the temperatures of the cards we used AIDA64 (former Everest Ultimate by Lavalys) and GPU-Z. Recording noise levels is done with an ExTech HD600 dBA meter from a distance of no more than 5-10cm away while power consumption is measured using both with a voltmeter and an amperometer (GPU-Z sometimes comes in handy in this as well).
TEST RESULTS – ALIEN ISOLATION
TEST RESULTS – RYSE SON OF ROME
TEST RESULTS – BATTLEFIELD 4
TEST RESULTS – BIOSHOCK INFINITE
TEST RESULTS – METRO LAST LIGHT
TEST RESULTS – POWER CONSUMPTION / NOISE LEVELS / TEMPERATURES
TEST RESULTS – OVERCLOCKING
After spending a roughly 45 minutes trying to overclock the Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB we managed to reach 1120MHz on the core (50MHz over the stock) and 1600MHz on the memory (100MHz over). Further testing revealed that the core can go all the way up to 1200MHz but we did experience some freezing in our benchmarks so we went back down to 1120MHz (although we could had probably hit over 1150MHz without issue).
Our OC gave us roughly a 7% boost in Alien Isolation and almost a 11% boost in Battlefield 4 (temperatures increased 4 degrees under load).
CONCLUSION
If a gamer was to come here today and ask us whether or not the Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB by HIS is what he should get for his gaming rig the answer would obviously be no and just a look at our charts should be enough to justify it. Still people like my friend are neither gamers nor enthusiasts so for people looking to get their hands on a graphics card ideal for low-resolution gaming and with low power consumption and low overall noise levels things can’t get much better than the HIS Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB. Now I still can’t figure out how by just slightly reducing clocks HIS managed to cut the power consumption of the R7 360 all the way down to 50W (56W in our tests) when most similar models require over 120W at load is beyond me but I always welcome such differences. As for overclocking although we did use a very conservative one for our tests we know for a fact you can push it even more (some users have reported stable overclocks of well over 1250MHz on the core) so do keep that in mind as well.
So how much do our friends over at HIS ask for their little Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB? Well although for some strange reason this specific model is not available in the USA it’s widely available inside the EU for a price of 118Euros (Amazon.de) a price tag which is not half bad considering the power consumption this card has. On the other hand by “investing” just a tad more you can get the slightly better GeForce GT 750Ti card so there’s also that option. Still even though the HIS Radeon R7 360 GREEN iCooler OC 2GB may not be the fastest card in its league but it does quite well, is a good overclocker and all that just by using the power coming from the PCIe slot so it goes without saying really that it gets our Golden Award.
PROS
- Build Quality
- Overall Performance (For Its League)
- Very Low Power Consumption (50W TDP)
- Very Low Temperatures
- No Power Connector (PCIe Power Only)
- DirectX 12 Compatible
- Size
CONS
- Faster Solutions At Around the Same Price