HIS HD 6790 IceQ X Turbo ATI Radeon graphics card

If you're serious about games you'll need an equally serious graphics card.

The HIS IceQX Radeon HD 6790 certainly looks the part, both in size and the array of sockets on the back.

Installation was straightforward, though the card takes up two PCI Express slots on the computer's motherboard.

It would be wise to make sure that the PC has a powerful enough power supply: a 500W model is recommended and the card uses two six-pin PCI Express power connectors. As with all graphics cards, you'll need to be happy opening your PC – and it won't fit in a laptop, only desktop ‘tower'-style cases.

On the back are two DVI sockets, one of which can be used to attach a monitor which has only a VGA socket, using the supplied adapter. One HDMI and two mini-Displayport sockets complete the line-up to allow a total of four monitors connected at once. The other gadget in the box worthy of note is a Crossfire adapter for combining two of these cards at once, though a 600W power supply is required for the latter.

Unlike other graphics cards using the ATI Radeon HD 6790 processor, this card has been overclocked by HIS at its factory, so it's running faster than the standard speed. This would normally make it noisier but the clever design of this one meant we couldn't discern any extra noise.

Software installation was straightforward, though you need to uninstall any old graphics drivers before installing the card. A supplied CD contains drivers and the AMD Hydravision utility for setting up multiple monitors.

It performed extremely well in our tests, running a car-racing game much faster than any other card we've reviewed. It even managed 50 frames per second in the flight simulator DCS: A-10C, one of the most graphically demanding games we've ever seen and which topped out at around 30 frames per second on other cards.

It's less useful for non-gamers: it'll still improve Blu-ray playback performance on an older computer, for example, but no more than a cheaper card, such as the Zotac Geforce GT 430 ZONE.

There are many more expensive graphics cards available but still, at £110 the HIS 6790 Turbo is not cheap. However, if you want to play games at the highest quality, it's a great upgrade.

The HIS card is available from Ebuyer