HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 TurboX Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Ice Ice Baby

There's no other way of saying it, the new Radeon HD 4850 from ATI is an absolute hit. At a competitive price, while offering such performance, its release forced NVIDIA to dramatically slash prices of their GTX 200 cards. And although NVIDIA eventually responded with the hastily conceived GeForce 9800 GTX+, which offers similar performance at almost the price of a Radeon HD 4850, this pricing scheme seems to be haphazardly enforced. In Singapore, prices of GeForce 9800 GTX+ still exceed those of the 4850 by quite a fair bit (around S$50), leaving buyers here looking for cards in that range with little choice but to go with ATI.

Still, the Radeon HD 4850 is by no means perfect. It has its own fair share of issues, and the most pressing one is heat. In our previous review of a reference 4850, we recorded the operating temperature of the core to be a whopping 82 degrees Celsius, making it one of the highest ever recorded. Even though this temperature is technically within the safety bounds for a modern GPU, it clearly has lots of room for improvement.

The HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 Turbo X comes in a compact, dark blue box, with the word "IceQ 4" plastered prominently over it. The card itself, as you can see, comes in matching blue.

Enter HIS then, the Hong Kong-based graphics card vendor famous for its IceQ cooling solution with their own take - the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 Turbo X. They believe that their IceQ cooling solution, now in its fourth generation (hence IceQ 4), is exactly what the 4850 needs to keep cool. They even claim that it can bring gaming temperatures down by as much as 20%.

While that sounds all impressive and good, we'll reserve our judgment till we test it out for ourselves. The HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 Turbo X not only sports the latest IceQ cooler, it is also factory-overclocked. So far, it's beginning to look like an unbeatable combination doesn't it? Read on to find out, but first, a quick look at the 4850 and some of its competitors.

HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 Turbo X and competitive comparison cards

Model	HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 Turbo X	RadeonHD 4850 512MB	NVIDAGeForce GTX 260 896MB	NVIDIAGeForce 9800 GTX 512 MB	ATIRadeon HD 3870 512 MB	ATIRadeon HD 3870 X2 1GB
CoreCode	RV770	RV770	GT200	G92	RV670	R680(RV670 x 2)
TransistorCount	956million	956million	1400million	754million	666million	1332million
ManufacturingProcess	55nm	55nm	65nm	65nm	55nm	55nm
CoreClock	685MHz	625MHz	576MHz	675MHz	775MHz	825MHz
StreamProcessors	160Processors (800Stream processing units)	160Processors (800Stream processing units)	192Stream Processors	128Stream Processors	64 Processors(320 Stream processing units)	128Processors (640 Stream processing units)
StreamProcessor Clock	685MHz	625MHz	1242MHz	1688MHz	775MHz	825MHz
TextureMapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF)units	40	40	64	64	32	32
RasterOperator units (ROP)	16	16	28	24	16	32
MemoryClock	2200MHzGDDR3	2000MHzGDDR3	1998MHzGDDR3	2200MHzGDDR3	2250MHzGDDR3	1800MHzGDDR3
DDRMemory Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit	448-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
MemoryBandwidth	70.4GB/s	64GB/s	111.9GB/s	70.4GB/s	72.0GB/s	115.2GB/s
PCIExpress Interface	PCIever 2.0 x16	PCIever 2.0 x16	PCIever 2.0 x16	PCIever 2.0 x16	PCIever 2.0 x16	PCIever 2.0 x16
MolexPower Connectors	1 x6-pin	1 x6-pin	2 x6-pin	2 x6-pin	1 x6-pin	6-pin,8-pin
MultiGPU Technology	CrossFireX	CrossFireX	SLI	SLI	CrossFireX	CrossFireX
DVIOutput Support	2 xDual-Link	2 xDual-Link	2 xDual-Link	2 xDual-Link	2 xDual-Link	2 xDual-Link
HDCPOutput Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
StreetPrice	~US$199	~US$199	~US$299	~US$170	~US$120	~US$220



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