HIS IceQ 4 Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 - Pretty Cool Ice
That is how we can call it, the new Radeon HD 4850 from ATI is a sheer bang.
At a competing price, while providing such performance, its release
constrained NVIDIA to dramatically cut down prices of their GTX 200
cards. And though NVIDIA eventually reacted with the hurriedly
conceptualized GeForce 9800 GTX+, which offers synonymous performance
at almost the price of a Radeon HD 4850, this pricing scheme looks to
be arbitrarily enforced. In Singapore, prices of GeForce 9800 GTX+
still exceed those of the 4850 by quite an average bit (around S$50),
resulting buyers here seeking cards in that scope with little option
but to go with ATI.
Still, the Radeon HD 4850 is by no means complete. It has its own fair contribution of issues, and the most imperative one is heating system. In our former recap of a reference
4850, we registered the operating temperature of the core to be a bashing 82 degrees Celsius, making it one of the highest ever recorded.
Even though this temperature is technically within the safe bounds for
an advanced GPU, it clearly has lots of room for improvement.
Enter HIS then, the Hong Kong-based graphics card vendor notable for its IceQ
cooling solution with their own take - the HIS IceQ 4 Radeon HD 4850.
While that sounds all dazzling and good, we’ll reserve our sound judgment
till we test it out for ourselves. The HIS IceQ 4 Radeon HD 4850 not
only sports the latest IceQ cooler, it is also factory-overclocked. So
far, it’s starting out to look like an invincible combination doesn’t
it? Read on to find out, but first, a fast look at the 4850 and some of
its rivals.