It's been a while since we've seen anything from HIS which is a bit of a shame as their IceQ series of cards have been one of the more stand-out models of ATI based graphics cards. Fortunately, HIS are back at it again with the IceQ cooler in hand and some hefty clocks to go with it. There isn't anything too out of the ordinary, we have on hand the HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 TurboX graphics card. Their IceQ series have always been very strong and have pleased a lot of buyers by the great performance and the eeficient cooling, though keeping the noise at low as possible. And taking the same logic into account, applying it on the Radeon HD 3850 is exactly what HIS has done. - TweakTown

HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 TurboX Graphics Review

Nothing has changed too much in the HIS box department. Their high-end cards follow a square box design which is pretty straight forward. We see all the usual details, the top of the card gives us the brand while the bottom shows us the model. In the middle we can see a big emphasis on the IceQ3 cooling solution. The right of the box gives us all the main information such as the fact that it has 512MB of GDDR3 memory, PCI Express, HDMI, 1080p support along with a diagram of how the IceQ3 cooling solution works. At the very top of the card we can see a TurboX sticker, detailing the core and memory clock speeds.

With the package out the way it's time to move onto the card and like most IceQ cards there isn't a whole lot to the front of the card thanks to the giant heatsink taking up the majority of the space. Looking around the card we can see some carefully placed copper heatsinks but that's about all. If we have a look around the card, the top right corner shows us a single PCI Express connector while the top of the card shows off our CrossFire connectors if you want to make use of two of these cards. Moving across the top of the card we can see more of the copper heatsink along with a copper heatpipe that comes out the top of the card.

As we mentioned earlier, the particular HIS model not only carries with it an aftermarket cooler but also increased core and memory clocks. The core comes in packing a hefty 735MHz clock, up from the standard 668MHz and the memory comes clocked in at a healthy 1960MHz which is up from the stock 1650MHz effective. You can see that a quite heavily overclocked card like the HIS Radeon HD 3850 does a pretty good job of keeping up with the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. The good news is that the HIS Radeon HD 3850 manages to come in at about $40 less than the cheapest GeForce 8800 GT graphics card.

When you throw in the fact that you have regular driver updates from AMD the card looks pretty good indeed. The Radeon HD 3850 has impressed us the whole time, but the problem is that the GeForce 8800 GT managed to over shadow the card since its release. AMD have some good cards on the market at the moment but it seems that a lot of people aren't really giving them a chance. It's safe to say that the GeForce 8800 series have been drilled into our heads so much as the top graphics card that we sometimes can't comprehend looking at anything else. But in fact there are other fine card delivering great gaming performance.

HIS have done a good job with the Radeon HD 3850, the IceQ3 cooler is as good as always and manages to do a good job of keeping the card cool. The overclock out of the box is very nice and really helps it stand out from the pack. If you're looking for a card that packs a bit more punch over the standard Radeon HD 3850 the IceQ3 TurboX offering may be the card for you. It's one card worth having a look at if you're in the market for a Radeon HD 3850.