Well, right now things are looking up for AMD. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is a great card, performing on a par with similarly priced cards from NVIDIA. This makes it an excellent choice for enthusiasts who require the ultimate performance at all times. Equally so, it also puts the card out of reach for gamers who don't want to spend a fortune on their gaming machines. AMD's answer is the Radeon HD 3850. The card has all the features it's two faster brothers offer and only falls behind in performance due to slightly lower GPU speeds and slower memory. But while no features were cut in the process of making the Radeon HD 3850, its price experienced a significant reduction. - DriverHeaven

HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ TurboX Graphics Review

HIS have never had problems designing attractive boxes and the Radeon HD3850 IceQ TurboX sure doesn't disappoint when it comes to looks. The front has all the specifications including the GPU and memory speeds nicely listed, so a quick glimpse is all that's needed to decide if this card is what you are looking for. The card itself looks very unorthodox for an AMD branded product, as it's entirely blue. As far as specifictions go, the TurboX is a reference Radeon HD 3850 pushed to the extreme, as the GPU runs at a blazing 735MHz while the 512MB of high-end GDDR3 memory ticks happily at 1.96GHz effective.

The cooler on the card is impressive to look at, but as a result the card takes two slots instead of just one. The tradeoff is that the cooler is near noiseless and pushes the hot air generated by the card straight out of the case, lowering the chassis temperature in the process as well. Like it's faster brothers, the Radeon HD 3850 uses a 256-bit memory bus, a step down from the faster Radeon HD 2900 series. On the other hand the 320 unified shaders mean the card is similar in performance to the Radeon HD 3870. In fact, the only real difference between the two versions are the lower GPU and memory speeds.

With the release of the Radeon HD 3870 X2, ATI finally managed to get back into the game, offering a card that is competitive with NVIDIA. Where does that leave the Radeon HD 3850? On paper the performance of the card is obviously considerably lower than the Radeon HD 3870 X2, but then again so is the price. The HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 TurboX is a good card by all accounts. Its performance in the newest games is rock solid and save for perhaps Crysis with its power hungry engine not a single game can bring it to its knees. Well at least not current gamles available and it will do well for quite some time.

ATI's drivers are top notch as well, so you can be sure that regardless of what you use the card for, it won't cause you problems due to stability issues. Media playback is also one of the cards strong points, delivering an unparalleled experience when it comes to HD video playback. The supplied HDMI converter just further reinforces this. Last but not least, the HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 TurboX comes with one of the best gadgets we have seen. The HIS screwdriver is a fantastic and original idea and just makes the whole Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 TurboX edition a great package and just giving an extra plus point going for it.

The fact that it at times outperforms a reference Radeon HD 3870 doesn't hurt either, however considering at the time of press it is a bit more expensive than a reference Radeon HD 3870 graphics card, going for around $200 we find it hard to wholeheartedly recommend. But don't be mistaken it is an excellent graphics card which comes at almost silent operation and with out of the box overclocked settings which give it an extra notch to attract potential buyers.