As it stands today, AMD's latest generation of graphics cards are the Radeon HD 3000 series, namely the Radeon HD 3850 and the Radeon HD 3870. Based on these cards, HIS has engineered their own special versions using the IceQ3 brand name. The card we check out today is based on the ATI Radeon HD 3850 reference design but uses the IceQ3 cooler, some additional GDDR3 memory and higher clocks of 735MHz on the core and 1960MHz on the memory which should bring the performance very close to the Radeon HD 3870. All this makes this a very interesting version, designed for great performance, with improved slient cooling but still keeping the price as low as possible. - techPowerUp!

HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 TurboX Overclock Review

The HIS box is big, which will make it stand out on store shelves. On the back you have a window where you can inspect the merchandise. The bigger cooler is similar to a design from Arctic Cooling a while back. It exhausts hot air out of the case and has additional cooling for the memory chips. As expected the card uses a dual slot cooling solution for improved thermal performance. The output configuration follows today's standard. Two DVI ports are available, both are dual link capable, so you can run two extreme widescreen displays at once. The golden connectors are just for looks, as the signal is already digital.

At first sight the cooler looks pretty cool, it has copper and heatpipes and hot air is going outside of the case. When we cleaned up the baseplate though we noticed that the part that makes contact with the GPU core is made from aluminum. Even though it is just aluminum, the cooler does a fine job at keeping the card cool. The memory cooler is also a painted piece of aluminum with a number of fins on it. And yes, CrossFire is supported of course, even the new CrossFireX which will work with up to four GPU's in the future can be used once the ATI drivers support it. These drivers should be released shortly though.

The HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 is coming at higher clocks than the AMD reference design, but the rest of the overclocking is basically the same. Having a better cooler certainly helps. We used ATITool and AMD overclocking software to adjust the clocks in order to detect the maximum stable clock frequency. The final overclocks of our card are 850MHz core and 2196MHz memory clock speed. Especially the memory overclock is very impressive, considering that the chips were selected for 2000MHz operation. Please also consider that this card is already overclocked over the AMD reference design clocks.

The HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 TurboX is listed for $199 at Newegg, and please don't confuse the Turbo and TurboX versions. If you are considering the Radeon HD 3870 from AMD but are just a few bucks too short to buy it, why not get the HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3. It is only slightly slower than the Radeon HD 3870 and offers all the same features at a lower price of only $199. The dual slot cooling solution will ensure that the card stays cool at all times. If you want to make up for that missing performance, you can easily overclock the card to outperform the Radeon HD 3870 and even some of NVIDIA's latest offerings.

Overall the performance of the Radeon HD 3850 is fine to play all current titles at their high detail setting. Also the card is a great addition to any media PC system, at least if you can fit a dual slot cooler because of the HDMI support. Just attach the included adapter, connect your HDMI cable and you're ready to watch HD movies on your big screen.