Whilst the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series was on balance, successful and put ATI back in competition with NVIDIA with respect to both value for money and outright performance, there were a few drawbacks to the reference cards. The most notable was the coolers that were happy to let the card sit at skin-melting temperatures. Among the first Radeon HD 4850 cards to opt for a non reference design was the Sapphire Toxic edition which we felt was a definite improvement over the reference design as it provided higher clock speeds to boot. Not to be outdone however, HIS has now debuted its Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX and it promises even better performance. - Hexus

HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX Cool Card Review

The HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX differentiates itself from the reference Radeon HD 4850 through the use of an upgraded IceQ4 cooler and increased clock speeds of 680MHz core and an effective 2200MHz memory, compared to the reference of 625MHz and 2000MHz respectively. Quite a boost on the core, we're sure you'll agree. The rear of the card features no extra memory modules, with the IceQ4 TurboX version employing the same 512MB of GDDR3 memory arrangement as the reference design. The striking blue PCB is cool though and certainly a change over the default ATI design.

And an evolution of the previous IceQ coolers, the dual slot solution features an 80mm fan that channels air through the shroud and over the heatsink, before exhausting the heated air out of the case. This approach should keep ambient case temperatures down. Viewing the cooler from the top highlights the two heatpipes that transfer the heat from the initial copper baseplate and heatsink to the aluminium fins. Such a design allows increased thermal performance whilst keeping both weight and costs down. Both the voltage regulators and memory sections are covered with copper heatsinks, and they receive some airflow.

With the tremendous cooling improvements over the reference design, we would imagine the overclocking potential to also increase. As such the speeds were raised, the clock speeds of the Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX to a maximum stable overclock of 700MHz core and 2400MHz memory, a nice boost over pre-overclocked settings. Fundamentally, it's hard not to like the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX 512MB version. For the price of buying a reference Radeon HD 4850 card and an aftermarket cooler, such as the Akasa Vortexx Neo, you can purchase a solution with a decent cooler pre-attached.

The IceQ4 card ships with frequencies of 680MHz core and 2200MHz memory and our performance numbers show the card's performance to be right between the reference Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870 products. The HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX is everything the reference Radeon HD 4850 should have been and more, and as a total package is hard to fault. The only slight disappointment we experienced was with the limited overclocking headroom on our card. With a notable performance boost over reference designs and with a $199 etail price, the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX is a quality proposition.