HIS has been known to produce affordable mainstream graphic cards for the Asia market. They are one of many board partners for AMD, producing Radeon cards for the masses. Having enjoyed plenty of success with its large market share in Asia, they now look to expand their business into other countries. But in order to do this you need to spend a bit of money to market your product, especially your brand name. Unfortunately, the graphics card market in Europe is already very saturated and what's more little is known about them in Europe. Where as some of the bigger brands can splash their cash in marketing, HIS have been more cautious with their money and as such have trust in their products. - TweakTown

HIS Radeon HD 4850 TurboX IceQ4 Cool Style Review

Last month, looked at the Radeon HD 4830 graphics card from HIS. We found it to be a very good graphics card that offered decent performance and great value. It competed very well against similar cards in its class, noteably the Sapphire Radeon HD 4830. What strikes us about HIS graphics cards is the fact that they use their own custom cooler. We all know that GPU core temperatures can rise significantly during its operation. This is definitely the case with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 board, so having a custom cooler that can effectively reduce the GPU temperature is definitely an advantage over its competitors.

Now we will be taking a look at the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 graphics card. It utilises an overclocked Radeon HD 4850 core running at 685MHz, with 512MB of GDDR3 memory at 2200MHz. The whole board is cooled by their own custom heatpipe cooler called IceQ4. It's their 4th generation in custom GPU coolers, and in this particular model takes up two PCI Express slots. Needless to say the ATI Radeon HD 4850 offers a wealth of exciting technologies which you probably already know. These include a 55nm GPU, 800 stream processors, DirectX 10.1 support, CrossFireX, as well as custom filter anti-aliasing techniques.

We're expecting the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 to perform just as well as any other Radeon HD 4850 on the market, if not better. We've got high expectations in terms of performance because of the pre-overclocked GPU which is set at 685MHz. So let's hope HIS can deliver the goods. What's even more interesting, is the overall operating temperature of the graphics card. We all know that the standard Radeon HD 4850 can run really hot, but with such a powerful custom heatpipe cooler on the Radeon HD 4850 from HIS, we should be able to see lower GPU temperatures and as such also overall less heat within the case.

Well, what a surprise we found the HIS Radeon HD 4850 TurboX IceQ4 edition to be one of the fastest graphics card in its class. It outperforms all of the Radeon HD 4850s we've tested to date. The performance is simply astonishing. Just look at the results as they speak for themselves. This is all thanks to an overclocked GPU core and a faster memory clock. HIS have produced a graphics card that's well worth a look. Mainstream gamers will find the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 irresistably attractive, especially when the card comes with its unique cooling technology. It offers great performance, features but above all excellent value.

Overall, we're very pleased with what the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 has to offer in terms of performance, features and of course value for money. It will probably cost you in the region of about $200, which we think it is excellent value for money. Our main concerns for HIS, is the fact that the graphics card market is very saturated. Can they compete with bigger brand names? Only time will tell, but for now the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 is in our opinion an excellent buy for the mainstream gamer.