Agreed, 2008 has been a fantastic year for AMD. We have seen them release a portfolio of great cards with extremely competitive pricing to challenge NVIDIA. The Radeon HD 4850 has been one of their most successful cards, with its combined price to performance ratio capturing the hearts of many consumers. One of the most documented issues with these cards however are the running temperatures, especially when overclocked. These cores can get hot with the reference heatsink which can raise temperatures inside a chassis. Fortunately, for those who do not wish to void their warranty by replacing the heatsink, AMD's partners have been busy producing cards with custom cooling. - DriverHeaven

Club3D Radeon HD 4850 OC Graphics Edition Review

The HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX card arrives in a typical looking black box with the IceQ4 logo dominating the front of the packaging. The back of the box details the specifications and has information on the dual slot cooling solution. The HIS is a fantastic looking card based on the reference Radeon HD 4850 but with a new cooling solution, a matching blue PCB and a dual slot cooling design. The IceQ4 custom heatsink is one of the key elements of this overclocked beauty, using a fan which draws in air from both sides before it flows through the two heatpipes and fins, and reduces the heat from the core.

Due to the nature of dual slot cooling designs the card is able to exhaust hot air out of the rear panel, preventing the card from filling the case around it with hot air. The memory chips have a separate heatsink from the core to prevent any heat transfer and the voltage regulators also have a set of fins to keep them cool. Right next to them is a 6-pin power connector. The PCI bracket on the back of the card looks slick with its gold plated DVI ports and gun metal bracket. There's also a video out port between the two DVI ports. The other half of the bracket is vented to allow the cooling solution to perform its job optimally.

The reference Radeon HD 4850 runs at 625MHz core and 1986MHz memory, so you can see that HIS have opted for a fairly aggressive overclock, just what we want to see. The core speed has been increased 685MHz and the memory has taken a bump to 2200MHz. The card also has 512MB of GDDR3 at its disposal. The Club3D Radeon HD 4850 ships in a fantastic looking box, a greyscale color theme which gives a professional understated appearance. The back details information on the various features as well as the specifications. Just like with the HIS card, the Club3D bundle isn't bursting at the seams with their kit.

The Club3D Radeon HD 4850 OverClock edition looks quite different to many overclocked cards we're seeing on the market now and they have used a cooler like those in ZEROtherm's line instead of utilising a dual slot bracket to exhaust air. Despite that, the cooler is still large enough to prevent you from installing an expansion card in a slot right next to it. We've seen one of these coolers before on a BFG card and it seemed fairly capable when put up against a third party cooler such as the Akasa Vortexx. It does the job but it isn't as good looking as some of the other coolers we've seen, leaving most of the card bare.

Now Club3D have opted for a very modest overclock when compared against a reference card of 625MHz core and 1986MHz memory. The core speed is up by 40MHz but to our surprise the memory is left untouched. The HIS card is a viable all round purchase. It performs great, looks stunning, and can be obtained at an extremely competitive price tag. Even with the aggressive out of the box pre-overclocking the IceQ4 heatsink managed to keep the toasty RV770 core at respectable temperatures and exhausted the hot air out the rear of the case. Additionally, the cooling configuration is quiet and is almost inaudible.

The card will set you back about $199, which is a little more pricey than some of the other overclocked Radeon HD 4850's we've seen on the market, but the card is just one of the best overall configurations and worth the extra money. We couldn't find any obvious drawbacks with the HIS model and it is one of the best purchases in its respective price zone. First impressions on the Club3D are mixed because although the ZEROtherm cooler is a solid performer a rear exhaust is missing which means that ambient case temperatures will increase. And it is still large enough to prevent anything being installed directly next to it.

Upon installing the board in the system, we also were disappointed to find that Club3D had left the memory speeds untouched, this is rather surprising as with additional manual overclocking we found significant increases. Now, these drawbacks wouldn't be so bad if the card was priced accordingly, but at $205 the card isn't as competitive as we would have liked and it needs to be lowered by $20 to make it a must have product. That said, there is still value with the product, especially if you spend some time manually overclocking it.