It's been a while since we've seen anything from HIS and now was really as good a time as any to see what the company has been up to with the Radeon HD 4800 series from ATI becoming such a popular line-up. Today we're looking at not one, but two HIS Radeon HD 4850 cards, but in true HIS style they carry the impressive IceQ cooling solution. So what we will do first is have a look at what's going on with the cards and see how the IceQ4 cooler looks. From there we will test the cards individually and also in CrossFire form. What's also exciting about this round of testing is it's the first time we will be able to try CrossFire out on our new X58 testbed. Fingers crossed we don't run into any troubles! - TweakTown

HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX CrossFire Preview

HIS haven't really done much with the packaging since we last saw a card from them. We've got a black and blue theme going on which looks pretty good. Across the bottom of the box we have the model mentioned and in the middle of the box we have the IceQ4 logo. At the top of the box we have the HIS logo and to the right we have a TurboX sticker that mentions the clock speeds on the card. Down the right hand side of the box we have some of the main features the card offers including HDMI and 512MB of GDDR3 memory. Turning the box over, we have a picture of the card and some bubbles explaining its functions.

Pulling the card out of the box, there isn't anything that we didn't already see on the back of the box, which gave us a pretty good run down of the card and its cooler that manages to take up most of the PCB. We can see across the front of the cooler we have the IceQ4 logo along with the HIS one. Across the top of the card we can see part of the heatsink along with two heatpipes which help pull the heat away from the core. Having a look around the card, there isn't anything we haven't seen on a Radeon HD 4850 before. The back of the card has a single 6-pin PCI Express connector, which is needed for the extra power.

Looking across the top of the card we see two CrossFire connectors which we will fortunately be making use of today. With the aftermarket cooler, the card is of course a dual slot solution. At the top we see some vents to help get the hot air out while across the bottom we see two dual link DVI connectors and a single TV output. Being part of the IceQ4 series, HIS has taken the time to overclock both the core and memory of the card to give us a bit more performance. The core comes in at 685MHz which is way up from the stock clock of 625MHz. The memory has also had a healthy increase from 1986MHz to 2200MHz effective.

As we mentioned earlier, it has been a while since we have seen anything from HIS. However, the company really hasn't lost its touch. It manages to produce a fast card that's cooled well whilst keeping to a reasonable noise level. Throw in the fact that the bundle isn't all that bad and you have a great Radeon HD 4850 on your hands. There isn't a whole lot to complain about when it comes to the card. Yes, you could say it's a pain that it's a dual slot video card, but with the temperatures single slot cooling solutions put out, the temperature on offer from this design is welcomed and keeps the card running cool and smooth.

You can't fault the look of the card either and the black and blue design on the card looks great along with the beefy cooler that's always been pretty mean looking. It's good to see that HIS have added their magic touch to the Radeon HD 4850. This is a great card and if you're looking for a very fast Radeon HD 4850 which comes with a great cooling solution, the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 TurboX is highly recommended. Now the only thing to decide is whether or not to buy one or two of these babies.