While we had the chance to check out GPU's from many different companies, one of the ones we haven't worked with much is HIS, but recently they've decided we're worthy of their attention. With that in mind they have sent us a Radeon HD 4850 with their special IceQ4 branding. This means that it is not just a reference design according to the ATI standards buit comes with their well known IceQ suffix. And that means you get a quiet cooling solution instead which be seen as an added value. The next version following would be the Turbo edition which adds even some pre-overclocking of both core and memory clock speeds. But we have just the simple edition with their new silent IceQ4 cooling design. - XSReviews

HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 512MB Style Card Review

The box for the HIS Radeon HD 4850 is pretty fancy looking, with a swirly blue background and a large central IceQ4 logo. There's a few feature buttons on the right hand side and a big picture of the fancy bundled screwdriver. The back has a large picture of the board, with little cut aways of all the main features the Radeon HD 4850 has. Along the left is a feature and specification list. The card itself follows along from the same theme as the box, black shroud with a wispy blue flame covering half of it. At the front end there's the usual coaxial fan, but this is one is bright electric blue, with the translucent blue shroud surrounding it.

This definitely looks a lot better than the usual matt black fan, with matt black fan surround. The IceQ4 logo is quite cool too. Running underneath this logo is the large central heatsink, responsible for drawing the heat away from the GPU. Moving along, the one viewable part of the central heatsink sticks out from under the shroud, and also surrounds the twin copper heatpipes used on this card. Next to these heatpipes, we also have twin CrossFire bridges. This allows you to connect two cards of the same type together, for increased performance. The back is very low profile and has a very thin backing plate, with low profile screws.

Using their Catalyst drivers is perhaps the easiest way to overclock your ATI based GPU. Unfortunately when attempting to overclock the Radeon HD 4850, and you are not given much of a range, with a max of 700MHz on the core and 2400MHz on the memory. This is hardly a big overclock, but the card can handle it no problem, and it's better than nothing. The Radeon HD 4850 is a pretty quiet card. At idle it's almost inaudible unless you get your ear near the fan. If you crank it up to 100%, it does make a bit of a whine, but even at it's max speed it's not too intrusive. The average price for this graphics card is about $165.

The HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 card is a pretty impressive piece of kit. It get's good scores considering it's relatively mid-range cost, and it's low noise rating means that those looking for a card that won't shatter ear drums, will be pretty happy with this one. It's overclocking ability with the Catalyst drivers was pretty good, but perhaps with other pieces of software you'd have more luck. The bundle isn't bad either, but definitely more of a enthusiast aimed one, than a gamer one. All in all it's a pretty great all round card. It ticks all the boxes, and anyone with a $175 budget for a GPU would be more than happy with it.