We have come a long way from the major change of high-end graphics memory size that took place near the end of the GeForce 7 series life spans. This change is happening again, only this time it is 512MB to 1GB. One gigabyte boards are quickly becoming the norm for high-end cards. Even some of the lower end cards are getting this 1GB treatment. And it's one thing for a company to slap an extra 512MB of memory on a board and call it a new card, it's another for the card to actually perform significantly better than their 512MB version. And that is exactly what it is all about these days with the new games. While the higher memory size certainly helps in higher resolutions, by how much does it help? - Bjorn3D

HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 1GB Video Design Review

That is the question posed today with the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4, the latest in HIS's long standing IceQ series. These IceQ series has long been considered one of the best cooled cards that comes from the factory. Generally, when you think of exceptional cooling, you think of major overclocking. Though the Radeon HD 4850 has not had much success hitting 700MHz core, maybe the IceQ4 will change that. With the look of this cooler, we would not doubt it would at least run cool at the highest overclock. Thanks to the newly designed double slot fans and dual heatpipes, the IceQ 4 effectively dissipated the heat from the GPU chip.

The outside of the box has a nice graphics. Also, on the front is a little sticker that says this video card comes with a free game. It is always a nice thing for a graphics card manufacturer to include one game so you can test your new toy without having to buy a game. Looking further there is also a sticker that shows the included multi purpose screwdriver. Now when we move to the back we see the basic information graphics card makers usually put on their boxes. There is a brief rundown of all the features along with the specifications. This is not a factory overclocked card, so it has the standard clocks as any reference card.

For overclocking we kept on raising the core speed of the board until it became unstable, and then we preceded to increase the memory clock speed. Once the board artifacted we backed down the clocks a bit to ensure stability. We were able to get 700MHz core and 2176MHz memory stable. That's not a bad result, about the same as other Radeon HD 4850's. The only difference are the cooler temperatures, and overclocked it never went past 75°C which is damn nice. With 1GB graphics cards quickly becoming a standard, it will just become harder to justify purchasing an older 512MB unless you are going for a CrossFire system.

Newer games are slowly coming around to taking advantage of added memory. And judging by past experience, in the next year you will see a larger increase in frame rates from what you are seeing now. This will be even more prevalent in higher resolutions. The performance of CrossFire is undeniable compared to a single Radeon HD 4870. If you are in the market for a graphics upgrade, but can't justify the price of two Radeon HD 4870's, then two Radeon HD 4850's would be a better buy over a single Radeon HD 4870. If you fall into that position, it may be better to grab a couple 512MB cards due to their cheaper price.

You may loose an advantage later on down the road, but their sheer power will keep them in a high standing compared to other 1GB cards. Even after all of this time since the Radeon HD 4850 was introduced, it still proves to be a powerful card, capable of playing all of the latest games. Combine that with the added benefit of 1GB of memory, and HIS's incredible cooler, and you have a incredible combination of power that will live long into the future. The HIS Radeon HD 4850 1GB edition adds many advances to the Radeon HD 4850, allowing it to function far into the future as a viable graphics solution.