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HIS HD 3850 ICEQ 3 TurboX runs at 735MHz

by on25 December 2007

Index

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Merry Xmas Review: The fastest Radeon HD 3850 around

 

HIS HD 3850 IceQ 3 TurboX owes its name to two things – the famous Ice Q 3 cooler, and 735MHz, hence the suffix TurboX. Just in case you've been living on Mars and don't know about IceQ 3, it's HIS's ace cooler, and they use it on their champion cards.

HIS once again proved their excellence when it comes to ATI cards. Besides Radeon HD 3850 IceQ 3 TurboX, there is a bit slower version that runs at 720MHz core, and 1820MHz for the memory. TurboX, on the other hand, runs at 1960MHz memory speed, but not even that will push the limits on Samsung memory; the aforementioned memory has 1ns access speed, and that accounts for 1000MHz (effective 2000MHz). We all want our graphics cards to run ever faster, and HIS lets you have it straight out of the box.

HD 3850 reference speeds are 670MHz core and 1660MHz memory. This card packs 512MB GDDR3 memory, and since newer games are quite hungry for memory, it looks like you’re good to go.

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The card also has UVD engine (Unified Video Decoding) that decodes HD video entirely on the GPU, thus ridding the CPU of this tiresome task. RV670 also packs 5.1 audio which means DVI to HDMI dongle will handle video and sound at the same time, thus enabling full HD experience. Some ATI HD 3850 cards have a built-in HDMI connector, but that’s not the case with this card.

To minimize interference when the signal is transferred to the dongle, HIS glazed their Dual DVI outs with a thin layer of gold and we know that gold is the best conductor. Of course, that doesn’t mean that this DVI out will work any better than any other DVI out, but when it comes to interference, you simply never know.

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IceQ 3 cooling technology is not only quiet but it significantly lowers the temperatures, so HIS dared to overclock the card, and sell it as such. The cooler also has a small heatpipe that helps transfer the heat to the cooler fins.

The cooler is UV sensitive, so if you have a UV sound source within your case, you can enjoy in a pleasing blueish color of the cooler. It’s easy to mount and take off, but there will be no need to take it off as we’ve measured temperatures of up to 18 degrees Celsius cooler compared to the reference HD 3850 cooling solution.

Memory cooling is handled by a large passive cooling component that stretches over all eight memory modules. There are eight modules in total, and each has 64MB of memory (512MB in total).

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This is a DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 card, which means that this card will definitely last. Any day now you should be able to use it in CrossFireX mode, chaining four identical cards and harnessing their power. If you want to use only two, CrossFire is already enabled.

PowerPlay is a feature that will handle power consumption depending on your GPU’s workload, and it’s rapidly becoming a trend. If you care for power consumption, then this is the card for you, because it will consume less power in idle mode than Nvidia’s cards do. Maximum consumption that we measured was 242 Watts, while in idle mode that number dropped to 138 Watts.

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GPU runs at 735MHz, but in idle mode GPU goes down to 297MHz. Downclocking also goes for the memory that runs at 830MHz in idle mode, and if the need arises it overclocks to 980MHz.

IceQ 3 cooler does a great job, and you can see it for yourself in the tables below.

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In the box you’ll get a wonderful gift – it’s a pen, screwdriver, LED lamp and a spirit level (bubble level) in one convenient gadget. There are no new games, but if you register you’ll get Half Life 2: Last Coast and Half Life 2: Deathmatch. You don’t get the Black Box voucher.

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Benchmarking

HIS HD 3850 is a really fast card, maybe even the fastest HD 3850 around, and we’ve put it up against reference ATI cards, as well as Nvidia’s 8800 generation. In synthetic tests HIS 3850 IceQ 3 TurboX card fared well, and it even outperformed Radeon HD 3870.

 

 

Testbed:

Motherboard:
EVGA 680i SLI (Supplied by EVGA)

Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition (Supplied by Intel)

Memory:

OCZ FlexXLC PC2 9200 5-5-5-18  (Supplied by OCZ)
        while testing CL5-5-5-15-CR2T 1066MHz at 2.2V

PSU:
OCZ Silencer 750 Quad Black (Supplied by OCZ)

Hard disk:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Supplied by Seagate)

 

CPU-Cooler:
Freezer 7 Pro (Supplied by Artic Cooling)
 

Case Fans:
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 12 PWM
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 8 PWM

 


Futuremarks

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HIS’s card did really well here. Although HD 3870 is supposed to be faster, HIS somehow managed to win. HD 3870 runs at 775MHz/1125MHz (GDDR4) while HIS HD 3850 runs at 735MHz/980MHz (GDDR3).

Gaming

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Truth be told, we can’t say that ATI Radeon 3870 is better than HIS 3850 TurboX card. The performance gap between the two is so small, that it’s negligible.

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Some games might ask for more muscle than HIS HD 3850 can supply, and in that case HD 3870 will prove to be a smarter choice. However, compared to ATI reference HD 3850, HIS HD 3850 TurboX card is much better.


Conclusion

HIS did a great job putting IceQ 3 cooler on their HD 3850s. The card is no longer single-slotted, but in return you get great cooling and low noise levels. The core runs at 735MHz, straight out of the box. IceQ 3 cooler is the component that made overclocking possible, and unlike ATI’s reference cooler, this cooling solution will blow the heat out of your case. Memory also got a boost, and it runs at 980MHz, which is 150MHz more than reference 830MHz.

This is a DirectX 10.1 card with Shader Model 4.1 and it means that it will be enough for a long time. With 512MB GDDR3 memory, IceQ 3 TurboX card can be your gaming as well as multimedia solution. It has HDCP, and with a little help from an HDMI dongle that you get in the box, you can use both gold-plated dual-link DVI ports for HDTV.

You can use this card for gaming, with performance almost identical to reference HD 3850, but this is definitely not the lowest priced HD 3850 that we’ve seen, as it will set you back about $220.

Still, we recommend this card to anyone who likes their HD 3850 cool and quiet.

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Last modified on 26 December 2007
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