Published in Reviews

HIS HD 3850 ICEQ 3 TurboX runs at 735MHz

by on25 December 2007

Index

 

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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