These babies are all fast aren't they? You can not deny that once you tested them you'd like to keep them all and delicately whisper with a Gollum like voice  "my precious..."

Any game at any settings on all cards will perform absolutely perfectly, in fact with a faster processor performance would be even higher as believe it or not, both x850 cards are limited by the Athlon 64 4000+ CPU. It's really silly, but in several cases the VPU (Graphics core) is waiting for the CPU (processor) to finish up its calculations and send them to the graphics card driver. Don't get me wrong, the Athlon 64 4000+ is powerful enough but see it like this, your graphics card is like 80% at work with certain games. So if you own an Athlon 64 3000+, your CPU probably is not powerful enough to feed the x850 with enough data to maximize performance.

All cards performed absolutely stablely at very good temperatures. The Radeon x850 XT and XT PE. When we look at tweak ability then I have to give it two thumbs up to both the x850 XT and XT PE, especially the standard XT version combined with the new iTurbo feature. And while the Platinum edition did not have that option it still did have some excellent room to overclock as we got it 100% stable at 581 MHz. That's really impressive.

Now then, what to recommend... Well, purely from a performance point of view of course the spectacular X850 XT Platinum Edition floats my boat, followed closely on its tail the standard XT version, (standard probably isn't right choice of wording though). From a budget point of view and actually a lot of other reasons it makes way more sense to buy the standard x850 XT version. With iTurbo software you can get way more performance straight out of the box and that really is true value.

Both x850 products really are expensive though, there was a very good reason that I wanted to include the Radeon x800 XL results in these tests also. As that card my friends, still offers the most bang for your bucks. If you'd make a calculation in the amount of money that you pay versus the framerate that XL would extinguish the 850 XT and XT PE versions from a price point of view. But that's not what this review is about.

If you have the money to spare and want the best of the best, then look no further as HiS is offering two extraordinary x850 products built with the highest quality, the best cooling and an amazing bundle. In retrospect, there's nothing I can find wrong with either of these x850 products other then it's a half a month salary you have to cough up to be able to get one.

The sum of all these factors make both the Radeon x850 XT and x850 XT PE a product that I can recommend from the heart, if your budget suits that of course. And if your budget does not cut it, hey go for that really fantastic x800 XL.

My compliments to HiS Technology for pursuing their rather unique path, because they dear to go where the competition isn't. And that will get my deepest sympathy.

HiS Radeon x800 XL IceQ II Turbo	HiS Radeon x850 XT IceQ II Turbo	HiS Radeon x850 XT PE IceQ II

For innovation, tweaking, cooling, high quality and bundle these three cards will receive our difficult to earn Editor's choice, with the x800 XL and x850 XT being slightly more preferred compared to the Platinum Edition (value for money wise), congratulations to HiS technology.

HiS Radeon x800 XL - x850 XT - x850 XT PE - IceQ II (Turbo) (PCX)

Product type: Graphics card
Memory: (256 MB GDDR3)
Manufacturer: HIS
Website: www.HISdigital.com
MSRP:  325-600 USD