HIS Radeon 6850 ICEQ X Turbo review - Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

What a lovely little card this is. The majority of tests show average framerates in-between 40 to 60 FPS with modern games versus very good image quality settings up-to a monitor resolution of 1900x1080/1200. As such the card is simply good value for money. 175 EUR for a R6850 might however be a tiny bit too expensive as that 1GB R6950 is seriously coming in close price wise, whilst offering a truckload of performance.

But yeah, the ICEQ X Turbo model proves to be a very potent product, in its baseline performance it is already a small chunk faster than the reference 6850 products available on the market, and there's great overclocking headroom left as well. As you have been able to see, we did not try it yet, but a Voltage tweak with AfterBurner will very likely push the graphics core at 975 MHz or even a full GHz ... that's mighty impressive when you realize the default reference clock is just 775 MHz.

The feature-set itself is of course top notch. That improved feature set of course is grand with the new HD3D and UVD 3 update of the video processor.  There are no ground-breaking new designs aside from some feature updates. Price/performance wise however you have noticed that the R6800 offers a truckload of value for money.

The cooler that HIS uses is quite silent and efficient. With it's factory overclock you can expect game temperatures of up-to only 59 degrees C, so that's plenty cooling performance at comfortable noise levels as well. The only thing that can work against it is your taste in the color design really.

So the baseline performance of this product is grand... the cooling is just extremely silent, and all that can be purchased for roughly 175 EUR. We stated it several times before, the Radeon HD 6800 series offers great value for money and you can play any game to date up-to a monitor resolution of 1900x1200 really well. As such we can wholeheartedly recommend this product. But we would like to see HIS get a little more creative with their color scheme, baby-blue won't cut it for most mainstream and enthusiast end-users out there.

Other then that, great stuff.

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