HIS Radeon 5850 iCooler V Turbo review - Introduction

HIS  R5850 iCooler V Turbo 1024MB - The 5850 at its best ....

HIS technology is on a roll lately by releasing the latest iCooler model graphics cards. The iCooler series entails a new cooler that is slowly going to replace their ICEQ series. However, a few weeks ago we published an article based on the 5870 iCooler Turbo and that product received some disapproval from Guru3D.com in regards to iCooler noise levels.

After consulting with us HIS reprogrammed their FAN RPM setup and issued new BIOSes for their R5850 and R5870 iCooler based products. The new BIOS will be embedded in the production volume batches of HIS, and man that that does make a difference alright. Though we'll be updating the previous HIS Radeon 5870 iCooler Turbo article based on the new BIOS today we will review the Radeon HD 5850 based on that new BIOS. The end results is without any doubt surprising as the noise levels are now downright good and the cooling performance remains magnificent, just the way we like it.

As such today we review the HIS  Radeon 5850 iCooler V Turbo, we spot a custom PCB and a more extreme yet now silent cooler. Yes, the quest for more MHz has started and as such HIS has introduced a more fashionable version compared to the reference design.

The HIS Radeon HD 5850 iCooler V Turbo edition features a custom-designed cooler that's improved from the iCooler solution HIS used one on previous generation graphics cards (last generation Radeon HD 4890). The card itself then, while the non-Turbo variants use reference AMD clock speeds of 725 MHz core and 4000 MHz memory, the Turbo model we test today, ups those numbers to 765 MHz and 4500 MHz respectively, bringing a little more oomph to the product.

The HIS R5850 V iCooler Turbo features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and great monitor connectivity. You will have two DVI-D, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort connector at your disposal. As an added bonus HIS released a special SKU that comes with a full copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as well.

Today we'll be reviewing this product. Let's have a peek and then head on into the review.