Reviews - HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo graphics card review

[HEXUS]

Pre-overclocked and equipped with an excellent cooler. Is this the best HD 6850 money can buy?

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[Irien]

Tasty card for the price Also, are 6850s still unlocking readily to 6870s? With this cooler, that would make one of these boards an absolute steal!

[BullDogg]

Tasty card for the price Also, are 6850s still unlocking readily to 6870s? With this cooler, that would make one of these boards an absolute steal!

It was the 6950s that unlocked to 6970s, so unfortunately, there are no unlocking shenanigans to be had here.

[Jimbo75]

I like HiS, they make the best cards imo. This one looks worth it, my XFX is a noisy blighter and I'll probably end up buying seperate cooling for a lot more than this HiS one costs.

[subucni]

Glad to see this card getting another favourable review, just need it to start showing up in stock at some places now. Great cooling with low noise, yes please i'll take one.

[MSIC]

Thanks for this review, it's very timely for me as I'm looking for a 6850 with almost all of these characteristics.....

One thought though that has come out of a number of threads i've been involved in throughout our fair and pleasant forums recently is something that is probably a much bigger topic than just this card here...
It concerns the heat / cooling of this card, and exactly what happens to that heat.
To be more specific, this review clearly shows that the heat is being successfully removed from the immediate graphics chip, however that heat still radiates & dissipates to somewhere else, typically still within the case of the computer, and this then effects other components to a greater or lesser degree.
Of course different cases (and fans, and other components such as the PSU) all make a difference, including of course heat generated by other components too, but knowing how much heat GFX card 'x' adds to a case compared to GFX card 'y' might make a big difference to a purchase; So it would therefore seem to me to be of interest to all to understand not just how well the cooler on the card works, but within a context of how much heat is produced for the system as a whole...

Thanks!

[dfour]

It concerns the heat / cooling of this card, and exactly what happens to that heat.
To be more specific, this review clearly shows that the heat is being successfully removed from the immediate graphics chip, however that heat still radiates & dissipates to somewhere else, typically still within the case of the computer, and this then effects other components to a greater or lesser degree.
Of course different cases (and fans, and other components such as the PSU) all make a difference, including of course heat generated by other components too, but knowing how much heat GFX card 'x' adds to a case compared to GFX card 'y' might make a big difference to a purchase; So it would therefore seem to me to be of interest to all to understand not just how well the cooler on the card works, but within a context of how much heat is produced for the system as a whole...

Thanks!

It would be a nice idea if this sort of data could be included but as yourself has mentioned there are to many random variables to make results like this usable and indeed the amount of time it could take to setup and do could also be prohibative.
Imagine a 10 graphics card test and then use 5 of the most popular cases to test the ambient temp increases in Thats a hell of a lot of time swapping components around and retesting.

Nice review though

[MSIC]

I guess perhaps I wasnt making myself very clear (I do waffle sometimes ).
I'm not so interested in how hot a card is going to make a given environment (after all, lots of variables etc).

What would be fantastic is to know how much heat GFX card X produces (irrespective of how much cooling or space I might have). I can then know if I want to replace my current card with a new one, how much extra / reduction of heat my personal system will deal with by comparing the heat production of one card against another.

[bbo320]

Newegg had this card for $199.99 + $7.56 shipping (don't know what that translates to in pounds + VAT) but it is already out of stock. I think it's a little high considering they also have other HD 6850s for less than $170.00 including shipping.