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The HIS HD6850 ICE Q X is quite possibly the best HD6850 on the market. The appearance is sure to divide opinion, after all you can't release a semi transparent aqua coloured graphics card and expect everyone to accept it without question. We actually think it looks rather striking and while our first impression was negative, we grew to like the appearance.
The cooler is without question, stellar. It isn't as quiet as the Sapphire Toxic Edition but HIS have opted for a slightly higher fan speed balance to reduce load temperatures. With a maximum spin of around 47% in the bios, its a good tradeoff to maintain respectable dBa while ensuring the core is adequately cooled, even when overclocked.
Even though this PCB design only requires a single 6 pin power connector, the overclocking headroom is massive with this particular board reaching 1025mhz on the core and over 1200mhz (4800 effective) from the memory. We can't guarantee they will all hit these speeds, but 950mhz+ should be achievable by the majority of boards on sale.
Idle power consumption also impressed us, with the PCB design only demanding 16 watts, the lowest we have yet to record from this specific board design.
Pricing has yet to be confirmed, but we would expect this product to hit retail around £160-175 in the UK, which makes it easily a top rated graphics solution and perfectly capable of high image quality 1080p gaming.
KitGuru says: If you can live with the colour scheme then this is one of the best HD6850's on the market.
Wow thats dramatic looking. Not sure I can handle the blue !
my sapphire 6870 reference can burn up to 85c in 1minute, and looks like still going up…omg
great temps, my own card hits 88c under load. (6870)
Wow that has to be the ugliest video card ive seen, ever. and it rocks. how ironic.
I enjoyed reading the testing page. I agree, none of these speakers really get it ‘all right’ its a case of finding the best sound to your personal tastes and buying a value set.
Just goes to show that most people who buy 580’s or 5970s to game on a 1080p monitor are just throwing their money away.
a new IceQ? ooooooh i want it sooooo muuuch, dammit.
glad to see that it’s still the coolest and most quite version of an ATI card. though, the difference is less noticeable than on older generations, it seems
I think it looks great. very different and the market needs it. Id like a luminous red video card from AMD with a glowing red fan.