HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo 1GB Video Card Review

A Closer Look At the HIS Radeon HD 6850 Turbo Video Card

The AMD Radeon HD 6800 series is made and manufactured from the ground up to be a high end gaming card; I mean, just look at the list of features listed on the previous pages. Direct X 11, Eyefinity, HD3D and so on. With the HIS Radeon HD 6850 not only do you get all of these gaming type features, but you also get a high performance cooler as well to help keep the card cool during heavy game play, overclocking, or both for that matter.

The first thing you notice when you take the HIS Radeon HD 6850 Turbo out of the box is the killer looking heat pipes that protrude from the top of the card. It’s barely out of the box and it already screams hot rod. Another of the first things I noticed was the sheer size of the heatsink on this bad boy; it covers almost the entire card.

Flipping the card around to the back we get a look at the mounts for the IceQ cooling system. We also get a really good look at the size of the card; from end to end it is roughly 9″ long which is actually much shorter than the cards that are based on the reference design of the 6800 series and actually makes the HIS Radeon HD 6850 Turbo compatible with a wider range of PC cases.

From the back end of the card we get a good look at the single 6 pin power connector. I really like the cards that have the power connectors at the back of the card rather than on top because it is much easier to hide the wiring to the card.

There are plenty of ports for all of your visual needs. Here we can see that the HIS Radeon HD 6850 Turbo has 1 display port, 1 HDMI and 2 DVI connectors which will allow you to connect the card to a variety of devices such as your PC or a television.

I wanted to show you guys a really close up picture of the heat pipes that come off of the IceQ cooler; there are 4 of them and I can attest to the fact that these heat pipes get really hot when the card is under a heavy load.

Another important part of the IceQ X cooler is the 92mm fan that is front and center on the side of the card. This fan and its size play an important role in just how cool the HIS Radeon HD 6850 Turbo is kept during heavy loads, or if the room your computer is in happens to be hotter than normal.