HIS HD 5850 iCooler V Turbo Review

We have spent the past week putting the HIS 5850 iCooler V Turbo through its paces only to discover what we have known for some time now, the HD5850 is a fantastic graphics card. HIS has taken the 5850 and replaced the cooling solution with an iCooler V model. These changes mean that this product runs cooler than a reference HD5850. The iCooler V Turbo model performed exceptionally well in all the games we tested with only Metro 2033 and Crysis Warhead causing it to break a sweat.

It is faster than a reference design but we feel the inability to increase the voltage to the GPU hinders the overclocking potential. We were able to use MSI Afterburner to push beyond the factory overclocked speeds, but not close to the level that we  have seen with specific other 5850's in the past. We were able to push this particular card as high as 800 MHz core and 1175 MHz on memory, which is fine, but not great. After completing this review I looked elsewhere to see the maximum clock speeds others had reached in their tests and they were often higher then the numbers I achieved … so it could well be just this particular sample that is limited. The Asus card that sat patiently at it's reference speed throughout the entire review; has been benched on numerous occasions with the core as high as 1000 MHz and the ram at 1250 MHz using MSI Afterburner to increase both voltage and clock speeds.

It seems AMD raised their game with the 5000 series cards and recent drivers; when we paired the cards they worked flawlessly together.

KitGuru says: The HIS 5850 iCooler V Turbo model provides better performance than a 5850 clocked at reference speeds, and earns our “Worth Buying” award … but HIS will have to price this card aggressively to make it stand out against the competition.  There are many similar factory overclocked cards in this congested and competitive market place. With tough competition from the likes of Sapphire and Power Color pricing will be directly responsible for it's level of success.

HIS offer a 2-year product warranty for all product models in the North America Region.

You can find more detailed information and RMA procedures at the following web address: HIS North American Support

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