HIS HD 4850 IceQ4 1 GB Review

We have come a long way from the major change of high end graphics RAM size that took place near the end of the Nvidia 7 and ATI X1900 series like spans. This change is happening again, only this time it's not 256 MB to 512 MB, it's 512 MB to 1 GB. One gigabyte cards are quickly becoming the norm for higher end cards. Even some of the lower end cards are getting the 1 GB treatment. It is one thing for a company to slap an extra 512 MB of RAM on a card and call it a new card, it's another for the card to actually perform significantly better than the 512 MB version. While the higher RAM size certainly helps in higher resolutions, by how much does it help?

That is the question posed today with the HIS HD 4850 IceQ4, the latest in HIS's long standing IceQ series. The IceQ series has long been considered one of the best cooled cards that comes from the factory. Generally, when you think of exceptional cooling, you think of major overclocking. Though the HD 4850 has not had much success hitting 700 MHz core, maybe the IceQ 4 will change that. With the look of this cooler, I would not doubt it would at least run cool at the highest overclock. There's only one way to find out!