Reviewed >> COMPUTERS CONSUMER ELECTRONICS COMMUNICATIONSA HIS For ToughTimesHIS Radeon HD 4850		

HIS graphic cards are typically exemplified bytheir trademarked IceQ cooling system. Insteadof going the standard reference card design
way that so many other graphic card makers
have done, HIS stands out mainly because they
like to have their own custom cooling systems
which for the most part work better than thenormal standard fansink cooler combos.
With the current economic crisis, toughtimes are upon us and HIS recognizes thisby offering a line of HIS graphic cards thatare geared for the suddenly more financiallyconstrained user. Since adding-on its own
custom cooling systems will incur higher
costs, HIS are adopting the - open card with
big giant fansink - school of design which somany other budget graphic card makers havebeen doing for some time. Amongst this line ofbudget-based graphic cards is the HIS Radeon
HD 4850.
Based-off of a blue PCB with a big blackheatsink and a transparent blue plastic fanstuck on it, the card looks like any otherbudget card complete with a single S-video
port and two DVI-I ports on the back. Likeother HD 4850s, this card only needs a single
6-pin power connection with a recommended

BY Muzaffar Ismail

PSU of 450 Watts. The card has CrossFire X tabs
available for later use. It also comes packing a625MHz core clock and a 1986MHz memory
clock with 256-bit memory interface and512MB worth of GDDR3 memory.
In terms of performance the card does
reasonably well with a 3DMark Vantage scoreof P7256 and a 3DMark06 score of 12270. You
should be able to run most of today’s gameswith most settings maxed-out as we ran theFar Cry 2 benchmark on Ultra High and still
got more than a 40 FPS frame rate. Older DX10
games like Company of Heroes will probably
fly with the card as it managed a score of 54.5
FPS in the Company of Heroes benchmark
test. Although we’ve yet to see any game as
demanding as Crysis you can still get the card
to run on 1280 x 1024 resolutions using Highadvanced settings and 4x anti aliasing. Granted,
you’ll have to cut some of the advanced settingsand deactivate the anti aliasing completely ifyou’re using a widescreen resolution like 1680
x 1050 but gameplay is still fairly smooth withvery little lag.
Surprisingly enough, under load the cardis actually cooler than some of the IceQ
renditions we’ve seen from HIS with the card

only slightly warm to the touch. The design
works very well with the fan being fairly silent
and powerful. This makes the card just perfectfor the budget gamer looking to overclock formore frames as you should be able to push thecard a reasonable amount. This factor coupledwith its already good performance makes theHIS Radeon HD 4850 a very good buy for thegamer on the look-out for a good deal.
SPECIFICATIONS				
Slot

RadeonMemoryCrossFire

Price

PCIe2

HD 4850

512MBYes

TBA

Model : H485FN512P
Core : 625MHz
Memory : 1986MHz
DirectX Support : 8 and below, 9.0a (Shader Model 1), 9.0b (Shader Model 2), 9.0c
(Shader Model 3 / HDR), 10 (Unified Shader Model 4 / Vista), 10.1 (Unified Shader
Model 4.1 / Vista SP1)
I/Os : 2x DVI-I, 1x S-Video
Cooling System : Fansink / Double-Layer
PSU Required : 450W, 6-pin Single
Contact : Ban Leong Technologies Sdn Bhd
Telephone : (03) 7956 6300
URL : www.hisdigital.com

Available at

HWM’S VERDICT				Features: 8.0
Performance: 8.0
Value: 8.5

8.0
Out of 10

A good HD 4850 for thegamer on a shoestring
budgetFar Cry 2 performance was good98

MAR 2009