Product type: 512 MB (GDDR3) mid-range graphics card
Manufacturer: HIS
Website: hisdigital.com
MSRP: 169 EUR / 199 USD

Hey all and welcome to a new article here at Guru3D.com. Now let's face it, 2007 was full of drama for AMD. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong except the Radeon 3800 series. NVIDIA fails to deliver good price/performance cards at that 150 EUR price segment and when ATI released Radeon 3850 & 3870 the dynamics changed. As we speak NVIDIA is still trying to prepare a card to match this series (8800 GS/9600 GT) but until released the Radeon 3850 & 3870 offer a stack load of performance, compatibility and features at a terrific price. See, performance wise a reference 149 USD Radeon HD 3850 will easily wipe the floor with any card from the entire GeForce 8500/8600 series. With new releases we also often see a couple of new tricks. Today's product will see light of it in the form of DirectX 10.1 support, the new UVD (video de/encoding) engine is now integrated opposed to the 2900 XT which didn't have it. Full PCI-Express 2.0 support, and a die-size based on 55nm to die for.

Shortly after the release of the reference Radeon HD 3850/3870 cards, HiS Technology adapted another line of these cards as well and I bet they'll sell really well. In their very successful product line they always release their ICEQ version of their graphics cards.

Today reviewed product is hot, but in a good way. It's a Radeon HD 3850 colored with a blue PCB, a ICEQ3 cooler slapped on top of it and they pre-overclocked it to match the Radeon HD 3870 performance level, all that for roughly 175 EUR. Not bad eh? Next page please.