14 DAY TRIAL // AMD may be preparing new Radeon HD 6950 cards, but its partners are not done with its HD 6800 series yet, as proven by HIS, whose IceQ cooling system just ended up on two HD 6850 boards.
As end-users know, the Radoen HD 6800 cards from Advanced Micro Devices have been servicing the mainstream market for a while now.
As such, most of consumer and OEMs are focusing on the HD 6900 series, but HIS still found time to release two new HD 6850 models.
As shown by its official website, HIS Digital has come forth and delivered the Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X and IceQ X Turbo.
As their names imply, they are almost identical, from the prowess to the (arguably irrelevant) aesthetic value, save for the operating clock speeds.
That said, they feature 960 Stream Processors and 1 GB of GDDR5 VRAM each, as well as a memory interface of 256 bits.
Needless to say, DirectX 11 is supported, as is CrossFireX, which enables multi-GPU configurations between cards running the same chip.
Furthermore, the newcomers can communicate with various displays, even multiple ones at once (thanks to the Eyefinity triple-display capability), via the dual-DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI outputs.
The HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X has GPU and VRAM speeds of 775 MHz and 4,000 MHz, respectively, while the IceQ X turbo works at 820 MHz and 4,400 MHz.
As for the cooling solution itself, it utilizes four heatpipes and a single fan, whose diameter is of 92 mm.
All in all, the boards should be both quieter than the stock cards, by about 7 dB, and their temperatures lower by 13 degrees Celsius.
Unfortunately, while the official website does already have the product pages of the video controllers (IceQ X, IceQ X Turbo) the prices are still a mystery.