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HIS HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo graphics card

A fancy cooler alone does not a great graphics card make

By contrast, the HIS HD 4870 IceQ 4+ idles at 45°C and only rises to 55°C under load. This is impressively cool and suggests that the graphics chip should lead a long and happy life. On the downside, the IceQ 4+ cooler is quite noisy under load, which is fair enough, but it's also clearly audible when idling.

HIS HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo 1GB

Ultraviolet ready

We would have hoped that this cooling would give the IceQ 4+ a fair amount of scope for overclocking, but things aren’t quite so simple. The Overdrive section of AMD's Catalyst drivers has maximum settings of 790MHz/4400MHz, and while the HIS card ran these clock speeds without any problem it wasn’t a huge improvement over the stock settings.

There are alternative overclocking utilities, such as ATi Tool and Riva Tuner, but we find them to be less user-friendly than the Catalyst drivers. In any event, HIS didn’t include overclocking software on the driver disc.

In fact, you don’t get a huge amount in the package, which consists of the graphics card, a CrossFire bridge, a DVI-to-HDMI adaptor and a DVI-to-VGA adaptor. In fairness to HIS, the IceQ 4+ also has UV Reactive Artwork so you can install a UV light in your case and watch your card glow in the dark.

HIS HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo 1GB

Paying a premium for the cooler?

In essence, the HIS 4870 carries a premium of some £40 over a 1GB reference design from the likes of PowerColor, and we assume that most of that money is being spent on the IceQ 4+ cooler. Although the performance of the HIS 4870 is impressive, it's unlikely that the fancy cooler plays a large role as the extra clock speed is so tiny compared to a stock HD 4870. This makes it hard for us to see the appeal of the IceQ 4+ cooler as you have to suffer the noise from the fan without any notable gain in performance.

Verdict

The underlying performance of the HD 4870 and 1GB of GDDR 5 is impressive but there are legions of these cards on the market and they cost less than the £200-odd HIS wants for the HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo. We can't see much reason to pay a premium for the IceQ 4+ cooler. ®

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HIS HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo 1GB - key

HIS HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo graphics card

HIS Digital tweaks the Radeon HD 4870 with a funky cooler and a coating of UV paint - but not much in the way of boosted performance.
Price: £235 RRP

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