The HIS 3870 IceQ3 512 MB is a very solid offering on the HD 3870 market. It comes with the special IceQ3 cooler and runs at clocks that are among the highest available. Given that the factory clock is already very high, we saw only limited additional overclocking, but still better than the Sapphire HD 3870 Toxic for example.
The HIS cooler works good at idle, keeping the card cool and quiet, but when the card is heavily loaded it becomes a bit noisy.
With the recent AMD price drops, this card can be had below $199, at Newegg it's only $189. Since an HDMI adapter is included in the package, this card could also be used for a media PC / gaming PC combo because it has both AMD's UVD for accelerated video playback and 3D rendering power for the latest games.