Gigabyte HD 5870 1GB Super Overclock Review

Gigabyte’s OC Guru Software

Gigabyte has long been using their own proprietary overclocking and monitoring software for their video cards to varying degrees of success. Their newest OC Guru aims to take things to the next level with the software that ships with their HD 5870 Super Overclock.


What you see above is what OC Guru looks like when all of its “tabs” are opened. However, finding exactly where those tabs are is a lesson in frustration since the actual interface is so cluttered with needless design elements that everything seems to meld together. To make matters even worse, the information Gigabyte supplies in its Help menu is anything but complete and gives only the bare necessities of pointers.

One of the main problems with OC Guru is the fact that its interface is too complicated for its own good. At the top we have indicators for GPU temperature as well as GPU usage which are perfectly fine in our books but following these are bits of information no self-respecting enthusiast would give a damn about. Current (in Amps) as well as GPU power consumption as well as energy savings are listed and in our opinion show completely out of wack numbers considering the overly high actual numbers we received in our testing. To add insult to injury, there is absolutely no way to actually log any of these seemingly arbitrary numbers.

Below this is where all the fun happens but you have to access the Adjustment tab by first clicking on an almost-hidden button and then clicking on one of the Profile buttons on the right to be able to make any changes. Once you jump through those loops, it is relatively easy to increase core and memory speed as well as adjust voltages to a maximum of 0.10V over standard.

Honestly, we are not fans of this interface at all. It makes simple tasks needlessly difficult and it feels like you are fighting it from start to finish.

Overclocking Results

While we can harp all we want on the OC Guru interface, the fact of the matter is that it allowed some impressive overclocks from the SoC. We will be dividing these into two categories: what we could achieve without any voltage increase and speeds once voltages were increased to the maximum allowable by the software (+0.10V)


Final Clock Speeds (Stock Voltage)

Core: 989Mhz
Memory: 5076Mhz (QDR)

On stock voltage, the results were quite encouraging with the core topping out at a mere 11Mhz away from that magical 1Ghz mark. Even the memory got in on the act by allowing an increase of another 76Mhz (QDR).


Final Clock Speeds (+0.10V on memory + core)

Core: 1040Mhz
Memory: 5240Mhz (QDR)

The real test came with a bump to the memory and core voltages and in our opinion; this card was really able to fly. Not only does this prove that the OC Guru software actually works when it comes to fine tuning voltages but shows that our card had a significant amount of headroom left in the tank.