Gigabyte HD 5870 1GB Super Overclock Review

Conclusion

This Gigabyte card had a lot to live up to considering the pedigree shown by the previous two iterations in the Super Overclock family of GPUs. Ever since it was first shown to the press at CES in Las Vegas, there have been some small leaks but never all that much in the way of bona fide information about clock speeds and a host of other things. There is little doubt that the HD 5870 Super Overclock had big shoes to fill within an extremely competitive market and in our opinion it accomplished its stated goal and then some.

As it stands, even though Gigabyte’s flagship card isn’t pre-overclocked to that magical (and some would say unattainable) level of 1Ghz on its core, the performance benefits it brings to the table are impressive at the very least. The combination of a significant amount of overclocking to both its core and GDDR5 memory does have an impact on in-game framerates even though the vast majority of applications just won’t see an a huge difference in playability. Games that were unplayable on a stock-clocked HD 5870 remain so on the Super Overclock but the increased speeds do improve the fluidity in certain cases.

Many people will look at this card and wonder why Gigabyte didn’t equip it with 2GB of memory. In our opinion, the HD 5870 isn’t limited by 1GB of GDDR5 in any of the resolutions most enthusiasts play at. Adding more memory would have only added to the cost of the SoC which is already an expensive card at $500.

The heatsink itself is also something to behold since it is able to keep the core’s temperatures under control regardless of the 100Mhz bump in clock speeds. Granted, the naked memory modules will probably raise the hackles of a few intrepid overclockers but Gigabyte thought ramsinks wouldn’t be needed due to the modules’ proximity to the fans. We tend to agree with them.

Unfortunately, there was one area which we found needs some serious polish. The OC Guru software is a complete disaster in terms of usability and accessibility. What should have been a quick and easy interface basically turned into a an overly flashy affair that makes simple tasks next to impossible to perform as you wade through hidden tabs and utterly pointless (and many times inaccurate) controls. It’s an ugly, hair-encrusted mole on the otherwise supermodel-like visage of Gigabyte’s HD 5870 Super Overclock. So much so that we would recommend a competitor’s product –MSI’s Afterburner- over the UI facepalm that is OC Guru. On the plus side, once you navigate through the labyrinth of menus it does allow you to eke a bit more performance from the card with voltage tweaks.

Another thing that we found a small problem with was the power consumption at both idle and load which was far above that of a stock HD 5870. Even with Sapphire's overclocked and 2GB-equipped Toxic Edition we saw increases which were more than acceptable but the Super Overclock breaks all records for us when it comes to pre-overclocked HD 5870 cards. Granted, installing the OC Guru software did lower the idle power consumption so it was more in line with what we expected but it barely budged the peak power consumption. However, two questions remain: why should users need to install yet another piece of software in order to control idle power consumption and are enthusiasts willing to sacrifice their electricity bills for performance? In response to the second question, we believe so.

All in all, the Gigabyte HD 5870 Super Overclock is an absolute winner in our books since it offers stunning performance coupled with quiet operation and significant overclocking capabilities. The overall experience was clouded a bit by the absolutely horrid OC Guru software but this is something which is easily avoided by never installing it in the first place. So if you are looking for one of the best HD 5870 cards available on the market today, you should look no further than the HD 5870 Soc.


Pros:

- Great performance
- Extremely good temperatures
- Absolutely insane overclocking limits...if you can put up with OC Guru
- Voltage read points will come in handy for some


Cons:

- VERY high power consumption for a HD 5870
- Totally unintuitive software
- Slightly louder than the reference design