Graphics Cards And Configurations Compared
The baseline for this article is AMD’s Radeon HD 5870, which we're running at its default clock speeds and a maximum overclock without leaning on voltage tweaks. We did the same with MSI’s R5870 Lightning, using the factory-overclocked speed default instead of the AMD reference spec. Then we add another test run at the card's fastest stable overclock, again without modifying voltages.
We also added similar cards from two other vendors for a quick cross check, as we wanted to make sure that the overclocking results and benefits achieved during the testing are actually representative of factory-overclocked solutions. We used a Core i5-750 CPU at 4 GHz to provide sufficient processor horsepower, minimizing the likelihood of a platform-imposed bottleneck.
| Graphics Cards | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer and GPU | Codename | Memory | GPU Clock | Shader | Mem Clock | SPs |
| MSI R5870 Lightning TwinFrozr II OC (HD 5870) | Cypress | 1024 MB GDDR5 | 925 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1315 MHz | 1600 |
| MSI R5870 Lightning TwinFrozr II (HD 5870) | Cypress | 1024 MB GDDR5 | 900 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1200 MHz | 1600 |
| Asus Matrix 5870 P/2DIS/2GD5 (HD 5870) | Cypress | 2048 MB GDDR5 | 894 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1200 MHz | 1600 |
| Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD (HD 5870) | Cypress | 1024 MB GDDR5 | 950 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1250 MHz | 1600 |
| Radeon HD 5870 OC | Cypress | 1024 MB GDDR5 | 900 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1300 MHz | 1600 |
| Radeon HD 5870 | Cypress | 1024 MB GDDR5 | 850 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1200 MHz | 1600 |
| Radeon HD 5850 | Cypress | 2048 MB GDDR5 | 725 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1000 MHz | 1440 |
| Radeon HD 5850 | Cypress | 1024 MB GDDR5 | 725 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1000 MHz | 1440 |
| Radeon HD 5830 | Cypress | 1024 MB GDDR5 | 800 MHz | 5.0 | 4 x 1000 MHz | 1120 |
SPs = Stream Processors, Shader 5.0 = DirectX 11
| Test Setup | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5 750 @ 4 GHz (21 x 190), Lynnfield, BIOS 1.26875 V, 45 nm, LGA 1156 |
| Mainboard | Gigabyte P55A-UD7, PCIe 2.0, SATA 6 Gb/s, USB 3.0 |
| Chipset | Intel P55 Express |
| Memory | 2 x 2 GB DDR3, 2x570 MHz 7-7-7-19, OCZ3G2000LV4GK, PC3-16000 Golden Series |
| Audio | Realtek ALC889 |
| LAN | 2 x RTL8111D |
| HDDs | SATA, Western Digital WD300HLFS, WD5000AAKS |
| DVD | Gigabyte GO-D1600C |
| Power Supply | Cooler Master RS-850-EMBA 850 Watt |
| Drivers | |
| Graphics Driver | ATI Catalyst 10.6 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit |
| DirectX | 9, 10, and 11 |
| Chipset Drivers | Intel 9.1.1 |