Introduction

Overclocking on video cards has become a really big deal lately thanks to companies like MSI offering us simply awesome overclocking software that is easy to use and is compatible with all brands and models. Combine this with the release of new models from NVIDIA and fancier versions of models from ATI partners in regards to its higher end models and you find yourself looking at the OC potential of cards a lot more.

Today we're once again firing up the HD 5870 SOC we looked at recently and seeing the OC potential of the model. Since overclocking in itself is a big deal to the SOC series, it seemed clear that we had to look at it in some detail and see how it compares to the model not only in stock form, but also the stock clocked HD 5870. At the same time, we can't forget about the new GTX 400 series of which we've already looked at when overclocked in great detail. Looking at our Total Performance and Total Value Rating graphs, there's a clear hole missing when it comes to overclocking the high end single GPU model from ATI.

Today we're going to fill that hole and we're going to fill it in fashion. While not only looking at the OC potential and the performance of the HD 5870 SOC, we'll also be having a closer look at the new OC Guru software that GIGABYTE has included in the package. The question we ask ourselves; is it going to replace Afterburner from MSI?