Introduction

After looking at the new 9600GT just the other day, it became clear to us that the HD 3870 really does still have some life in it. It's not dying off anytime soon thanks to the aggressive pricing that has been implemented recently.

What we found was that the HD 3870 stock clocked card faired quite well against the 9600GT which came with an increased core and memory clock. It did get us thinking though; with an MSI HD 3870 OC sitting around doing nothing, it was time to see what would happen when we put overclocked part up against overclocked part.

It's really going to come down to how well the HD 3870 is able to make use of the increased clock speeds that MSI have offered. Since we haven't looked at the card before, we may as well kill two birds with one stone and check out the whole setup beginning with the package.