ASUS ROG Radeon HD 5870 

One reason is that the clock speeds are increased, the additional 1 GB of GDDR5 memory needs power too, another factor is the different voltage regulation circuitry.

Thanks to the new error correction algorithm in the memory controller, every memory error is just retransmitted until everything is fine.

MSI has slightly increased the clock speeds on their design to 900/1200 up from 850/1200 on the reference design.

You have to manually increase the clocks and observe the framerate until you find the point where performance drops.

At resolutions lower than 1900 x 1200, 2 GB has very little performance benefits.

Crossfire dual, triple and quad configurations are supported to improve performance even further.

Overall this is a nice choice of added features and the software is reasonably easy to use.

8.9The HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo is a rock solid card that can play every game you throw at it, at resolutions up to 1920x1200, with highest details settings, and some anti-aliasing eyecandy.

GPU voltage is managed by a UP6225 voltage controller, which supports I2C software voltage control up to 1.85 V. MSI's Afterburner lets you adjust the GPU voltage up to 1.35V. Unfortunately you can only change GPU voltage via software, adjusting the other voltages requires a hard mod via soldering.

Along the top edge of the card ASUS has placed a lit Matrix logo which changes color when the GPU load / power draw changes, a very nice touch.

Due to reduced power requirements, AMD has decided to fit the card with two 6-pin power connectors only.

I find the power consumption improvements very impressive.

Desktop157 MHz300 MHz0.97 VBlu-Ray Playback400 MHz900 MHz1.11 V3D Load900 MHz1200 MHz1.17 V AMD includes their own overclocking utility with Catalyst Control Center.

Afterburner which is made by my good friend Unwinder, who also makes Rivatuner, is clearly one of the most advanced and easy to use software for GPU overclocking.

The overclocks seen on our card are neither spectacular nor disappointing, they pretty much represent a good average of what you can expect from most HD 5800 based graphics cards.