The Verdict
Terrific... yeah this is a wonderful product. As IF the standard Radeon HD 5870 wasn't already fast enough Gigabyte ups the ante a little more by increasing the base and memory clocks even further, and not a little. That is a spicy pre-overclocked graphics card alright. The effect of the 100 MHz however is a little trivial, good here and there, but not that much of a difference in other places.
But I mean honestly come on, even at default clocks the card is a beast already, we certainly can't complain at playing COD Modern Warfare 2 at 2560x1200 with 4xAA and the very best image quality settings and still retrieve an average framerate of over 90 FPS. The same for Anno 1404 (yeah I really like this title), if we take a more common resolution then at 1920x1200 we see the card push out an average framerate of 75+ FPS with 4xAA enabled. It's a fantastic little GPU alright, and now even a notch faster... very nice.
Though not thoroughly mentioned in the review, Gigabyte also delivers their own overclock software with this card. For whatever reason we cannot capture screenshots as it uses some sort of weird overlay. I can be very short, the software works but really... the layout and GUI is a little ghastly. I mean it's a really user unfriendly piece of software. The one interesting feature is that you can increase GPU voltage a little bit, it allowed us to up the GPU VRM towards 1.275 V (off the top of my head). The additional voltage did not seem to have any effect on the end result of our overclock and as such we quickly steered away from the application. So the basis for overclocking software is there, but the implementation is unfortunately... well let me put it this way, it leaves room for improvement alright.
But heck, at the default 950 MHz clock you already have one of the fastest products on the globe. ATI delivered a grand product with the 5870, it has now been enhanced by Gigabyte. The overall quality is nice, the implementation is good. Whatever game you play, you'll play it with very nice framerates and the very best image quality, that's what a product like this is all about.
The build quality of the card is absolutely dazzling, when you look at the PCB you will be impressed. When you look at component usage, you will be impressed as well. Though the whole ultra durable design is a good marketing feature, the reality also is... it really works. Better component usage will grant you less heat, increased stability, better tweakability and also lifespan.
As such we can very much recommend the Gigabyte R5870 SOC to the more serious hardware entrepreneur.
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