ASUS Radeon HD 5770 Voltage Tweak review - The ASUS V-Tweak edition

The ASUS V-Tweak edition

ASUS markets it's product as Voltage Tweak edition graphics card, and obviously as the branding suggests .. they include a software tool allowing you to increase GPU voltages. Once you installed the utilities suite you'll gain a couple of applications.

The idea is simple -- Voltage Tweak technology, enabling the end-user to increase GPU voltage to stabilize higher clock-speeds by manipulating the 5770 voltage regulators.

To be able to Voltage tweak you'll need to install the supplied SmartDoctor utility to gain access to the voltage settings. The SmartDoctor software application can be found on the CD, and after it starts up, it gives you the screen shown below:

Highlighted in red -- that's your overclocking domain.

The software itself doesn't look as sexy as MSI's Afterburner but it definitely works. This software suits will allow you to apply voltage adjustment to the GPU core; the memory's 1.5V cannot be changed.

As standard, the card ships with engine/core voltage at 1.125V. This can be reduced (under clocked) to 0.95V and increased to 1.4V, but any setting over 1.28V is considered red-line territory. We do recommend to not take the voltage over 1.3 Volts unless you apply some serious cooling.

With all that extra juice you jam into the GPU, are you worried about warranty ? ASUS will guarantee any SmartDoctor-set parameters under the card's three-year warranty.

SmartDoctor is more than just about setting voltages it's an overclocking suite on core and memory as well yet also allows you to regulate fans, and monitor fan speed, engine and memory.

So we could not push the card much further really as we'd run into issues, but 1000 MHz seems pretty doable for the 5770 cards with an increased GPU voltage. We locked GPU voltage at 1,3 Volts by the way.

Throughout out benchmark session we'll show you the reference/default performance, but also the results overclocked.