Introduction

The ASUS HD 5870 Matrix Platinum ROG is the latest beast in their array of VGA products. It is highly optimized for overclocking and tweaking on both a PCB design and software level. One interesting feature is the use of 2 GB of GDDR5 memory which is twice as much as on the "normal" HD 5870. Whether this can help make a difference will be something we are going to look at. Compared to the reference design, ASUS has bumped the clock speeds only slightly.

There is also a non-Platinum version of the card which runs considerably cheaper and offers all the same features and specs. The only differences are that the Platinum is running at 850 MHz core clock and the Platinum cards are binned for higher clock speeds than the non-Platinum.