Overclocking

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of GPUTool and our benchmarking suite.
The overclocks listed here were achieved with the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. Please note that every single sample overclocks differently, that's why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.



The overclocks of our card are 935 MHz core (7% overclock) and 1450 MHz Memory (16% overclock). These numbers are good, but we have seen higher clocks on the Sapphire HD 5770 Vapor-X which managed 990 / 1450.

Considering that PowerColor is using a Volterra voltage regulator with voltage control, I am confident that it is possible to reach higher overclocks once you start increasing GPU voltage.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies we ran a quick test of Call of Duty 4 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.


The actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 8.2%.

Temperatures

Temperatures are looking great. Together with the low noise this results in a winning combination.

Clock Profiles

Modern graphics cards have several clock profiles that are selected to balance power draw and performance requirements.
The following table lists the clock settings for major performance scenarios and the GPU voltage that we measured. We measure on the pins of a coil or capacitor near the GPU voltage regulator.


AMD includes their own overclocking utility with Catalyst Control Center. While easy to use, it also limits the maximum overclock to a predefined limit in the BIOS. This limit may vary from vendor to vendor or product to product. Following are the upwards limits for overclocking CCC gives you.