HD3870, HD3850 review - Is RV670 the new mid-class DX 10?

Page 10 - Overclocking

Understandable for a site such ModReactor, where overclocking and tuning up the hardware is worshiped, is to show what the potential owner of the new RV670 based card could expect.

Unfortunately the latest RivaTuner version at the time of making this review (2.06b) was incompatible with the Catalyst 8.1 driver for Vista x64. That forced us to overclock through the panel of the driver itself. And since as we already stated that RV670Pro and RV670XT are almost identical, the overclock potential of HD3850 is enormous. From what we saw on other sites the card can easily reach core frequencies up to 760-780MHz or in other words - it caches up with the more expensive HD3870 (with default 775MHz Core frequency). All this with the single slot stock cooler!

But ATI took care of that, limiting the maximum overclock through the driver to 710MHz Core and 1780MHz Memory, which both 3850 models, that we had reached with ease at once. It is truly saddening that we are unable to test their true limits...

HD3870 on the other hand had no limitations. We managed to get the stable frequencies at 850MHz Core and XXXXMHz Memory. Again just with the stock cooler. Since the cards emit massive quantity if heat a good heatpipe aircooler or even water cooler would get better overclock for sure.