Overclocking
Gigabyte HD 7870 OC overclock |
PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+ overclock |
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Overclocking performance will vary from sample to sample, so it's important to note that these results aren't a guarantee on what to expect from the Gigabyte and PowerColor cards.
But they do give you a general idea and we can see that both cards overclock well. With no adjustment in voltage, we were able to bump up Gigabyte's HD 7870 OC to 1,175MHz on the core and an effective 5,900MHz on memory.
Sticking to stock voltage, we were able to go marginally further on the PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+, hitting 1,200MHz and 6,000MHz, respectively, for core and memory. The bump in core operating frequency is nice, but it's on memory that most of the headroom lies.
The overclock proved to be perfectly stable and it results in a healthy bump in frame rates. 1080p performance on both cards is increased a further 12 per cent, and both are in Radeon HD 7950 territory when running AvP at these frequencies.
