The first Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards sporting higher than reference frequencies have finally arrived. At the start of the month we informed you about how XFX was planning to launch overclocked versions of Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850. The XFX Black Edition series wasn’t first to market though, as both PowerColor and Sapphire have announced overclocked Radeon HD 5870 cards.
PowerColor’s water-cooled LCS HD5870 appeared earlier but it too has gone with the flow. The fastest single-GPU graphics card on the market just got faster, the difference in clock frequency is more or less academic. We were hoping for frequencies north of 900MHz, but the companies barely touched them.
| Graphics card | GPU | Memory |
|---|---|---|
| PowerColor LCS HD5870 | 875 | 1250 |
| Sapphire’s Vapor-X Radeon HD 5870 | 870 | 1250 |
| AMD Radeon HD 5870 reference | 850 | 1200 |
Both have used their own cooling solutions for their cards, where PowerColor decided to bet on rigorous water cooling, while Sapphire settled for its acknowledged Vapor-X air cooling.
PowerColor has the better specifications and more powerful cooling, but it also costs nearly $70 more, $440 vs. $370 for the Vapor-X. At the same time AMD will unleash Radeon HD 5970 in just a day and it will raise the bar.
