We recently learned that MSI was working on the first Radeon HD 5870 with 1GHz GPU clock frequency, but as it turns out it is not alone. Gigabyte claims to be planning a seriously overclocked version too. The card is called Gigabyte Radeon HD 5870 Super Overclocked and will get clock frequencies at 1GHz GPU and 5200MHz GDDR5 memory. A big increase from the reference 850/4800MHz.
Exactly what Gigabyte has done to achieve these extreme clock frequencies we don’t know. MSI has made some major changes with its 5870 Lightning and we would expect Gigabyte to revise the reference design quite a bit.
Other manufacturers we have asked about plans for 1GHz Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards have been skeptic. The main reason is the high voltage needed to get the cards stable at these clock frequencies, something that results in exponentially rising power consumption and heat development.
Picture courtesy of BeHardware
We are working on getting some more information on Gigabyte and MSI’s monster cards, but the information we have so far tells us that Gigabyte aims to launch in February.
