Radeon HD 3870 has not really been able to shoulder the benchmarking success of the Radeon 2900 XT. Even though the 2900 XT was more or less a disappointment to many, it has been fairly popular among the top benchers. In fact, the card is found at the top of the 3D charts and outperforming GeForce 8800 Ultra there, at half the price. The reason Radeon HD 3870 hasn’t been able to reach the same kind of success is mainly because of the weak power circuitry, only 2 phase PWM. But if you’re known as Shamino and is one of the legends of the overclocking community, there’s no reason to let that stop you.
First thing to do is to get rid of that pesky Over Current Protection by removing two resistors and replacing two others with a pair of 300Kohms equivalents;
And if you feel like it you can always add a couple of capacitors for extra stability;
Doing this he was able to reach 1200 MHz GPU core clock with 1.75V VGPU, and when running the processor at 4.25 GHz he scored 16 404 points in 3DMark 06. Far from the world record, but still an intriguing result. Maybe there is hope for Radeon HD 3870 after all.
There’s more over at foxconnchannel.com.
