PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB GDDR5

Name: PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 - Page 9
Brand: PowerColor

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, September 22, 2008, 06:00 PM EDT

To see what kind of extra headroom the PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB had hiding under the hood, we used the Overdrive control panel built into ATI's drivers to overclock the card beyond its already factory-overclocked state.

Overclocking the PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB

Not worth the effort

In the end, Overdrive topped out at a GPU speed of 830MHz and Memory speed of 950MHz (3.8Gbps effective), which were only modest increases over the card's "stock" 800MHz (GPU) and 900MHz (Memory).

While we had the PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB overclocked, we re-ran a couple of benchmarks and realized only marginal performance improvements. With a factory overclocked card like this one, it's probably best to leave its frequencies be, for the sake of longevity and reliability.

Tags: DDR, HD, PC, GDDR5, Power, PCs, Powercolor, 4870, color, GB, R5

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com