VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 X2 Over-Clocked Review - PAGE 3

Box'N'Bundle

The VisionTek HD3870X2 comes in a box that is relatively very small: the packaging is the size of shoe box -- and that's fine with me. It's always good to save trees in the pursuit of gaming.

In my last VisionTek review (of the HD3870), I complained that characters from the game Tabula Rasa adorned the box, yet the game did not come with the package. This time we have a similar case as Call of Juarez is featured on the box, yet not included the bundle. Personally I think VisionTek would do just as well emblazening their boxes with their terrific, deadly looking skull-type logo they have, but that's perhaps just me.

As far as the bundle goes, we have a molex-to-PCI power adapter, a S-video cable, a DVI-to-HDMI adpater, a VGA-to-DVI adapter, a well-assembled quick installation guide, a CD with drivers and a manual, and a ATI/AMD "Ruby ROM" disc that features games, applications, screensavers, and desktop wallpapers. All in all, a fine bundle.

Overclocking

Push it to the limit, as they say. Overclock the overclock is a fine motto to live by.

Manually setting the fan to run at 100%, we slowly increased the clock speeds to try to find a new stable OC plateau. The Samsung K4J52324QE-BJ1A memory chips are rated to 2000 MHz, so right off the bat we put the memory right at 2000. Unfortunately I did not have much luck pushing the core much faster than its already overclocked setting.

After seemingly treading water in my overclocking effort, I gave up at 865 / 2000 -- not that bad, when considering the memory is already running 200 MHz faster than a 'regular' HD3870X2.