Disclaimer: Overclocking can damage your video card, and will void your warranty. AMD, Sapphire and Rage3D are not responsible for damaged video cards caused by overclocking, or overvolting.

Unlocked, what's unlocked?

AMD is marketing the HD5970 as similar to their "Black Edition" Phenom CPUs, a fully tweakable enthusiast product. Accordingly, the Hemlock was specifically designed to withstand higher levels of overclocking than we've seen in the past in AMD GPUs. The AMD graphics team has also added their own voltage adjustment software, and is supporting venders as they follow suit. Since nobody wants to melt their brand spanking new Hemlock cards, max voltage adjustments are 1.1625v for the core and 1.15v for the memory, which should get you well on your way toward achieving HD5870 speeds, or faster then HD5870 speeds.

Redline and Overclocking

Sapphire's voltage adjustment software is branded Redline, and marketed as "overclocking/tweak software" - but you can't overclock with it. But wait!  Don't worry! Using Redline in conjunction with CCC's overclocking utility, you can overclock without issues or problems. With the voltage sliders maxed, we achieved a maximum core clock speed of 925MHz and a memory clock speed of 1200MHz. Below you can see our BattleForge DX11 results.  We tested 10 times in a row, and got the final scores at the end of each run.