It’s quite possible that no manufacturer will build a better Radeon HD 5870 card than Asus’ Matrix 5870. In many ways, the Matrix 5870 is an exercise in engineering overachievement: A videocard that’s likely to outperform other Radeon HD 5870 cards, but that's priced so high that it’s really competing against the higher-end GeForce 480 GTX.The Matrix ships with a core clock set at 894MHz and the memory clock at the default 1,200MHz. The card is designed from the ground up to be overclocked and over-volted, with premium components used throughout. Asus also added their Super Hybrid Engine control chip, which ensures clean power delivery, plus a new cooler design.The card is outfitted with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, rather than the stock 1GB. It also differs from stock cards in its output connectors. Due to the more robust cooling fan and exhaust, the connectors are now mounted on just one half of the mounting bracket – which means there isn’t room for two DVI connectors. So Asus equips the card with one DVI, one DisplayPort, and one HDMI port. This limits you to using two 2560x1600 or 2560x1440 displays, rather than three; still, few people run three displays large enough to require the high bandwidth that DisplayPort and dual-link DVI deliver.