Overclocking the Sapphire Radeon 7870 GHz Edition Safely

[samborambo56]

I've seen a lack of tutorials on the matter and have decided to write my own tutorial detailing my own experiences overclocking this particular card.

So as a reference my specs at the time of overclocking are:

• 
  AMD Fx 8320 (stock speeds).
  8GB 1600Mhz RAM.
  Sapphire Radeon 7870 GHz Edition.
  2 HDDs - 1 x 1TB - 1 x 500GB.
  1 pretty crappy disk drive.
  2 pretty crappy case fans.
  3x Random ass monitors.
  All usb ports in use currently so that's 6 in total.
  Couple of pretty standard speakers with sub woofer.
  (IMPORTANT) 500w Corsair Builder Series PSU

So for this we are going to be using the default AMD Graphics OverDrive and the 14.2 Beta Mantle Drivers.

So its pretty simple:

Switch up your fan speed to no lower than 55% (Yeah it'll be loud but what do you expect?!)
Change power limit settings to +ve 20%
Change GPU Clock to 1170MHz
Change Core Clock to 1320MHz
Download ATITool http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/
'Scan for artifacts' for at least 5 minutes
'Show 3D View' and look for little black lines on the 3D animation
If you see black lines on the animation and/or the 'Scan for artifacts' finds errors then change the settings in the graphics overdrive to 'Default' immediately and do not attempt again.
Leave 3D view running for around 10-15 minutes and make sure your GPU temperatures do not exceed 80-85c
If your computer 'BlueScreens' at any point during this process then be sure to boot in safe mode and default the speeds on the GPU.

Verdict -

Gives noticeable FPS boosts in games.
Temperatures are reasonable (Idle of about 50c and max of around 80c which is cooler than the new R9 290x runs :L)
Seems perfectly stable on 500w psu along with a pretty power hungry system to begin with.

Have Fun
Sam