Asus has announced what it claims to be the first overclocked versions of HD 3800 series. That would be wonderful if Powercolor and Gecube hadn't announced their OCed cards already. Asus' OCed HD 3800 series will carry the "TOP" label in their model name. Asus is going to have two of these OC-ed cards, HD 3870, branded EAH3870 TOP/G/HTDI/512M, and HD 3850, branded EAH3850 TOP/G/HTDI/256M.

Each of these cards come with exclusive specially designed "Glaciator Fansink," which should, at least according to Asus' test, lower the temperature by 20ºC when compared to reference HD 3800 series coolers. Aside from the lower temperature, Glaciator should reduce the noise from reference 50dB to a stunning 25dB. According to Asus' tests, OCed cards raised 3DMark06 score from 9304 to 9687 for HD 3870 and 8111 to 8779 for HD 3850.

Asus is definitely the first one in something, and that's the highest factory OCed HD 3800 series. The OC-ed HD 3870 from Asus will work at 850MHz for the core and 1.14GHz (2.28GHz effectively) for 512MB of GDDR4 memory. The "TOP" labeled HD 3850 will work at 730MHz for the core and 950MHz (1.9GHz effectively) for 256MB of GDDR3 memory. When you compare these clocks to reference 775MHz/1.125GHz for the HD 3870 and 668MHz/828MHz for the HD 3850, you can see that Asus' Glaciator fan is definitely doing a great job.

Both of these cards will come bundled with DirectX 10 title, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. The price and availability have not been announced.