Mikecdm: 3DMark05/06 records with Radeon HD 4870

The Radeon HD 4870 graphics card launched way back in 2008 under the ATi brand. After all this time, HWBot's database holds 727 3DMark 2006 results alone. You'd think after 11 years, overclockers would have nothing left to surprise us with, and everything achievable had already been done. But as I've mentioned in several previous articles, some graphics benchmarks, surprisingly, are now more CPU-dependent. Specifically, this applies to all 3DMark versions up to 2011.

American overclocker Mikecdm knows this quirk firsthand. To climb above hundreds of competitors, he leveraged an Intel Core i9-9900K processor overclocked to 7000 MHz:

The result was two gold medals in the Radeon HD 4870's 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 categories.

It seemed like a straightforward formula for success: the overclocker just needed to methodically work his way down to older, relevant benchmark versions, collecting records along the way. However, things weren't that simple. Even with such a high CPU frequency, the enthusiast couldn't secure first place in 3DMark 2003. Mikecdm was limited to only third place:

Most likely, the situation in 3DMark 2001 SE was even worse, and the American overclocker chose not to publish that result.

Mikecdm's test bench used the following components:

Graphics card - MSI Radeon HD 4870 Cyclone
Motherboard - ASUS ROG Maximus X Apex
RAM - 2x 8GB G.SKILL Trident Z

Source: Mikecdm's profile on HWBot