phenom I was really big and on 65nm, which seemed to be capped around 3ghz anyway, and the arch didnt change much, so why would overclocking change much.

5870 was out for a LONG time before 6xxx was even being shown, and the prices for that gpu stayed flat for a while thanks to nvidia, people who bought it early were really happy, people who bought it late should have known something else was right around the corner, since their cycle is almost always 1 year

and thuban is quite temperature limited (meaning crashes at higher temps). good luck getting near 4ghz within 125w and stable up to 80C, the sweet spot for all 45nm amd chips is mid 3ghz