Sapphire HD 6950 Toxic Edition 2GB Review

1. Introduction2. Sapphire HD 6950 Toxic Edition 2GB (Bundle)3. Sapphire HD 6950 Toxic Edition 2GB (Card)4. Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.09. Gaming: Resident Evil 510. Gaming: Alien V Predator11. Gaming: Lost Planet 212. Gaming: Total War Shogun 213. Gaming: Far Cry 214. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 215. Gaming: Home Front16. Gaming: Dirt 317. Triple screen: F1 201018. Triple screen: Crysis Warhead19. Technical: Acoustics Performance20. Technical: Thermal Dynamics21. Technical: Power Consumption22. Technical: Overclocking23. Unlocking the extra shaders24. Closing Thoughts25. View All Pages

There certainly haven't been many exciting video cards released in the last couple of months, but today we are looking at the new Sapphire HD 6950 Toxic Edition 2GB which is supplied in a pre-overclocked state with a custom design. Is this an ideal upgrade for your next system?

Sapphire's Toxic Edition cards have always had a special place in the enthusiast market, thanks to the proprietary design, custom cooling solutions, clock increases and noise reducing tweaks applied at the factory.

The Sapphire HD 6950 Toxic Edition gets a huge clock increase when compared to the reference card. The core clock is ramped to 880mhz and the memory speeds are increased to 1300mhz (5.2Gbps effective). Additionally, they have doubled the GDDR5 memory count to 2GB.

Product	Sapphire HD6950 Toxic Edition	AMD HD6950
Core Clock speed	880mhz	800mhz
Primitive Rate	2 prim/clk	2 prim/clk
Shader Architecture	VLIW4	VLIW4
Stream Processors	22 SIMD/1408 ALU	22 SIMD/1408 ALU
Texture Units	88	88
ROPs/Z-Stencil	32/128	32/128
Frame Buffer	2GB GDDR5	1GB GDDR5
Memory Width/Speed	256bit, 5.2 Gbps	256bit, 5.0 Gbps
Power Connectors	8 pin & 6 pin	6 pin & 6 pin
Display Outputs	2xDVI + 2x mDP + HDMI	2xDVI + 2x mDP + HDMI

The box has a 3D rendered image of a blue tinted magician on the front (Dr Manhattan's skinny brother maybe?), with information on various specifications. ‘Dual Cooling' fan is mentioned here, but we will talk about this later in the review.

The card is protected within an anti static cover, sandwiched inside thick cardboard foam. The bundle is comprehensive, consisting of a Sapphire Select Club membership, software disc and Quick Install guide. There is also a molex to 8 pin and molex to 6 pin converter, for those people with older power supplies. Sapphire also include a high quality HDMI cable, mini DP to Displayport connector and a free copy of the excellent Dirt 3.

The card is a great looking product, although it isn't a dual fan solution as stated on the box. We checked with Sapphire and they are aware of the discrepancy. Nonetheless it is still a proprietary design and finished in an attractive black colour scheme.

The blue coloured magician is also featured on the cooler at the front, matching the PCB colour.

The card is Crossfire capable in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations, if your bank balance is big enough. There is a dual bios switch above the Crossfire connectors and we will look at this closer, later in the article. The board requires a single 8 pin and 6 pin power connector to operate.

There is a dual link and single link DVI port set to the right, beside an HDMI port and two mini DP connectors. Sapphire have extended the size of the vents at the rear of the card, to help enhance airflow and cooling proficiency.

Removing the cooler is a straightforward process and we are greeted with the bright blue PCB underneath. The cooler is a copper design with wider exhaust vents for improved airflow.

The card is overclocked to 880mhz core and 1300mhz memory. It is a Cayman GPU built on 40nm architecture with 32 ROP's, 1408 unified shaders on a 256 bit memory interface.

We are using our overclocked Core i7 system today, which operates at 4.33ghz.

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.3ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: OCZ ZX 1250W
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 9-9-9-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Hazro Ultra Sharp HZ230Wi, Dell Ultrasharp U2410 Rev A00, Iiyama Prolite E2472HDD x2

Other graphics cards for comparisons:
Nvidia GTX590
Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition
Nvidia GTX580
Nvidia GTX570
XFX HD5970 Black Edition 4GB (QuadFireX)
AMD HD6990
AMD HD6870
AMD HD6850
AMD HD5870
Sapphire HD5850 Xtreme
Sapphire HD5830 Xtreme
Sapphire HD5770 Vapor X Edition (860mhz core)
Sapphire HD6790 CrossfireX
MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II
nVidia GTX570
nVidia GTX 550 ti (900/1026)
nVidia GTX460 OC (715/900)

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
HQV 2.0 Software

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Nikon D3X with R1C1 kit
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Resident Evil 5
Dirt 3
Lost Planet 2
Far Cry 2
Alien V Predator
Home Front
Total War: Shogun 2
Tom Clancy H.A.W.X. 2
Crysis Warhead
F1 2010

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

We test at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings.

The Sapphire HD6950 Toxic Edition slots in just behind the reference clocked GTX570, averaging 51.2 frames per second.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The Toxic Edition scores 20,624 points in this Direct X 10 test, falling in again just behind the reference clocked GTX570.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

A strong result from the Sapphire Toxic Edition, almost equaling the Direct X 11 performance of the reference clocked GTX570.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

	Sapphire HD6950 Toxic 2GB
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

We spent several hours recently testing the new Catalyst drivers with the HQV Benchmark and have seen no image quality changes. Reflected with these results via the Sapphire card.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Strong results from the Sapphire Toxic, falling just behind the reference clocked HD6970. This engine has always been favourable for AMD graphics hardware and the card manages to outperform the reference clocked GTX570.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

Strong results from the 2GB Toxic Card with this Direct x 11 engine, averaging 53 frames per second. The frame rates never dropped below the 30 sweet spot.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

This is an intensive Direct X 11 engine and one that will task even the most powerful hardware. The Toxic Edition maintains a positive 30 fps result throughout our test environment, averaging 43 fps.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

All settings are pushed to mixed high/ultra settings as shown below.

Real world testing can fluctuate a little, especially with dynamic environments. With this test we also like to include built in benchmark results via Steam so readers can directly compare against their own hardware. Direct X 11 1080p and 720p results are below.

Direct X 11 performance is strong from the 6 series AMD cards, and 1080p is perfectly playable with the settings cranked.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

Excellent performance results from the overclocked card, and there are no problems playing at these settings.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

A game which is well known to favour nVidia hardware. Still, the Toxic card manages to produce an average of over 80 frames per second at these settings, which is excellent.

Homefront is speculative fiction, set in a near-future, post peak oil world that features a significantly diminished United States, and a united Korea that has built a massive alliance in East Asia. The Gate Corporation (a major private military company) also plays a minor role. The game focuses on the collapse of the United States, subsequent occupation by the Greater Korean Republic—a united Korea under the rule of Korea—and the American Resistance that fights said occupation. The player is invited to join the American Resistance, “using guerrilla tactics, commandeering military vehicles, and utilizing advanced drone technology”.

Homefront’s PC version has been outsourced to Digital Extremes, a Canadian developer responsible for numerous Unreal Tournament games and Bioshock ports. Frank Delise, the executive producer of the PC version has stated that the PC version of the game will feature exclusive content and dedicated servers. Additional exclusive features include clan support, DirectX 11 graphics, and first person vehicle cockpits.

This game was slated when it was released, but we really enjoyed it in the Kitguru offices. We averaged 55 fps, dropping to 35 fps in the more intensive game sections.

Dirt 3 is a rallying videogame and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters, although the “Colin McRae” tag has been completely removed from this iteration (having been previously been removed from American versions of previous games in the series).

At these high settings, the Sapphire HD6950 Toxic Edition manages to power through the engine without a hitch, maintaining a 40 frame rate at all times.

F1 2010 is a video game based on the 2010 season of the Formula One world championship. It is the sequel to the 2009 video game based on the same series. It was released in September 2010 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows platforms. The game was confirmed by Codemasters on 23 April 2009. The game engine is based on the new EGO 1.5 engine, an unofficially titled evolution of the EGO 1.0 engine that was created specially for the title.

We are testing across three screens with 4aa and 8af enabled and ultra quality settings in DX11 mode.

F1 2010 is a great game, and it looks fantastic when panning across three screens. The Toxic card manages to keep the engine running smoothly, dropping only a few times under 30 fps.

Crysis Warhead, like the original Crysis, is set in the near future when an ancient alien spacecraft is discovered on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of former SAS Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns. In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield.

The engine is still a system killer, all these years later, but modern day hardware can finally generate the frame rates we wanted when it was released !

The game is generally quite playable, although there is some hitching during some of the more intensive firefights and environmental locations. Reducing the image quality settings or adding another card to the system would be needed for a perfectly smooth experience.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The cooler is surprisingly quiet when gaming, although it is generally just audible inside a case, when taxed. Furmark forces the fan to spin a little higher, raising the noise to 37.5dBa. At idle, the fan spins at a shade under 1,200 rpm meaning it is relatively quiet.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The cooler proves to be very capable, thanks to the redesigned structure and rear panel air flow system, forcing more heat outside the chassis. Under FurMark load, the fan spins to just over 2,000 rpm, dropping to around 1,750 rpm when gaming.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

Power consumption is very good, as expected, demanding around 20 watts when idle and rising to around 200 watts when gaming.

For our overclocking results today, we used our favourite software, the excellent Sapphire TriXX.

Even though this is a preoverclocked card, we managed to wrangle another 74mhz from the core, reaching 954mhz. The memory overclocked to 1406mhz, which translates to an effective 5624mhz.

The manual overclock manages to push performance above the reference clocked GTX570 and HD6970. Very good overall results.

While Sapphire aren't focusing on this aspect, the card ships with an ‘alternative' bios, which may, or may not unlock extra shaders.

The image above shows the bios switch. Simply turn off the computer, and change the position. Sapphire have already pre-programmed the bios for ‘unlocked shaders', although there is a possibility it may not work on some cards from the production line. We can consider this an ‘extra', rather than a selling point as this feature may not work on all cards.

As a reminder, the image above shows how the card looks at the ‘out of the box' bios setting. There are 1408 unified shaders at the ‘default' bios setting.

After moving the bios switch and rebooting the system, we were greeted with a full fat 1536 Unifed shaders as highlighted in the image above.

Re-running 3DMark 11 shows a minor score increase over the reference settings. This will obviously extend further when manually overclocking.

The Sapphire HD 6950 Toxic Edition is another stellar card design from AMD's largest partner. While it is supplied with only a single fan, Sapphire have cleverly adjusted the board design to improve air flow, meaning the cooler will expel more hot air outside the rear of the case. As testing has showcased, it really does work well, reducing fan speeds.

On a performance level, the HD6950 Toxic Edition falls in between the reference HD6950 and the reference HD6970. If you are fortunate enough to get one which will accept the pre programmed bios settings with extra shaders, then you will end up with HD6970 performance out of the box. Sapphire aren't making a big deal out of this bios setting however as there is a possibility that the card might not work in the ‘unlocked' position. That said, our sample worked with the full 1536 shaders and could even be overclocked further with the TriXX tool.

The HD6950 Toxic Edition is supplied in a very high state of overclock, however we did manage to push the core even further, from 880mhz, to 954mhz. The GDDR5 memory also scaled to 5624mhz, which shows significant headroom. With 2GB of fast GDDR5 memory on board, high resolution gaming is also a strong point, across three screens.

Thanks to the proprietary cooler, the Toxic Edition is quieter than the reference design and temperatures peak just over 70c, when gaming.

While the card has not yet gone on sale, we have been informed that the price point should only be slightly more than the reference card design – with a £10-£15 premium. At this price, and with this specification and overall performance, it is clearly a very intelligent purchase.

Pros:

• great design.
• is supplied overclocked and headroom allows for more.
• runs cool.
• is quiet.
• bios switch can unlock more performance, but it isn't guaranteed.
• Bundle is impressive and includes Dirt 3.

Cons:

• Another fan would have helped reduce noise levels even further.

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