Sapphire HD6870 Dual Fan Overclock Edition Review (with Dirt 3)

The Sapphire HD6870 Dual Fan Overclock Edition arrives in a blue coloured box, with the primary focus on the free game – Dirt 3. Strangely, they haven't included a picture of the card on the front.

The bundle includes power converters, display adapters, a quality HDMI cable, Crossfire bridge, and information on how to claim the free Dirt 3 game. There is also membership to the Sapphire Select Club.

The card itself is an attractive two fan design, protected inside a plastic shroud. It is built on a blue PCB.

The card is Crossfire capable, in a two way configuration, and it demands two 6 pin power connectors for operation.

The card has two DVI, one HDMI (1.4a) and two mini DisplayPort connectors, and can support a VGA monitor with the dongle supplied. Using two of the DVI/HDMI outputs together with the two DisplayPorts enables this card to support up to four monitors in Eyefinity (SLS) mode.

The cooler is held in place with 4 screws. It is a dual heatpipe design, with two thick heatpipes leading into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the core.

Sapphire are using quality Elpida W1032BBBG memory.

Above, a GPUz overview of the hardware. A Barts core built on 40nm architecture, with 32 ROPS and 1120 unified shaders. The 1 GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface.

Become a Patron!