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The Sapphire HD 6870 FleX Edition is shipped in a fantastic shiny box, featuring a render of a woman in a futuristic army outfit.
Inside there is a comprehensive bundle, which focuses on cabling. There is a mini-displayport to displayport converter, a high quality HDMI cable, Crossfire connector, VGA adapter, and literature on the product and how to enter the Sapphire Select Club. As our sample is one of the first out of the factory we didn't get the passive FleX cable which converts HDMI to DVI output, but this will be included in the retail packaging. We do already have several of these cables in storage however.
The Sapphire HD6870 FleX Edition is a fantastic looking card on a bright blue PCB.
The fan is the same 11 blade angular shaped model which we first documented earlier this week when we reviewed the new Sapphire HD6870 Toxic Edition. The heatpipes can be seen (above) through the fan blades. Sapphire generally use a 9 blade fan for most of their cards, so we were pleasantly surprised to see this enhanced fan incorporated into the FleX Edition. The air is forced across the cooler below in a wider array.
The HD6870 FleX supports 2x mini DP (1.2), HDMI 1.4a, and 2 x DL-DVI and SL-DVI connectors. It requires two six pin power connectors for operation. As we explained earlier, the HDMI port can be used with the supplied passive DVI adapter to power a third DVI screen for Eyefinity.
The FleX can be used in a Crossfire X pairing with another similar card. We are going to do this later today for our 4 screen game testing.
The cooler uses three 8mm heatpipes and sealed dust resisting bearing to keep the card cool while minimising the noise levels. This is a custom PCB design by Sapphire engineers and features specific changes with voltage and component positioning.
Elpida W1032BABG-50-F memory is used, they are rated by the manufacturer to a maximum of 1250mhz (5Ghz effective) at 1.5V.
A final shot of the Sapphire HD 6870 FleX, beside the Sapphire HD6870 Toxic Edition. Very similar in appearance, but very different, under the hood.
A basic overview of the hardware via GPUz. The card is clocked to AMD's reference specifications.
