Last week AMD launched their new HD6970 and HD6950 graphics cards. Kitguru has reviewed several partner boards and found them to be high performing, great value for money products. Due to adverse weather conditions in the United Kingdom our review of the Sapphire cards has been a little delayed but at least we have something special in store for you today.
Sapphire have released three versions of the HD 6970. All of the cards are clocked at standard speeds and are supplied with reference coolers.
The standard, ‘Entry level’ HD 6970 (above left) will cost £290 inc vat. The ‘Gaming Edition’ card (above centre) will ship with the full Battlefield game and a code to download Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam – this is worth £49.99. This bundle only costs £10 more and the card comes supplied with a custom sticker featuring Battlefield artwork.
The last bundle is a ‘Special Edition' of the HD6970 (above right) with the same Gaming Edition extras but in an aluminum carry case, priced at £330 inc vat. This is the one we are looking at today.
We also have their HD6950 on test today, which is clocked at reference speeds.
Product | Sapphire HD6970 |
Sapphire HD6950
|
Core Clock speed | 880mhz |
800mhz
|
Primitive Rate |
2 prim/clk
|
2 prim/clk
|
Shader Architecture |
VLIW4
|
VLIW4
|
Stream Processors |
24 SIMD/1536 ALU
|
22 SIMD/1408 ALU
|
Texture Units | 96 | 88 |
ROPs/Z-Stencil | 32/128 | 32/128 |
Frame Buffer | 2GB GDDR5 | 2GB GDDR5 |
Memory Width/Speed | 256 bit, 5.5 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 |