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As with most HIS products, the HD6970 arrives in a ‘long' box with the image of a rendered sword on the front.
Inside there is a Crossfire connector, power converter cables, video adapter and literature on the product. There are no free games with this bundle.
The card is a reference design with a HIS sticker on the front. The rear has a protective plate over the PCB, encasing the card completely.
The card has two Crossfire connectors for 2, 3 and 4 way CFx. It requires a six pin and an eight pin power connector.
Both HD6950 and HD6970 have a new switch next to the Crossfire Connectors which enables two modes. Setting 1 is an unprotected mode for user updates and setting 2 is protected as factory default. Never has modding your video card been so user friendly.
Connectivity is strong with 2 miniDisplayport connectors being complimented by an HDMI 1.4A output and 2 DVI ports (one DL and one SL).
Once the backplate is removed, we have access to the PCB. Removal of the cooler is simple, just a little time consuming due to all the screws involved.
The cooler is a 5th generation Vapor Chamber system which AMD claim has great cooling efficiency and acoustic performance but more on this later. The memory installed on the card is Hynix H5GQ2H24MF.
Both cards running in Crossfire X.
I think these are good boards, even though a lot of people will be disappointed with the fact the 580 is still leading the single card attack
@Sam: Not quite. The 5970 is still the fastest card. The GTX580 is definitely the fastest single chip.
The price is the biggest selling point. I dont think they are the performance killers we expected, but the 280 price for the 6970 means its actually only 30 more than the 5850 was at launch. thats quite a good figure for them to achieve. I think they are doing what they do against intel in the CPU sector. drop pricing as low as poss.
CFx is very good with these cards. the drivers must be much better than I last remember
@Faith – thats what I meant, ill be sure to make sure I analyse the text perfectly before posting next time 😉
these arent too shabby. good job from AMD. they hit the sweet spot on the pricing