KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
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.
Another great card. really enjoying my 5830 xtreme.
Thanks, looks like another good product. so price will be £220 ish? is that the ballpark? I notice sapphire do a dual fan 6950, but its not overclocked and probably cant be unlocked either.
excellent, I need to get dirt 3 cause i need a new game
2GB is nice. I still play GTA4 and that helps. I like maxing everything
Id like to see if two of these would be as good as a HD6990.
you ever hear of the return key?
Good card, but im holding fire until the end of the year, until the refreshed cards come out.
PC market is dead anyway, nothing happening within it 🙁 games all suck lately
Whats up with the box? did they cut the dual fan cooler out at the last minute?
so many of these cards out now its hard to keep track. I think ill wait until the 7 series before upgrading, my old 4 series still manages to play most of the games on my 17 inch screen. Best waiting for the new mid range boards whenever they are out.
This card seems the ultimate 6000 series bang for buck card, runs cool/silent, low power requirements and can be tweaked to outperform the 6970 by a large margin. I need this card sooner then later please!