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Sapphire love their 3D Rendered babes, and who are we to argue. This time they have opted for well endowed sword wielding Amazon warrior.
Inside the box is a rather impressive bundle, with power and video converter cables, a software disc, Crossfire bridge and some literature on the sapphire range. They also include a quality HDMI cable.
The card features a dual fan, heatpipe cooler, finished in black plastic. It is built around a custom blue PCB design.
It is Crossfire capable in 2,3 and 4 way configurations and requires an 8 pin and a 6 pin power cable for operation.
The I/O plate has two DVI ports, a full sized HDMI port and two mini displayport connectors. There is full multi monitor Eyefinity support with this card. The card still vents hot air out the back of the computer chassis, which is always a bonus.
Sapphire are using Hynix H5GQ2H24MFA memory, which has proved to overclock well for us in the past, so we will be interested to see how far we can push this particular board later in the review.
Sapphire haven't cut any corners with this card, using a pure copper base with five thick heatpipes. These pass out into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the core.
An overview of the HD6970, which we have seen many times before. It is based on the 40nm Cayman core, which has 1536 Unified Shaders and 32 ROPS. There is 2GB of GDDR5 memory onboard which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. Core clock speed is 880mhz, and the memory operates at 1,375mhz (5,500mhz effective).
Sweet deal, hopefully see these for £270 at christmas in UK
The cooler looks as good as their vapor X,. they might cause damage to their other, more expensive cards with this. not that im complaining, nice to see a company taking the cost of the cooler themselves. they are making enough profit anyway on these higher end boards.
What voltage did you set to get 954MHz core? Thanks.
@ Jon.
1243, its in the picture on the overclocking page.
Looks great, nice to see it being classed as a reference board too. normally that would be over £300
@Davis
Thanks. That voltage look a little high? My 6970 does 945/1495 on 1185 with a Accelero XTREME Plus II cooler. Might push it a bit higher if thats a fairly safe voltage bump.
Hi, nice review and I have been reading reviews for 3 6970 cards but still cannot decide on which to buy. Which one would you pick between these 3:
MSI Radeon 6970 lightning edition
Sapphire Radeon 6970 dual fan edition
Sapphire Radeon 6970 Flex Battlefield 3 edition?
Depends on your specific needs. do you overclock? have you three non displayport screens? is noise a primary factor?
will not be overclocking, will only have 1 lcd tv connected using hdmi and yes noise is a primary factor. Basically Im after a stable and quiet setup.
They are all great cards, so your shortlist is very good. If you arent overclocking, using a single screen, then save some money and get the dual fan sapphire board as the pricing should be the lowest.
Can this card run Battlefield 3 on ultra settings?
What resolution?