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While we were disappointed with the somewhat lazy XFX HD6970 Black Edition release, the XFX HD6950 XXX has certainly ticked all the right boxes and restored our faith in XFX. For a start, they have included their proprietary two fan cooler which improves cooling performance dramatically … when gaming the core never got close to hitting 80c.
Other benefits of the enhanced cooler design include much reduced noise emissions and a quicker return to idle transient. Power consumption hasn't increased over the reference design either which is a plus point, these cards are efficient and won't cause a huge increase with the electricity bill, even if you game for many hours each day.
While the ‘out of the box' overclocks are relatively modest, the card does exhibit noticeable gains when directly compared to the reference design with many of the leading engines. We managed to push the performance further, reaching over 900mhz on the core and 1558mhz via the GDDR5 memory, this is significantly higher than any other HD6950 we have tested to date. The cooler is clearly a contributing factor and was one of the reasons we were so disappointed with the XFX HD6970 Black Edition – we don't want to see lackluster reference AMD coolers on any ‘Special Edition' cards.
We have yet to receive confirmed pricing information on this particular card, but we would expect only a small premium when priced against the reference edition. This is easily worth every penny and earns our highest award.
You can buy it from Scan for £206 inc vat.
KitGuru says: XFX have stepped up to the plate and hit a home run. A fantastic card and one of the finest HD6950's we have tested to date.
This is more like it. good overclocks too. I need an upgrade in the next few months, but I might opt for the GTX560
Seems like a good card, depending on the price point they achieve. they seem to have another XXX out with a single fan design.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-194-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752
Dual fans are always the way to go. anyone ever released a card with three fans ?
mmm so it will be over £200 then? its right into the 560 price zone, tough call
DOnt think any company has released a mainstream card with a three fan design, although I know arctic cooling had the exteme cooler on sale, was reviewed here. it had three fans.
I really like that return to idle bit in the cooling section. sometimes the crap coolers ive noticed can take well over a minute to sort the temps out.
I thought XFX had lost the plot after reading that Black Edition review at the weekend. no more like a black edition that my kettle. this is a lot better.
Its either this or the 560……. ill probably opt for nvidia. prefer the drivers
Im still getting over that 6970 card from Asus, everything pales in comparison. 🙂
my mate garry pointed me to this today, if they can get it under £200 quid id jump all over it, but I cant see that happening
Well I just bought the hD6870 flex, and have two screens coming soon, all for £600 🙂 really excited, but this card looks good too.
great looking card, love the dual fan setup. wish AMD would adopt that idea, we have to wait months after the release to see them. sucks for early adopters
This range doesnt impress me to be perfectly honest. they are good cards but I expected so much more from AMD when they were released. prefer nvidia all round.
Very nice, but ive entered the 460 competition, would prefer it !