Today we have a couple of Radeon HD 6950 cards and one HD 6970. Two of these three are copies of the reference design.

Specifications

Sapphire HD 6970 2GB GDDR5

GPU: Radeon HD 6970 (Cayman) Interface: PCIe 2.1 x16 GPU clock rate (ROPs/shaders): 880/880 MHz (standard) Memory clock rate, physical (effective): 1375 (5500) MHz (standard) Memory bus: 256-bit Stream processors: 1536 Texture units: 96 (BLF/TLF/ANIS) ROP units: 32 Dimensions: 275x110x33 mm Board color: dark brown Output connectors: Dual-Link DVI, Single-Link DVI-D, 2 x Mini DisplayPort, HDMI 1.4a Multi-GPU mode: CrossFire X (hardware)

Sapphire FleX HD 6950 2GB GDDR5

GPU: Radeon HD 6950 (Cayman) Interface: PCIe 2.1 x16 GPU clock rate (ROPs/shaders): 800/800 MHz (standard) Memory clock rate, physical (effective): 1250 (5000) MHz (standard) Memory bus: 256-bit Stream processors: 1408 Texture units: 88 (BLF/TLF/ANIS) ROP units: 32 Dimensions: 270x110x40 mm Board color: blue Output connectors: Dual-Link DVI, Single-Link DVI-D, 2 x Mini DisplayPort, HDMI 1.4a Multi-GPU mode: CrossFire X (hardware)

Sapphire HD 6950 2GB GDDR5

GPU: Radeon HD 6950 (Cayman) Interface: PCIe 2.1 x16 GPU clock rate (ROPs/shaders): 800/800 MHz (standard) Memory clock rate, physical (effective): 1250 (5000) MHz (standard) Memory bus: 256-bit Stream processors: 1408 Texture units: 88 (BLF/TLF/ANIS) ROP units: 32 Dimensions: 260x100x33 mm Board color: dark brown Output connectors: Dual-Link DVI, Single-Link DVI-D, 2 x Mini DisplayPort, HDMI 1.4a Multi-GPU mode: CrossFire X (hardware)

Design

Comparison with the reference design, front view

Sapphire HD 6970 2GB GDDR5	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6970

Sapphire FleX HD 6950 2GB GDDR5	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6970

Sapphire HD 6950 2GB GDDR5	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6970

Comparison with the reference design, rear view

Sapphire HD 6970 2GB GDDR5	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6970

Sapphire FleX HD 6950 2GB GDDR5	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6970

Sapphire HD 6950 2GB GDDR5	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6970

As you can see that one HD 6950 and HD 6970 are copies of the reference design (usually outsourced by AMD to Foxconn). Since AMD sell both ready cards and GPUs, vendors can make their own cards and HD 6950 FleX is one of those, having been customized by Sapphire.

Both reference copies can switch between two BIOSes in case of failed firmware upgrades and such. BIOS1 is switched on by default.

Maximum resolutions and frequencies:

• 240 Hz maximum refresh rate
• 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz max. digital (DVI) resolution
• 2048 x 1536 @ 85Hz max. analog (VGA) resolution

All cards require supplementary power: both HD 6950 have two 6-pin sockets each, the HD 6970 card has one 8-pin and one 6-pin socket.

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