Coolers

Sapphire HD 6970 2GB GDDR5

The cooler has a vapor chamber which is more efficient than regular heatpipes. Made of copper, heatsink fins included, the entire device is quite heavy.

Sapphire HD 6950 2GB GDDR5

An identical cooler, except for dimensions. It is set to low speed to reduce noise by default, so the card may get even hotter than HD 5870.

Sapphire FleX HD 6950 2GB GDDR5

This cooler has a vapor chamber and a massive and slow fan. It's quite efficient, noiseless and cools down both GPU and memory chips.

Temperature monitoring results

We measured temperatures using the MSI Afterburner utility.

Sapphire HD 6970 2GB GDDR5

Sapphire FleX HD 6950 2GB GDDR5

Sapphire HD 6950 2GB GDDR5

You can see that reference coolers are set to noiseless operation at the expense of temperature. But even 92°C isn't critical for such high-end cards. The efficiency of Sapphire's custom cooler is extremely high.

Write a comment below. No registration needed!