We've seen a lot of NVIDIA's offerings recently, especially GTX 570s. While they do rock the charts fairly well, AMD isn't one to be forgotten. The recent release of the Cayman Pro HD6950 and the Cayman XT HD6970 showed us that AMD can offer a tremendously powerful punch. Today I'll be taking a look at an HD6950 from ASUS, otherwise known as the ASUS HD6950. Just as with the other versions of the Cypress Pro core, the ASUS HD6950's core utilizes 22 SIMD, 1408 stream processors, 32 ROPs, and 88 texture units. To top it all off, the card is also equipped with a very hearty serving of 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Not only that, but this is also a slightly overclocked version of the HD6950. Now when I say slightly, I mean slightly, as this guy clocks in with an 810MHz core clock. That being said, it is still a boost in clock speeds and that's always nice to see. Plus, with the Voltage Tweak ability, I'm hoping to see some pretty awesome overclocks!
Closer Look:
The ASUS HD 6950 comes in a box that looks almost exactly the same as the ASUS EAH6850 and the ASUS GTX 570's packaging. Come to think of it, it appears as though ASUS has been using the same packaging on a great deal of its video cards. Don't get me wrong though, it is a pretty awesome box — seeing the dark knight (not Batman, an actual knight) ready for battle definitely gives the user an idea of how powerful the card is. The front of the box features a small amount of information about the HD6950, such as the 2GB of GDDR5 memory and the fact that this is an overclocked card. Other than that, it mostly features design. Flipping the box over reveals some more information about the card, as well as a detailed diagram of how each of the card's connectors connects to a monitor.
Opening the box reveals a secondary black box with a gold ASUS logo directly in the center. This contains three different sections. The top and right section contain all the card's included accessories, but we'll talk a little more about those later. Right now we want to move on to the bottom section. Here is the ASUS HD6950 wrapped in an antistatic bag and snugly concealed in black foam.
Now about those included accessories we were going to talk about. Just as always, ASUS includes a few nice goodies so that we can properly use the HD6950. Included with the card is a driver CD, a user's guide, a Molex to 6-pin connector, and a CrossFire bridge.
Now that we've got all that out of the way, let's pull this card apart and see what makes it tick!
Before I even start to talk about the card, I'd first like to say that I was very impressed with how much care ASUS puts into packaging its video card. The antistatic bag that the card was wrapped in tightly covered the card and was taped twice in the back. While this may not sound all that interesting, it really made the packaging look extra nice. Anyway, on to the card. The ASUS HD6950 uses a very appealing black and red design, featuring the ASUS logo in the bottom left hand corner. The entire card is covered in plastic so that when you receive it, everything will be nice and shiny. The top and back of the card follow the design of the reference cooler. Flipping the card over reveals a nice, shiny, black, backplate. All in all, this first look at the ASUS HD6950 left me feeling rather impressed.
When looking at the ASUS HD6950's connectivity options, it appears as though the company stuck with the reference design. Here you'll be able to use two dual link DVI ports, an HDMI 1.4a port, and a pair of mini DisplayPort 1.2 ports. Using the mini DisplayPort 1.2 ports, you'll be able to run a total of six monitors off of the one HD6950. Because of the multitude of display ports, the exhaust vent is slightly smaller than I would have liked to see. It is no more than about half of the card's width, and takes up only one expansion slot. Flipping the card over doesn't reveal any extra exhaust areas. The way things look so far, I'm guessing this card is going to get hot!
If you're into running multiple videocards in one system, then you'll be happy with the HD6950 — if you've got the dough, you'll be able to pair this bad boy up with up to four other cards. Just as with the other 69XX cards, you'll notice the same BIOS switch next to the CrossFire connectors. This will allow you to switch between the factory BIOS and the configurable BIOS. This may be what is needed to get a few of the more nervous users to try something new and flash their cards. Powering this card will be a lot easier than powering some of the other highend cards — all you'll need are two 6-pin connectors and a recommended power supply of at least 550W.
Removing the cooler from the card was fairly easy to do, something I always like to see. Once the cover is off, you'll be greeted with a nice bit of eye candy. I'm of course referring to the Cayman Pro core and the 2GB of GDDR5 memory surrounding it. Doing so also gives us our first glimpse of the card's beautifully laid out PCB. The ASUS HD6950's cooler uses the same vapor chamber cooler as the reference design. Just as with the reference design, the card's cooler was held together by multiple tabs. Unfortunately, pulling these tabs apart was harder than it looked. It got to the point where I was afraid of breaking something, so I left the cooler alone.
With the ASUS HD6950's cooler removed, we can get a nice close look at the Cayman Pro core. This powerful core is built on a 40nm process and stuffed full of 2.64 billion transistors. It utilizes 22 SIMD engines, 1408 stream processors, 88 texture units, and 32 ROPS. To top it all off, ASUS gave us an extra 10MHz on top of the reference clock, making this baby stock clocked at 810MHz. The memory surrounding the Cayman core is 2GB of GDDR5 memory from Hynix. ASUS left these modules running at the same speed as the reference design, 1250MHz.
Now let's see what kind of performance we can get from this card.
Specifications:
Graphics Engine: | AMD Radeon HD 6950 |
Bus Standard: | PCI Express 2.1 |
Video Memory: | GDDR5 2GB |
Engine Clock: | 810 MHz |
Memory Clock: | 5000 MHz (1250 MHz GDDR5) |
RAMDAC: | 400 MHz |
Memory Interface: | 256-bit |
Resolution: | D-Sub Max Resolution: 2048x1536 DVI Max Resolution: 2560x1600 |
Interface: | DVI Output: Yes 1 (DVI-I), Yes x 1 (DVI-D) HDMI Output: Yes x 1 Display Port: Yes x 2 (Mini DP) HDCP Support: Yes |
Software: | ASUS Utilities & Driver |
Dimensions: | 11"x5" |
Features:
ASUS Exclusive Innovation:
- Overclocked!: Factory overclocked to perform at 810MHz, 10MHz higher than stock performance, resulting in higher frame rates in games.
- Full Aluminum Cover: Aluminum label on the cover dissipates surface heat much more evenly than reference. Simply cooler!
- Voltage Tweak: Full throttle overclocking with exclusive ASUS Voltage Tweak via SmartDoctor - boosting 50% more speed, performance, and satisfaction!
- ASUS Smart Doctor: Intelligent system monitoring for efficient overclocking with an intuitive slide bar.
- ASUS Gamer OSD: Real-time overclocking, benchmarking and video capturing in any PC game!
- Splendid Video Intelligence Technology: Optimizes colors in various entertainment scenarios with five special modes - standard, game, scenery, night view, and theater.
Graphics GPU Features:
- Powered By AMD Radeon HD 6950
- AMD HD3D Technology: Optimize sereoscopic 3D gaming and movie-watching entertainment.
- AMD CrossFireX Technology: Gets up to 1.8X of a graphics performance boos in dual mode.
- AMD Eyefinity Technology: Unlocks the power of GPU's processor cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks.
- Microsoft DirectX 11 Support: Bring new levels of visual realism to gaming on the PC and get top-notch performance.
- Microsoft Windows 7 Support: Enable PC users to enjoy an advanced computing experience and to do more with their PC.