Sapphire Challenges NVIDIA's Unreleased GTX 560 With FleX AMD Cards

As end-users know, NVIDIA will shortly unleash the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, but AMD's own partners are definitely not letting things go by without a move of their own, as proven by Sapphire and its FleX products.

Sapphire's FleX family of video controllers is not totally new, but it did get two more members just a short time ago.

The controllers in question are the Radeon HD 6870 FleX and Radeon HD 5670 FleX, both of which feature a special version of the Eyefinity technology.

Normally, Eyefinity allows one to spread the viewing area over three monitors, but these two FelX models have the advantage of enabling cheaper multi-display setups.

Normally, an AMD Radeon adapter needs HDMI-equipped displays or monitors with DisplayPort connectors.

Such panels are expensive than those that only boast DVI inputs, so Sapphire's new cards' ability to handle up to three of them, without need for adapters, is a welcome change.

For those interested in the specifications, the HD 6870 FleX has a GPU clock of 900 MHz and the 1 GB of GDDR5 VRAM working at 4,200 MHz.

There is also a VRAM interface of 256 bits, as well as a pair of DisplayPort connectors, one HDMI and two DVI.

Meanwhile, the Radeon HD 5670 FleX has a GPU clock of 775 MHz, a memory interface of 128 bits (1 GB GDDR5) and a memory clock of 4,000 MHz.

Basically, they are both DirectX 11-capable graphics adapters that can handle pretty much any game in Eyefinity mode.

Unfortunately, there has been no sort of word on pricing, but it shouldn't take long for online listings to reveal this final detail.

What remains to be seen is how the AMD-NVIDIA competition progresses now that, even despite how NVIDIA's formal launch has yet to occur, some GTX 560 Ti models are already listed.