14 DAY TRIAL // Now that DICE's highly anticipated Battlefield 3 first-person shooter has become available in North America, Sapphire has released a special version of HD 6970 FleX graphics card that comes bundled with a copy of the game.
In order to download Battlefield 3 users will have to register their card on Sapphire's website which will unlock a serial for the game.
Outside of the new bundle, Sapphire's latest creation is virtually identical with the company's HD 6970 FleX graphics card as it uses the same PCB and Vapor-X custom cooler design.
The latter was specially optimized in order to keep the card's temperatures in check while also providing quieter operation than AMD's stock cooler, and even allows for the graphics card to be overclocked passed its nominal frequencies.
In fact, the Sapphire HD 6970 FleX BF3 edition comes with a Dual BIOS feature enabling users to choose between two performance settings, one running the card at stock and the other overclocked.
In the 'boost' setting the core clock is raised to 930MHz from its standard 880MHz frequency, while the card also increases its core voltage, fan speed and overclock limits to deliver higher performance. The memory is clocked at 1375Mhz (5.5Gb/sec effective).
In addition to providing higher performance and improved cooling, the HD 6970 FleX also support a more flexible display arrangement when in EyeFinity mode as it support three DVI monitors without the need for costly DisplayPort active adapters.
The first two monitors are connected to the two DVI ports and the third to an HDMI to DVI cable, which is supplied in the box.
No information regarding pricing and availability was supplied by Sapphire, but this type of details should come to light soon enough.
AMD's Radeon HD 6970 is based on the company's Cayman XT core and packs 1536 stream processors, 96 texture units, 32 ROP units and a 256-bit memory bus that connects to 2GB of video buffer.