14 DAY TRIAL // Since Advanced Micro Devices finally released the latest and strongest HD 6000 cards, it only makes sense that its partners would follow up, and Gigabyte's own two cards are already on sale.
As end-users have probably learned by now, from the many reports made over the past few weeks, the AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 are powered by the Cayman GPU.
This graphics processing unit is the latest DirectX-11 capable chip form Advanced Micro Devices and is built on the 40nm manufacturing process.
Gigabyte's version of the Radoen HD 6970 is dubbed GV-R697D5-2GD-B and has 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, as well as 1,536 Stream processors.
It also features 96 texture units, a memory interface of 256 bits and a bandwidth of 5.5 Gbps, plus support for not just DirectX 11, but also OpenGL 4.x, CrossFireX (multi-GPU setups) and Eyefinity.
The GPU runs at a frequency of 880 MHz, whereas the memory has a clock speed of 5,500 MHz.
The second controller, Radeon HD 6950, is sold under the name GV-R695D5-2GD-B and has 1,408 Stream Processors, plus a slightly smaller memory bandwidth, of 5 Gbps, and 88 texture units.
Its own Cayman chip runs at 800 MHz, while the 2 GB of GDDR5 have a frequency of 5,000 MHz.
Other specifications, which the two siblings share, include 32 ROPs, 128 Z-Stencils and identical connectivity capabilities.
The list of video outputs includes not just a pair of DVI connectors, but also two mini DisplayPort outputs and an HDMI port.
All in all, Gigabyte's Radeon HD 6970 and Radeon HD 6950 are stock-clocked iterations of AMD's original controllers.
They come with dual-slot coolers and can already be found for sale online, at prices of $299.99 (GV-R695D5-2GD-B) and $369.99 (GV-R697D5-2GD-B). Newegg has the HD 6970 and HD 6950 listed on this page and here, respectively.