14 DAY TRIAL // Although the Radeon HD 6900 graphics card series has just been made official, nobody expected PowerColor to miss from the launch party as the Taiwanese company is one of AMD's closest partners, building exclusively Radeon powered GPUs.
As is the case with most other HD 6900 graphics cards launched today, PowerColor also followed to the letter AMD's reference design, both cards using a vapor chamber cooler for keeping GPU temperatures in check, the core as well as memory clocks being set at their default value.
This means PowerColor's HD 6970 graphics core runs at 880MHz while its memory chips are clocked at 5500MHz, the slower Radeon HD 6950 having its frequencies set at 800MHz and 5000MHz, respectively.
Furthermore, the HD 6950 comes with 1408 stream processors, 88 texture units and 32 ROPs, its older brother maintaining the same number of ROP units although it features 96 texturing units and 1536 SPs.
Both cards are equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and feature an HDMI output as well as two mini DisplayPort and two DVI connectors, allowing for up to four displays to be connected simultaneously.
“With the new architecture design, the PowerColor HD6900 series is absolutely a perfect option for enthusiast gamers,” says Ted Chen, CEO of TUL Corporation.
“It’s embedded with all the latest technology and advanced power management ability to deliver the best gaming experience for all gamers,” Mr. Chen continued.
The Cayman core is AMD's latest graphics architecture, this new GPU coming with a VLIW4 stream processor design, as well as with dual graphics engines, leading to important increases in tessellation and rasterization power.
In addition, the ROP units have also been tweaked, some operations being up to four times faster compared to the Cypress core.
PowerColor's HD 6970 and HD 6950 are available for $369.99 and $299.99, respectively, strictly following AMD's recommended retail pricing.