HIS Radeon 6950 2GB Graphics Card Review

With the on-going battle between AMD and nVidia now stronger than ever, it seems that Christmas is going to make decisions a lot harder to make when it comes to which graphics manufacturer to go with. Especially with nVidia showing their hand with the GTX 580 and 570 dominating the market place for single GPU cards, whilst the 5970 still rears its older presence coming out on top. It leaves consumers asking about a rival single GPU card from AMD, which is where the 6900 series cards come into play, with the hope for something cheaper that gives a little bit more performance. The 6800 series had a successful launch giving users the ability to run the latest games with a satisfying frame rate, whilst still leaving enough money to stock up on beer for them long nights of clan matches and fragging ahead of you. The 6950 gives us a view of a tried and tested method with slightly improved performance, more memory and some newer features to appeal to the mass market. HIS show us exactly how it's meant to be done with their offering of the 6950 to the market and with a launch happening just before Christmas, it gives AMD the chance to confuse consumers by offering the latest technology for the best possible price.PackagingOnce again we see the HIS Excalibur branding their box in style. We still see many of the features we expected from a card of this nature including a PCI Express 2.1 interface, a whopping 2GB of GDDR5 memory to cope with the latest intensive games, and the usual HD support we have known to love. The side gives the novice user a bit of knowledge; encase there is any confusion as to what your system can handle with a clear view of the PCI Express interface, when compared to AGP and legacy PCI. Just below this we see a list of the system requirements. This gives you a bit of warning to see if your system is up to the task of powering this card. Two of the main highlights of this card are shown again with it's huge amount of GDDR5 memory and it's PCI-E 2.1 interface just to sort out any confusion. Some information is given on registering your product and a full list of what's included in the box, for the user wanting the gadgets that may come inside. The back is where we see mass amounts of information including a blurb about "The power of HIS" which talks about the Excalibur and how it was once owned by King Arthur if you fancy a trip down memory lane. The main point is to say how HIS are using this analogy for gamers world-wide. Being an AMD Radeon based card, we get the features of Eyefinity, EyeDefinition and EyeSpeed, and a quick description of what these entail, and for people who are out of the loop, it lists the main features including DirectX 11 support and what benefits it gives per feature. Even the most tech savvy user may find some valuable information here. As always, HIS give themselves some self-pimping by telling the world of their 1100 awards that they've won from major media worldwide. Maybe we'll be listed on the box one day. One can only dream. Accessory wise we get the usual that we have come to expect from HIS with a DVI to VGA adapter, install driver CD, user guide, quick installation guide, two twin Molex to PCI express power cables, HIS power up label and crossfire bridge all nicely packaged on top of the card. SpecificationsThe card that we are looking at today is the Radeon HD 6950 from HIS. This is one of AMD's latest GPUs as part of the 6900 series of cards. The full specifications are as listed below: Model NameHIS 6950 Fan 2GB GDDR5 PCI-E HDMI/2xDVI/2xMini DPChipsetRadeon HD 6950 PCIe SeriesMemory Size (MB)2048Memory TypeGDDR5Engine CLK (MHz)800MhzMemory CLK (Gbps)5GbpsMemory Interface (bit)256Bus InterfacePCI Express 2.1 (x16)DVIUpper Single-link DVI-D2nd DVIBottom Dual-link DVI-IMini Display PortYesHDMIYesHD 6850 System RequirementsPCI Express ® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot with 2 slots space available on the motherboard500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connectors recommendedCertified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified productsMinimum 1GB of system memoryInstallation software requires CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, a keyboard, a mouse, and a displayDVD playback requires DVD drive and a DVDBlu-ray playback requires Blu-ray drive and a Blu-ray discFor an AMD CrossFireX system, a second AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series Graphics card, an AMD CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one AMD CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable is required A Closer LookThe card itself quite surprisingly is longer than the GTX 580 from Nvidia which leaves us with hope that this card is going to be extremely good performance wise, at least if we're going by the bigger is better scenario. Due to this some people may have problems fitting this card into their case. As with most graphics cards on the market today, this card will require two expansion slots in your case but that's nothing out of the ordinary. The styling on this card seems to follow a reference design with a bit of flair by having the HIS colour scheme, Excalibur, model name and branded HIS fan at the far right of the card. The underneath of the card is a bit different to what we've seen in the past, where as generally we have seen the PCB, the card is now fully enclosed in plastic with a view of the GPU heatsink clamp and plenty of screws to show where the plastic cover mounts on from this side. The fan design is something that we seen in the past with HIS, with a branded logo and open fin design which in turn will help push the heat towards the back of the card and eventually dissipate from the expansion slot which is designed to exhaust heat out of the back of your case. Other than the fan, the graphics card as a whole is very encased with the plastic cover surrounding the card from front to back and from top to bottom. Being the latest graphics card from AMD it has the latest PCI Express 2.1 bus interface which is of course backwards compatible with earlier PCI express interfaces. For the user wanting to get the most performance for their money you may find that later on you will want to set up a multi-graphics card configuration using CrossFire. Unlike the 6800 series cards (which only support single CrossFire) this card supports two-way, three-way, and four-way CrossFire configurations as you can see from the two bridge ports. Just next to the CrossFire bridge ports you will notice a new feature which there has been a lot of speculation about on the Internet as of late as to what it could be. Guesses included a turbo switch, voltage regulator, and even fan speed controller but this switch is for jumping from one BIOS to another. The graphics card will store two sets of BIOS instructions of which one can be updated and changed whilst the original will remain. To the average user this may seem redundant feature but to reviewers and computer enthusiasts, this is something that we've been wanting for quite some time. Due to this card being fairly large, you half expect it to live by the "bigger is better" rule and therefore use mass amounts of power but only a 500W power supply is needed and unlike the GTX 580 this card only requires 2 6-pin PCI express power connectors. Connection wise, we see nothing out of the ordinary with the expected 2 DVI ports, single HDMI and two mini Display Ports allowing up to 6 monitors in total using a mini Display Port hub and AMD's EyeFinity configuration settings. Test SetupWith our entire graphics card based tests we have to use a multitude of benchmarking software to give the broadest all around testing. This in turn, shows off the cards most important features in real world settings. By doing these tests, it gives us results so that we can compare it to other cards that we have tested in the past from various different manufacturer's. We have installed this card into our main testing rig to give fair and consistent testing conditions. We use all of the same components for all of our tests to give the fairest results. Test SystemProcessor (CPU)AMD Phenom II X6 1100TMotherboardAsus Crosshair IV FormulaMemory (RAM)8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1800MHz Graphics CardHIS Radeon HD 6950 2GBPrimary Hard DriveKingston V+ Series 64GB SSD x 2 (Raid 0)Power SupplyBFG EX Series 1200wattOperating SystemWindows 7 Professional 64-bit3DMark 11 3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tesselation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics card and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online. Unigine Heaven 2.1 Heaven 2.1 is regarded to be one of the most intensive Benchmarking utilities about at the moment along with the likes of 3DMark. It makes use of highly comprehensive tesselation technology, advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion) and a highly defined light algorithm to produce ever changing light conditions amongst other items. Crysis Warhead The Crysis Warhead Benchmark is a good test of a cards ability to render explosions, fire and fast moving objects on screen. A good card will produce images with good depth of colour, smooth rendering and extra fine detail in the game terrain. Unlike Unigine however, this is a DX10 benchmark, but is still a good test of a cards capabilites. Dirt 2 The PhysX engine from within Dirt 2 is a good test of a cards rendering capabilities with fine details such as dust trailing from the rear of the car. There is also the aspect of light and reflections from the cars bodywork and the ability to work with the in game physics and damage rendering engines to produce a realistic gaming experience. Mafia II Mafia II is an older game and therefore it does have older grahics engines however this is is still a good allround in game benchmark that combines the terrain and explosion rendering of Crysis with the dust and dirt particle rendering test of Dirt 2. It also take into account the changing light conditions albeit not in quite the same detail as the others, but none-the-less still proves a cards capabilities on slightly older games. ConclusionThe Radeon 6950 has been a long awaited graphics card that at one point wasn't going to see Christmas 2010, but from AMD's efforts, they managed to get the release just in time, and with the GTX 580 low on stock, and the GTX 570 being Nvidia's true flagship card, the 6900 series seems to be perfect as the competition heats up between AMD and Nvidia. The 6900 series showed up on the GPU roadmap quite some time ago, and it was very clear that the performance wasn't going to be quite what comsumers expected, and this was mainly down to the model number confusion. The thing you have to understand is that this card is more about features and efficiency as opposed to performance with the ability to switch GPU BIOS, and to alter the TDP by 20% either way. The benchmarks gave some clear indictations of the potential this card has, and with room for overclocking, it could be a serious contender when compared to the GTX 570 and even the 580 from Nvidia, especially when we look at the likes of 3DMark 11. Other benchmarks gave very small differences between the power-mad GTX 580 and 6950, and when you look at the price, you'd be stupid not to get a 6950. Unboxing Video: Video Review: Pros: Trusted brandPremium online customer supportEyefinity supportLatest AMD technologyCrossFire support for multiple graphics card configurationsCons: Some users may find the card quite largeRatings: Design - 9Features - 9Performance - 9Value - 9Overall - 9 Attached files 1.jpg (58.3 KB) 10.jpg (70.9 KB) 11.jpg (67.9 KB) 12.jpg (72.7 KB) 13.jpg (61.7 KB) 2.jpg (40.6 KB) 3.jpg (36.6 KB) 3dmark11.jpg (20.3 KB) 3dmark11.jpg (33 KB) 4.jpg (77 KB) 5.jpg (67.6 KB) 6.jpg (67 KB) 7.jpg (74.5 KB) 8.jpg (56.3 KB) 9.jpg (66.1 KB) crysis-warhead.jpg (52.7 KB) crysiswarhead.jpg (48.9 KB) dirt2.jpg (35.1 KB) dirt2.jpg (44.4 KB) gold.jpg (15.8 KB) heaven.jpg (46.2 KB) heaven.jpg (49.3 KB) mafia-2.jpg (42.2 KB) mafia2.jpg (48.5 KB) thumb.jpg (25.4 KB)