First the minor niggles: it runs a little hot under load (~80°C) with the fan running at its reasonably quiet default - and if you crank the fan up it gets *really* noisy while still running around ~60°C (how, AMD, did you manage to come up with a reference cooler that manages to be that big and heavy but also so ineffective? My 4850 was the same - a Thermalright V2 sorted that). It's also a BIG card, so you might want to find some measurements to check ahead of time if your case is small, or you have connectors under where the back end of the card is. Also had my perennial problem of CCC failing to start every time I change my video card...*sigh*
But the good features outweigh this; it's very quick (I can at last play games in glorious 1920x1080 - yay!), and it's a reference 2GB design card with it has the dual firmware switch. This means it's reasonably safe to try modding the firmware to make this a 6970 (techpowerup.com have a good guide to this). I can confirm that, on my card at least, this works and I'm running at stock speeds for a 6970 (880/1375MHz) with the additional 6970 shaders (although with 6950 PowerTune settings) - and this is why it gets 5 stars from me despite the cooler/CCC issues. I haven't pushed it any further as neither the cooler or my PSU are up to it (using CCC to bump the power limit by 20% - corresponding to around +50W - led to lockups when my CPU was running flat out at the same time).
I did try a ASUS 6970 firmware with small overclocks, but this failed and I had to recover using the backup firmware switch. All hail dual firmware!
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Some folks have criticised a lack of adapters, but you have a choice of DVI, HDMI and mini-DP outputs - surely that's enough for most? You do get a 2x4pin-molex-to-1x6pin PCI express power adapter (this card needs two 6-pin PCI express connections, most recent PSUs tend to have at least one) and a CrossFire cable. Certainly it was enough for me, although listing the details in the description would have been nice.
| Brand | ASUS |
|---|---|
| Package Dimensions | 40.8 x 24 x 9.4 cm; 3.47 Kilograms |
| Item model number | EAH6950/2DI2S/2GD5 |
| Manufacturer | Asus |
| Memory Clock Speed | 5000 MHz |
| Graphics Coprocessor | AMD Radeon HD 6950 |
| Graphics Chipset Brand | AMD |
| Graphics Card Description | Radeon HD 6950 |
| Graphics RAM Type | Unknown |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 2 GB |
| Graphics Card Interface | PCI Express |
| Item Weight | 3.47 kg |
