I purchased the VTX3D Radeon 6950 1Gb a couple of weeks ago for £167.
I game at a resolution of 1920x1080.
I bought this to replace my 2 x Radeon 5770 1Gb cards in Crossfire. This might sound a little crazy as these cards were reckoned to be of similar performance to a single Radeon 5870. The 5870 also comes in close to the 6950 in some benchmarks. However, there is method to my madness.
I found my set up to be plagued with overheating issues from the two dual slot cards being so close together. Crossfire does not always work in all games, it is sometimes unstable until the drivers catch up and scaling is not always what is claimed. Newer games or those using tesselation, struggle on the 5000 series cards.
The VTX3D Radeon 6950 1Gb may not sound like much of an upgrade and yet I am a very happy customer at this price.
Performance in Dirt 2 is comparable to my previous setup. However, F1 2010 is dramatically improved and is fully maxed at this resolution delivering a minimum of 60 FPS. Metro 2033, a very demanding DX11 title, can be played on High settings with 4 x AA and works really well...it stuttered on the 5000 series with any AA. It makes mincemeat out of Battlefield Bad Company 2. Test Drive Unlimited 2 does not support Crossfire and therefore this card is a big improvement versus a single 5770. I have yet to test on Crysis or Stalker Call of Pripyat.
There are some other reasons to buy this card. Blu-Ray video playback is better on the 6000 series it appears with an extremely clear image comparable to my HDTV. Tesselation and advanced DX11 features seem much less demanding on this card with the Cayman architecture. There is a voltage tweak control available in the Catalyst driver, which means you can save power for less demanding titles or go upwards to help overclocking. It has a dual bios switch (I have not tested flashing to a 6970 as it voids the warranty and I read it may not work on 1Gb versions). Idle temperatures are averaging 38 degrees and at load I am only seeing 60 degrees...I think it runs cooler with 1Gb VRAM and it proves that the copper heat pipes and large twin fans on the VTX3D version cope well.
Installation was a breeze but remember to uninstall all Catalst software and any Crossfire application profiles beforehand.
Don't buy this version if you game higher than 1920x1080, want to use Eyefinity with three 3 screens or expect to have 2 of these in Crossfire. The 1Gb will likely constrain the card in these circumstances and you should buy the 2Gb version.
| Brand | VTX3D |
|---|---|
| Package Dimensions | 35 x 22 x 8.8 cm; 1.2 Kilograms |
| Item model number | VX6950 1GBD5-2DH |
| Manufacturer | VTX3D |
| Hard Drive Size | 1 GB |
| Graphics Coprocessor | AMD Radeon HD 6950 |
| Graphics Chipset Brand | AMD |
| Graphics Card Description | AMD Radeon |
| Graphics RAM Type | Unknown |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 1 GB |
| Graphics Card Interface | PCI-E |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Item Weight | 1.2 kg |