The Card

The HIS Radeon HD 6970 is a complete reference design implementation, with the only difference being the sticker on the cooler. Also the card uses the same cooler and PCB as the HD 6950 reference design.


HD 6970 requires two slots in your system.


The card has two DVI ports, two mini-DisplayPorts and one HDMI port. AMD's display output logic is clearly superior to what NVIDIA has to offer at this time. Vendors are free to combine six TMDS links into any output configuration they want (dual-link DVI consuming two links) - and use them all at the same time. AMD has also introduced DisplayPort 1.2 support with their new cards which allows the use of a DisplayPort hub to connect multiple monitors, or daisy chain them together.

An HDMI sound device is also included in the GPU. The HDMI interface is HDMI 1.4a compatible which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit output. The new revision also brings support for Blu-ray 3D movies which will become important later this year when we will see first Blu-ray 3D titles shipping.


You may combine up to four HD 6950 and HD 6970 cards in CrossFire for increased performance or improved image quality settings.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.