A Closer Look

AMD's heatsink uses a Vapor-Chamber Technology cooler with a large copper base. The thermal paste used is the same as on the HD 6990, a phase-change material that has the consistency of hard wax when cooled off but gets soft with higher temperatures.


The card has two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors which are specified up to 225 W power delivery.


Like on the AMD HD 69xx reference designs, a BIOS switch is present which lets you select between the original BIOS and a backup BIOS in case something goes wrong with a BIOS flash. Combined with the HD 6950 to HD 6970 modding potential this makes an unbeatable combo because it's almost impossible that you screw up enough to end up with a $250 paperweight.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-T2C. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


AMD is using a new voltage controller on their 1 GB card. While the HD 6950 / 6970 2 GB uses a Volterra VT1556, the 1 GB version uses a VT1586. Unfortunately this controller is not supported in any OC software - yet.


AMD's Cayman graphics processor is made on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. It uses approximately 2.64 billion transistors on a die area of 389 mm².