A Closer Look

The heatsink uses a copper base and five heatpipes to keep the card cool. This is one of the few changes when comparing this card to PowerColor's HD 6950 PCS++, which has only four heatpipes.


This little switch is present on the HD 6970 reference design too. PowerColor uses it in its original form which means it serves as a recovery feature in case of a bad BIOS flash. Both BIOSes on the card are the same.


The card requires one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCI-Express power connector.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


Instead of the Volterra VT1556 like on the AMD reference design, PowerColor has chosen to use a CHiL 8228 voltage controller. Just like VT1556 it offers full voltage control via I2C.


AMD's new 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.