
PowerColor HD 6950 Vortex II 2 GB Review
Packaging & Contents »Introduction

AMD's Radeon HD 6950 & HD 6970 have been on the market for quite a while. Once a reference design matures, AMD allows board partners to customize the design and change PCB layout, cooling and clock speeds.
PowerColor's Vortex thermal solution has been introduced first with the HD 5770 Vortex, and now appears as an improved version on the HD 6950, called Vortex II. Instead of a single fan, two Vortex-adjustable fans are available. The Vortex design allows the user to tweak the fan configuration to employ unused space in the case for additional cooling performance - at least that's what PowerColor claims.
The card also comes with well-increased clock speeds out of the box and support for software voltage control.
Radeon HD 6870 | GeForce GTX 470 | GeForce GTX 560 Ti | Radeon HD 5870 | Radeon HD 6950 | PowerColor HD 6950 Vortex | Radeon HD 6970 | GeForce GTX 570 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Shader Units | 1120 | 448 | 384 | 1600 | 1408 | 1408 | 1536 | 480 |
ROPs | 32 | 40 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 40 |
Graphics Processor | Barts | GF100 | GF114 | Cypress | Cayman | Cayman | Cayman | GF110 |
Transistors | 1700M | 3200M | 1950M | 2154M | 2640M | 2640M | 2640M | 3000M |
Memory Size | 1024 MB | 1280 MB | 1024 MB | 1024 MB | 2048 MB | 2048 MB | 2048 MB | 1280 MB |
Memory Bus Width | 256 bit | 320 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 320 bit |
Core Clock | 900 MHz | 607 MHz | 823 MHz | 850 MHz | 800 MHz | 850 MHz | 880 MHz | 732 MHz |
Memory Clock | 1050 MHz | 837 MHz | 1002 MHz | 1200 MHz | 1250 MHz | 1300 MHz | 1375 MHz | 950 MHz |
Price | $200 | $250 | $230 | $280 | $275 | $300 | $340 | $330 |