We’re fortunate here to have the opportunity to muck around with some of the best hardware that money can buy. Processors, motherboards, graphics cards, you name it. But at the end of the day we’re also consumers; we do buy hardware, believe it or not. Beyond that, we’re gamers like many of you, and with those two things in mind, we’re always on the lookout for some great value when we shop.

AMD’s 6000 Radeon cards have been pretty good on that front, offering gaming horsepower at respectable prices. Aftermarket power designs, factory overclocks, and custom coolers are hallmarks of partner products, but the value can be suspect, sometimes paying a premium for such features.

The Sapphire Radeon 6870 1GB DiRT 3 Edition comes with an excellent value-added bonus of including a hot game title. But it also features a custom heatsink, promising lower temperatures and noise levels, as we often see from AMD’s biggest board partner. Perhaps most significantly, this card comes with 1GB of memory rather than the 2GB found on the stock reference design. This reduces costs, of course, making it what appears to be a very tempting purchase for consumers.

We love a great deal as much as anyone, and the combination of a free game, low noise and temperatures on this latest card from Sapphire leaves us very intruigued. But what about performance? Does half the memory handcuff the gaming capabilities? Let’s take a closer look at the Sapphire 6870 1GB DiRT 3 Edition and found out.

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