Triple-A games provide an opportune time for graphics-card manufacturers to launch a new GPU bundle, much in the same way as Sony and Microsoft do with console-specific titles.

One of the most eagerly-awaited gaming titles this year has been Battlefield 3, released late last week. Seen as a pivotal release that can boost graphics-card sales, NVIDIA and AMD have gone to lengths in making noise about BF3-optimised drivers recently.

Sapphire has jumped straight on the BF3 bandwagon and released its best single-GPU card…with the game bundled in. The Radeon HD 6970 FleX 2GB incorporates the best of the company’s technology: it’s overclocked, ships with a Vapor-X cooler and has a new backplate for reference-beating temperatures.

The form factor and cooler are identical to the HD 6950 version we’ve reviewed recently. This means the central fan drives air across the substantial heatsink which cools the heatpipes jutting out of the vapour chamber. It’s a design that has worked well for Sapphire in the past, and such is the confidence in the cooling ability, this BF3 edition’s second BIOS setting whips up core speed from the reference 880MHz to 930MHz. Memory speed, however, is left at the default 5,500MHz.

Call us nitpicky, but we’d like to have seen a Battlefield 3-specific art on the cooler, commemorating the game’s release.

The 6900 family of FleX cards isn’t absolutely identical; the HD 6970 uses an 8+6-pin PCIe arrangement, providing more juice than the dual-6-pin on the ’50. Sapphire’s 50/70 PCBs are the same, so it’s just a case of choosing which right-hand power connector to run with.

• READ MORE (Source): Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 FleX Battlefield 3 Edition – Graphics – Review – HEXUS.net