Graphics-card manufacturer XFX is waiting patiently for the Radeon HD 7000-series of GPUs to appear. The interminable wait enables the company to keep its virtual larder full of Radeon HD 6K cards. Underscoring this stacking of GPUs is the HD 6950 range, which is home to no fewer than eight cards – five clocked in at stock speeds and three overclocked.
The best of the bunch is the version ending in product code CDDC. Dubbed the ‘Double Dissipation’ series, shipped with a core speed of 830MHz and outfitted with 2GB of GDDR5 running at 5,200MHz, it has manifestly better specifications than the 800MHz/5,000MHz-clocked reference card. But you literally pay for this extra frequency chutzpah, as the DD XXX is currently available for £230 or so.
Now, what does Double D have to do with graphics card, you may ask. Well, XFX reckons two is better than one and extends that thinking to the card’s fans, where two 80mm jobbies are housed on top of a card-wide heatsink. The overall design is wholly non-reference, evinced by a shorter PCB – 9.5in vs. 10.5in for reference – and, keeping costs down, a lighter card with a less-substantial heatsink.
XFX reckons the design is amongst the quietest and coolest around, helped by having a trio of core-touching heatpipes and a fancy backplate. For those that want to really test out the cooler’s mettle, the GPU’s voltage can be tuned from the default 1.1V through to 1.3V.
While it’s an astonishing 430g lighter than reference – 611g vs. 1,041g – build quality is good, as there are no flexes in either the PCB or card-long heatsink. Those looking for the dual-BIOS of the original card will be disappointed to learn that it’s not present here; XFX isn’t enabling the opening of a Radeon HD 6970-like 1,536 shaders.
- READ MORE (Source): XFX Radeon HD 6950 2GB DD XXX – Graphics – Review – HEXUS.net
