Just like on all other similar products, AMD's two Cayman variants, called Cayman Pro and Cayman XT, are based on the exact same GPU silicon. The model variant a GPU chip becomes is decided after the die is produced, at some point before it is put on the card. Creating new SKUs from the same silicon by locking features has been common practice in the industry since at least the Radeon 9500 in 2002.
SAPPHIRE set out to make a version of the AMD Radeon HD 6950 that was more than just a reference card with a game bundled in. They achieved that with the DiRT 3 Special Edition 6950.
BenchmarkReviews.com: To run today's PC games at high resolutions with all the settings maxed out you need a high end video Card, or two mid/high end video cards in CrossFire/SLI. The best thing about CrossFire/SLI is that you don't need to buy both cards at once, meaning you can spread out the cost of a system build, or simply wait until prices drop before you make your second purchase. Dual video card scaling has come a long way since its conception, in the early days Crossfire performance wasn't always what it was made out to be. However, our setups show near 90% scaling in most of our tests, this is great news for us budget enthusiasts out there as not all of us can afford to fork out $600 up front for the latest highest end equipment. In this article Benchmark Reviews will provide you with our performance and cost analysis of a HD6850 CrossFire setup and a HD6950 CrossFire setup.
BenchmarkReviews.com: HIS first introduced its IceQ coolers in 2003 to its Radeon 9800PRO series of video cards, eight years later HIS return with the IceQ X cooler, which thankfully performs much better than it looks. In this review the IceQ X cooler is strapped onto a HIS HD6950 Turbo X video card which comes factory overclocked at 880MHz GPU and 1300MHz Memory. Pushing clocks this far on a factory overclocked video card takes some guts, but HIS know that they have nothing to worry about, their IceQ cooler is up to the job. Benchmark Reviews aims to provide you with an unbiased review of the HIS HD6950 IceQ X Turbo X model H695QNX2G2M and report back our findings, keeping you informed on the latest technologies available on the market today.
