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Sapphire HD6950 FleX Review (hardware)

Posted by Shane Dickson (Oregon Slacker), 10 days ago

Here are the results of my rounds of testing on a single monitor setup:

6950 hd flex metro 2033 benchmark

Tested with Metro 2033 benchmark, DX 11, 1920x1080, Frontline Scene on high quality with Anisotropic Filtering at 4X both with antialiasing in AAA mode and 4xMSAA mode.

Lost planet 2 6950 HD flex benchmarks

Tested with Lost Planet 2 in settings benchmark in DX 11 with 1920x1080, Motion Blur On, with shadow and texture detail on high.

COD Black Ops 6950 HD flex benchmark

Tested with Fraps Textures on Extra with 4xAA on SP level Vorkuta (up till you push the cart past the machine gun towers). 1920x1080

3DMark vantage benchmark 69540 hd flex

Tested using 3D Mark Vantage on Performance settings at 1280x1024.

6950 hd flex 3dmark 11

Tested using 3D Mark 11 on Performance settings at 1280x720(720p).

Here are results of Eyefinity testing on several newer games, using fraps for in-game displays and playing with a variety of settings to get low, avg and high frame rates, along with some spectacular screenshots of what you can expect.

6950 HD game benchmarks

Dragons Age 2 was tested with high settings including the extra downloaded high resolution texture pack, no AA was used.

BulletStorm low numbers are from AA on with high settings, Avg numbers from medium settings, NO AA, and High was with low settings and No AA

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit was on max/high settings including textures

COD Black Ops with 8xAA and textures at extra high settings

Bad Company 2 SP was tested with HBAO On with 4xAA and 2xMSAA these are indicative of the low number range, High number range was with HBAO off and 1xAA& 1x Anisotropic filtering.

Bad Company 2 MP was tested with HBAO off and medium settings which is my usual single monitor gameplay settings.

In Eyefinity testing, the only difficulties came from Bulletstorm which just didn’t seem to want to cooperate, had some jitters and mouse movements seemed to be wily at times, all others ran and played fine, but COD did have some scrunching issues. Not surprising because it is not FOV validated, that being said there were some user made solutions that were easily found by Googling “COD Black Ops Eyefinity problem” which corrected the problem according to the gaming community forums I read. From what I understand and have been told by several friends who are Eyefinity users, if a specific game doesn’t support Eyefinity, most often the Eyefinity and widescreen gaming community users have a solution somewhere on the net.

The experience from Eyefinity was just overwhelming in single player games, racing games are truly immersive and worlds just seem more massive in role playing games. First person shooters were even amazing, playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 was a breeze as I kept up with the best and even took first place on the server in my first round playing in Eyefinity. Overall, I don’t know how I survived without getting my hands on Eyefinity sooner, it was definitely the experience I had always been waiting for when it comes to gaming.

Overview:

The 6950 fleX is truly an Eyefinity gaming powerhouse packed in a nice quality cooling GDN Gold Awardpackage. The fact that it has 2GB of GDDR5 memory to support high resolutions with Eyefinity makes this a gamer’s dream. The added value of being able to hook up Eyefinity without the need for a display port adapter easily makes it a great value. It’s like shaving off at least $30 making this a steal, especially when compared to other cards at the $300 price range that don’t offer nearly as many features or the performance seen by the 6950 fleX. This card is what gamers envisioned Eyefinity to be like when it was first announced: no hassle, plug-in monitors and get your game on.

Pros

  • -With fleX technology, no DP adaptor needed for DVI Eyefinity gaming

  • -Can support up to 5 monitors Eyefinity with Display port adaptor or DP monitors

  • -2GB of Memory for high resolution gaming

  • -Dual Bios so can experienced users can gain more performance

  • -Outperforms even high end $500 2gb 5870’s, same priced new 560Ti

Cons

  • -No instructions for Eyefinity setup, although easily found on Google

  • -Dual-Link DVI port does not turn on till after OS boot

 

 Our Rating for Sapphire HD6950 FleX Review (hardware)
9.0
Feel
No shiny lights, but sleek looking and stylish, looks great installed Functionality (what it does/doesn’t do) 10: Above and beyond functionality for cards in this price point, 2GB of GDDR5 Ram for optimal high resolution gaming, not to mention it’s the most powerful card on the market with fleX technology.
9.0
Usability
This card is almost a must have for die hard gaming fans who want to experience Eyefinity with no hassles.
10.0
Value
Included added value of fleX bumps this card cost down from an MSRP of $300 to less than $270, no other cards in that price point give you the experience this card will for gaming, especially multi-monitor gaming.
9.5
Overall
One of the best video cards I’ve had the pleasure of using, kept decent temperatures even under loads while testing, and performed admirably in all game testing performed.

Rating: 3.0, votes: 2
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