Sapphire HD 6950 TOXIC Pro Reviews

SAPPHIRE's TOXIC HD6950 is an incredible video card. There was a major flaw with the BIOS which required us to manually enable PowerTune to allow us to get the card working at its maximum potential, but it was an easy fix, and a new BIOS that fixes the issue works and is on its way to the public. The SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 also came with an HD 6950 BIOS as well as an HD 6970 BIOS for us to play with. This gaming performance the SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 produced stomped its competition in the relevant price range. On top of the great overclock that this card comes with, we had plenty of head room to push it even farther. With the overclock on the faster 1536 Shader BIOS the card was able to produce equal or better gaming performance than the much more expensive HD 6970 and GeForce GTX 580, at a fraction of the price. The SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 is a high-end card that sits in the middle of the HD 6950 the price market. You get two free games; DiRT 3 which is valued at $49.99, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution valued at $49.99, which just released on August 23rd, 2011. You will pay $269.99 after MIR for two free games and the fastest Radeon HD 6950 on the planet. The SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 Video Card is Radeon HD 6950 done right.

Sapphire's Radeon HD 6950 TOXIC 2GB graphics card is a strange beast. Look at it from a specification sheet and it has all the bases covered - a super-high factory overclock, decent cooler, and competitive price - but closer examination reveals not all that glitters is gold. One needs to manually change AMD's Power Control settings, increasing power-draw, in order for the card to function at the specified (in-game) 880MHz core speed, which seems counter-intuitive. Perhaps this is AMD's fault for setting too-conservative ratings, but whatever the case, Sapphire should release an updated BIOS and specific driver for this card, we feel, as going through this extra step is wholly unnecessary.Flick the BIOS switch and a Radeon HD 6970-matching 1,536 shaders become active, though one needs to force the aforementioned 880MHz core speed via the same control panel. The upshot of all this is a package that, while very decent from the outset, needs to be rethought. Able to run at very high speeds if you're willing and able to tinker with control-panel settings, Sapphire's Radeon HD 6950 2GB is an opportunity missed, we feel.