HIS HD6970 & HD6950 Review

The HIS HD6950 and HD6970

HIS packaging has always been an exercise in minimalism requiring no more cardboard than it strictly necessary to house the card safely.

Being both reference designs with almost identical artwork we’ll cover them both in one go. The HD6970 and HD6950 are both supplied with the shroud style cooler we’re all so very used to by now. It never ceases to amaze us how both manufacturers use this design and it’s the first thing to be changed on special edition cards. Either the manu’s know something that nobody else does, or they deliberately make their coolers under-perform.

The HD6970 requires that bit more power than the HD6950 and so has a 8pin PCIe power to go along with the 6pin rather than the twin 6pin PCIe power than we see on the HD6950.

Up by the bracket end of the cards we have the Crossfire fingers next to a dual-BIOS switch. The dual-BIOS has a locked manufacturer setting and one that the user can adjust. That way you’ve always got a working one should the flash fail or similar problems arise.