The card itself follows on the same design as the reference HD6870 we saw a few months back, as can be seen from the rectangular "ribbed" shroud and the standard blower blower type cooler. HIS have customised the card with their own sticker, continuing on the theme of Excalibur with the sword. The patterned sticker is the same as found on the box and makes for an appealing and sleek finish. The Radeon logo signifies the company's full integration of the ATI branding into the AMD umbrella, hence the AMD logo on the edge of the PCB near the PCIe insert. The card is 27.4cm in length.


The back of the card reveals the use of a metal backplate. The purpose is for additional cooling as well as support for this beast of a card. The heatsink on top is secured by by the X shaped bracket and 4 spring loaded screws. To remove the shroud and cooler, it is simply necessary to undo the 10 screws at the back and two more from the I/O plate. This is not covered under the warranty so be careful when removing them.


The fan uses a finned blower design to push air towards the rear of the card and hence out of the case. The HIS logo has been conveniently place on the central rotor. The fan supports PWM functionality and can thus be controlled by users or automatically based on temperatures.


Unlike the HD6870, the HD6950 sports two CrossFire connectors on the side for up to 4 graphics card to be used in CrossFireX. The side profile of the shroud is dominated by the ribbed design akin to the HD6870. There are also vents above the CrossFire connectors where heat can be partially extracted from


A new addition to AMD's graphics card is the BIOS switch shown above. The '1' & '2' labels indicate that users can switch between two BIOS for safer end user update. Since the launch of the HD5870, it has been quite common to see users flash their graphics card to support voltage tweaking or to simply update the BIOS. AMD are ensuring that this process is safer by implementing a protected factory default setting, '2', and an unprotected BIOS, '1', which users can update. The switch is connected directly to the PCB, next to the CrossFire connectors.


At the other end, the graphics card has 2 75W 6-pin PCIe connectors. These are conveniently situated on the side rather than at the end to ensure that the cables do not get in the way of HDD cages or other components. Two dual Molex-to-6 pin adapters are bundled for good measure so even older power supplies will be compatible although HIS recommend a 500W power supply.


The rear I/O panel has a wide selection of connectors, more so than on previous reference cards. On the right are two traditional Dual Link DVI-I connectors and for those still using VGA outputs, an adapter is provided. Furthermore, a single HDMI 1.4a port is built in and two mini DisplayPorts supporting the latest 1.2 standard. The ports are an example of AMD’s evolution on their display and video decoding features over the HD5XXX series. The main advantage of the new DisplayPort standard is the double bandwidth over the previous 1.1 ports, taking it from 10.8Gbps to 21.6Gbps. In real world applications, it means that a single port can support up to 2 2560x1600 monitors and 4 1920x1200 monitors through daisy chaining or by using an MST hub. The hub means that the card itself no longer has to sport up to 6 individual ports as was found on the Eyefinity6 special edition cards. As such, the two provided ports can easily drive 6 monitors at 1920x1200. If a hub isn’t available and daisy chaining not feasible, the 5 ports can still support up to 4 displays in Eyefinity as illustrated at the back of the box. The higher bandwidth of the DP is also relied on for AMD’s new 3D stereoscopy initiative. Unfortunately HIS do not provide adapters for the mini DisplayPorts. Small vents are also present from which heat is exhausted from.