today we're going to be unboxing the allnew Radeon
hd6950 so this is the latest edition to
the 6000 series of graphics cards from AMD uh just like the 6870 and the
6850 which were released a little while ago the 6970 and the 6950 have a very
very similar feature set to those cards but as you might imagine because of the
higher number they have more performance you know more more overall musle
so let's uh go ahead and start opening the box because that's what I do on this
channel get my knife open this up so
this is a direct X11 graphics card as you might
expect it has full support for AMD
ifinity technology with up to four displays so that is one of the features
that it does have in common with its uh little brother the
6850 and here's something that I also
wanted to mention about this card so
AMD's numbering scheme has changed I did mention higher numbers are better and
that is generally true uh however when they switched from the 5000 series to
the 6,000 series The 5870 was actually
not meant to be replaced by the 6870 the
5870 um was replaced by the 6970 now and
the 6870 replaced the old 5770 in terms
of where they fall in the overall pricing stack okay so this
6950 should be compared as like an evolutionary next step to last
generation's 5850 that's what we're comparing it to
so compared to the 5850 we've added much
beefier tessellation performance we've added HDMI
1.4a we've added ifinity support for up to four monitors instead of only three
and we have also added more performance and and more RAM
so this is a 2 GB graphics card compared
to the 1 gig that was typical on
850s and 5870 see I'm totally going to get my uh my signals crossed on all
these uh numbering schemes okay let me just see if there's anything else that I
need to mention oh yeah we've got support for AMD hd3d technology which
means you can play 3D games 3D Blu-rays
uh we have a driver CD which you should throw away as well as an installation
guide for how to install your graphics card we have full support for 7.1 audio
with the built-in HDMI port as well as
uh full support for AMD Crossfire X technology so that is three-way or
two-way on this particular card and I guess I better get
that sorry about that guys all right
let's have a look at what we've got in terms of accessories not a whole lot
actually this is a fairly Bare Bones package but I've got no problem with
that personally uh oh okay so here we've got a crossfire
Bridge which is expected and then we have a DVI to VGA adapter although if
you're really still using a VGA monitor or a VGA cable and you're buying a $300
graphics card you might want to rethink your priorities and then next we've got
a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort adapter this one's pretty useful because
not too many people out there are using mini DisplayPort monitors or mini
DisplayPort cables so as long as you
buy a DP monitor if it comes with a cable you will be able to connect your
graphics card because this particular card does not have even a single
standard DisplayPort connector it relies on mini DisplayPort to get um
basically to squeeze some extra space onto the back iio
Shield so that you can plug in up to four displays all right so here's the
card itself the Radeon 6950 I love powerc colors Graphics
actually they've got like just kind of a
badass like robot knight like futuristic
glowing eye dude he has like wings and he has like a huge sword that's uh I
mean if you actually kind of extend it from uh where it's cut off by the fan it
probably ends about here so it's like taller than he is and he looks pretty
tall so um yeah most people don't care about the graphics I do whatever all
right we got a power color sticker here and then we've got uh pretty much the
same fan we've seen AMD using for the last little while on their high-end
graphics cards let's move around to the top and then on the top of the card
we've got our power plug so we have dual six pin PCI Express and one of the
things I noticed about this card is it's one of the first I've ever seen that
doesn't come with Molex to PCIe connectors so make sure you have a power
supply with two PCI Express six pin
connectors and actually why don't we have a quick look at the side of the box
and see what uh 12vt Rail and fridge
they recommend uh 500 water greater power supply with two six pin PCIe okay
they don't say anything about the 12vt rail okay so also on the top of the card
we have a couple of other things we have the crossfire connectors that is for
two-way or three-way Crossfire and then we have a little dip switch here that is
for flashing the BIOS on this particular graphics card some of the exhaust is
actually done right here at the top and then you can clearly see down there the
vapor chamber cooler that it that this car comes equipped with just like the
6970 its big brother so speaking of its
Big Brother the actual difference between the 6850 6950 and the 6970 is
that it has fewer functional units they both have the same amount of RAM and
it's also clocked a little bit lower it also consumes less power and it is
cheaper so it's a slightly cut down
6970 here on the back we find that same uh red and black pattern that we
recognize from the 6870 and the 6850 as
well as its Big Brother on the bottom we find a standard PCI Express 2.0 slot and
lots of interesting stickers with serial numbers and whatnot on the back and I
love this I gushed about it in my 6970 unboxing already so I'm not going to do
it too much on this one but I love the
uh the heat spreader on the back it's awesome makes the card look really
really sharp and I mean even if you install a water block or like an
aftermarket cooler most of them support keep the back plate on so it really
makes the whole thing look really nice so on the back of the card we're going
to find all of our inputs and outputs and no inputs really mostly outputs and
we will find out what they are so first of all we have an air output exhaust
that is so this card is kind of half and half external exhaust and internal
exhaust and then we've also got two DVI connectors one HDMI and two mini display
port adap connectors not adapters so when you're running four monitors you're
going going to want to plug in either 2 DVI and two mini DisplayPort or one DVI
one HDMI and two mini DisplayPort you can't use all three of these and one
DisplayPort likewise if you're running three monitors you can't just use these
three you have to use two of these three and then one of these two for triple
monitor support so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Radeon
hd6950 don't forget to subscribe to lus techtips for more unboxings reviews and
other great computer videos featuring me