Published in Graphics

Powercolor rolls out its HD 6950 PCS++

by on20 January 2011
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Updated: Dual BIOS switch does its job

Powercolor has released its new Radeon HD 6950 PCS++ card that will use a dual BIOS feature in order to work at either 880MHz for the GPU or 800MHz for the GPU in safe mode.

According to our info, the PCB of the card is based on Powercolor's own design and they opted for a PCB that is more similar to the HD 6970 so it is no wonder that the card has an ability to unlock all the shaders and happily work at 880MHz. It is a bit unclear wether it already has 1536 shaders in the "second" BIOS, but we guess that you can always unlock it manually. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1250MHz (5.0Gbps) and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.

Since we are talking about a PCS++ series card, it is quite normal that it has a non-reference cooler. The cooler is equipped with two 92mm fans and three heatpipes connected to a rather large heatsink with copper base. The card features two DVI, HDMI and two mini DisplayPort outputs and will be bundled with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game.

Unfortunately, the price or the availability date haven't been announced but we guess that it will show up in retail/e-tail pretty soon.

Update: Powercolor got back to us and we can now confirm that the second BIOS does indeed unlock those extra shaders. So, in addition to the higher HD 6970 clocks, the HD 6950 PCS++ also has 1536 stream processors as well.

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Last modified on 21 January 2011
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