Sapphire's Radeon HD 6870 FleX edition addresses one of the main detractors from AMD's Eyefinity technology - the DisplayPort requirement. Initially, an active adapter was required to take the DisplayPort output and add the necessary timing signals for driving a 'legacy' display, such as VGA, HDMI or DVI. Later on, self-powered DP-DVI adapters became available, for much cheaper and without requiring a power source other than the port itself. Sapphire, instead of bundling the $30 adapter into the box, decided to go a step further and integrate it onto the graphics board itself.

Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 FleX

The Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 FleX edition differs from the normal AMD Radeon HD 6870 in two ways - the HD 6870 FleX uses a custom large diameter heatpipe heatsink with centrally mounted axial fan and offers enhanced Eyefinity capabilities. Sapphire includes an HDMI to DVI adapter to allow connection of three DVI displays to the card, and still offers the use of the two mini DisplayPort outputs for five display Eyefinity - no adapters required. Once DisplayPort 1.2 hubs and/or displays appear, the card can run six displays, three daisy-chained per miniDP output.

Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 FleX

Specifications

• $225USD SEP

• 40nm AMD Barts XT core

• 900MHz engine clock

• 1120 STREAM cores (VLIW-5)

• 14 SIMD

• 1GB GDDR5 VRAM

• 1050MHz (4.2Gbps QDR) Memory Clock

• 256-bit Memory Interface

• 56 Texture Units

• 32 ROPs

• 20W Idle / 152W Load

• AMD 2-way CrossFireX Support

• 5 outputs: DL-DVI + SL-DVI + HDMI 1.4a + 2 mini-DisplayPort

• Integrated Active DisplayPort Adapter for Eyefinity on DVI + DVI + HDMI outputs

• HDMI-DVI adapter + HDMI 1.4a 3' cable

Today we will look at the performance of the 6870 FleX in HD resolution and Eyefinity 3 configuration, as a single card and in CrossfireX configuration.