AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB Review

AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB Specifications

As its name might suggest, the Radeon HD 6950 1GB is the exact same card as its more heavily endowed Radeon HD 6950 2GB. The only difference is that the 1GB card uses eight half-density 128MB GDDR5 memory chips rather than the eight 256MB modules found on the 2GB variant.

As the only change is the density of the memory modules, the memory speed and the card’s total memory bandwidth remains the same: the 5GHz (effective) GDDR5 memory still provides 160GB/sec of memory bandwidth via the 256-bit interface. The remaining specifications are also the same, with the Caymen GPU running at 800MHz. The GPU also packs the same 22 stream processor clusters (SIMD Engines in AMDese) giving the HD 6950 1GB a total of 1,408 stream processors.

Remember that the Caymen GPU of the HD 6900-series uses a VLIW4 structure, where stream processors are arranged in banks of four, resulting in 64 stream processors per SIMD Engine rather than the 80 per SIMD Engine of the HD 6800-series and the entire HD 5000-series. The stream processors of the Caymen GPU are more capable than those of previous designs, so this design does deliver more performance.


Popping the card’s cooler off reveals the lower density memory modules really are the only difference: the PCB of our review sample is identical to that of a standard HD 6950 2GB card, except for the colour. This means that the card still measures in at a hefty 10.5in long, but with the two PCI-E 6-pin power connectors positioned on the side of the card so that it should fit in most cases.

The reference cooler is the same dual slot, black box design, with a large radial fan to blow air through the card’s aluminium heatsink and out the back of the card. A contact plate built into the cooler provides cooling for both the memory and the 4+1-phase power circuitry. However, we understand that most HD 6950 1GB cards will use custom coolers so the cooling and noise will vary.