Diamond, Sapphire & XFX AMD Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Roundup

XFX Radeon HD 6870

XFX sent over their Radeon HD 6870 video card that also features AMD reference clock frequencies of 900MHz on the core and 1050MHz on the GDDR5 memory ICs. This card is available under part number HD-687A-ZNFC and it currently sells for $253.99 shipped on Buy.com, making it slightly more than the Sapphire branded card on the previous page. The retail box is smaller than the other companies, but it looks good and has some basic information on the front of it.

The XFX Radeon HD 6870 is based off the AMD dual-slot reference design and other than a sticker change it looks just like the other Radeon HD 6870’s that we are reviewing here today. The black sticker on the GPU Fan is less than impressive. It looks like something should be there besides a big black dot.

The back of the XFX Radeon HD 6870 is the same as the other cards, but notice the GPU support bracket has a pair of white stickers over two of the screws.

XFX offers a limited two year warranty on their Radeon HD 6870 series, but if you register within 30 days of purchase, your limited two year warranty will be extended to the duration of your life. The warranty begins from the date of purchase and a copy of the original sales receipt is needed. It should also be noted that the limited lifetime warranty is transferable one time, but the two year warranty is not transferable. If you remove the GPU Cooler you must break or remove the sticker above. This means that if you want to change the thermal compound that comes on the card you lose your warranty. We contacted XFX about this and they said that if those in the enthusiast community want to remove the GPU cooler that they can contact XFX and let them know about it before hand to avoid potential warranty issues.

XFX left the display connections alone, but changed the exhaust plate design to include some custom XFX branding.

The XFX bundle included a pair of installation guides, warranty information booklet, a CrossFire interconnect, the drivers disc, a marketing flier on the XFX Pro Series power supplies and a door hanger that includes support information. This bundle is essentially the same that we saw with the Diamond Multimedia Radeon HD 6870.

We took a peak at the software disk that comes in the XFX bundle and found it to include AMD Catalyst 10.10 drivers, guides and access to register the card for the lifetime warranty.