So who knows about Pokemon? I'm still shocked that brand is still going after all these years. There are still movies being made, a cartoon on TV, the trading card game, and video games. When I was younger, the original only featured 100 Pokemon, and we were able to actually name them all. Now, there are 646 Pokemon on the online pokedex. They just released the newest Pokemon Platinum game for the Nintendo DS. I can't see how it's possible to "Catch'em all" anymore. I can barely remember to get stuff done around the house, let alone keep track of 600+ Pokemon. We'll see how much longer it lasts. I have a daughter on the way, and maybe she'll be the next generation to get into it.
I bring this up because it's kind of an inside joke with me and Radeon cards. Since I started reviewing, I have nearly all the 6000 series Radeon cards. There are only a few that I don't have to complete the series. Those are the 6850 and the 6990. One card I have wanted to round out the top end of the series has been the 6970. The only reason I didn't have it in my collection was because at the time of its release, I chose the 6950 instead. Both were released in December last year, right around the time we were doing a Christmas contest and preparing for CES. Sapphire has chosen to release an upgraded 6970 that I get a crack at, and get to add to the collection.
The Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 2GB Dual Fan Video Card has improvements over the original model. This Radeon HD 6970 comes with a new dual fan design and an added dual BIOS switch. The new fan design looks to improve noise over the stock model and offer an increased cooling performance by up to 25%. The dual BIOS switch has been seen on the 6950 and older 6970, however this is also improved. The switch offers default and performance settings. Default keeps everything at stock settings, while performance raises the core voltage to 1.2V, allows increased caps for overclocking, and sets the fan to a high performance mode. The Sapphire 6970 Dual Fan model retains all of the stock architecture under the hood. The 6970 has 1536 stream processors, a 880MHz core clock, and 1375MHz memory clock. There is also 2GB of 256-bit GDDR5 memory.
