Introduction

I hate Christmas shopping. I don't mind the crowds. I don't mind that department stores try to shove their sales down your throat, like they're never going to have another sale again. I hate that it's the single time of the year where EVERYONE has the same thing in mind. What the heck do I get "insert name here"? My family is pretty large, so we all do the secret Santa, instead of individual gift giving. My wife's side of the family has it all streamlined because her sister started using the online secret Santa and it allows you to post a wish list, which they all do. However, my side of the family is still stuck in the stone age, drawing names from a hat and leaving everything up to the "secret Santa". This usually involves phone calls asking "What does so and so like?" to the closer relatives of that person. It always ends up with you not knowing what the heck to get them, and frustration until the last minute when you're forced to buy SOMETHING.

I have always been into computers, games, and technology. This has always been some weird voodoo foreign language to everyone in my family. It has resorted to me being the relative to ask for gift cards or money, usually because whatever anyone bought me would end up being returned, or the thing I really wanted was very expensive. I would pool everything together and get exactly what I wanted. Video cards were always a bigger expense and, once 3D games came out, the video requirements increased. I made it a yearly habit after Christmas to do a system overhaul or, at the very least, purchase a new GPU. Well, it's Christmas time again and AMD is hard at work to try and get something for people to have under the tree.

One present could possibly be the Sapphire Radeon HD 6950. The Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 comes with an amazing 2GB of GDDR5 memory, more than enough memory to plow through any new DX11 title. The HD 6950 has 2 DVI, 2 mini Display Port, and a single HDMI 1.4a slot. Using the mini Display Ports, this card can support up to 6 monitors at once. There is also advanced technology with the HD 6950, including dual graphics engines, 22 SIMD engines, and 88 texture units. This increase far surpasses the 6800 series recently released.