Closer Look
The largest change Sapphire has made to the 6950 is its cooler. The reference design consists of a one fan blower-style setup that draws air in from the case, blows it over a large heatsink, and dumps it outside of the case. The 6950 DiRT 3 Edition however, has a completely new cooler featuring two fans rather than one that blow down directly on to the heatsink and back in to the case rather than out. This style of cooler generally gives much better gpu temps and is significantly quieter with the trade off of slightly higher case temps.
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Sapphire’s DiRT 3 Edition 6950 features one Display Port, one HDMI 1.4a, and two dual-link DVI connections.
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To help power the card there are two PCI-Express 6 pin power connectors on the side. Having the connectors on the side rather than the end help to reduce clearances as well.
The heatsink of the card is made up of five large copper heatpipes that transfer heat from the copper gpu block to the aluminum fins to be dissipated.
Also on the side is the Crossfire connector as well as a dual BIOS switch to aid in overclocking or flashing with custom BIOS.
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This picture gives you an idea of the size of the card compared to a US bill. The 6950 is quite large at 260mm (about 10.25 inches) but should fit in most modern mid-tower cases.
