What do you get if you take a Radeon HD 6950 and ship it from the factory with extra shaders and increased clock speeds? It's either an HD 6970, or PowerColor's new HD 6950 PCS++.
In 'safe' mode, the card will run at the normal frequencies of 800MHz for the core and 1,250MHz for the 2GB frame buffer. Throw the BIOS switch, however, and the Cayman GPUs full complement of 1,536 shaders are unlocked and turned up to a speed of 880MHz, perfectly matching the specs of the HD 6970.
That's right - this 'HD 6950' ships with an HD 6970-matching BIOS from the factory. It's not clear from the press release, but we'd have to assume that the safe mode BIOS only enables the standard 1,408 shaders so that it can at least maintain the facade of the lower-spec card. Obviously there are only two six-pin PCIe power connectors, though, potentially limiting how much juice the GPU can draw compared to a real HD 6970.
Being a member of the PCS++ family, the card also gets a custom cooler with a pair of 92mm fans that sit atop three copper heat pipes to keep the temperatures nice and low.
For good measure, the manufacturer has also thrown in a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Although it's not the most recent - or taxing - game, we're not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially now that pack-in games are quite rare.
Unfortunately, PowerColor didn't announce any details on availability or pricing. However, we assume that there'll be a significant premium for a card that is - for all intents and purposes - a Radeon HD 6970 with aftermarket cooling.
