Sapphire HD6950 2GB (100312TXSR)

I've got two of these in my rig, both of which unlocked to 6970 shaders with a flip of the bios switch.
On stock voltage, I have both of them OC'd to 950 core clock and 1420 memory clock, and there was some room to go higher but I opted for lower temps because the fan gets loud past 55% when you have two of them.

If you have the fortune of this card unlocking (and they usually do, from both personal experience and what I've heard from friends I convinced to buy it), you pretty much have yourself the best price/performance point on the market for gpu's.

However, they aren't completely without issue. There's an issue in sapphire's bios relating to power usage/throttling. It can be easily fixed by changing powertune to 20% in the catalyst control center. However, most people like to use Afterburner/Trixx/etc. for their fan profiles and whatnot, and some people have had conflicts giving them issues. It is certainly something to consider. In the end, I thought it was worth it, but that could be different for you.

Mine unlocked easy as pie, flip of the switch! After doing the +20% mod to get around Sapphire's poor card BIOS I was able to clock the card pretty well. Core is at 940, memory is at 5900(1475) and I use 1.250v. The performance is unbetable for sub $300 cards. Nvidia has nothing this powerfull at this price point:thumb:

After currency conversion from CAD and 13% HST tax I paid $386.33 USD which is far more expensive then you can get it for now, however demand is high and stock is low so you may have trouble finding it. I've had it since August and the card has been running fine at 940/1425 @ stock voltage. Ambient room temperature at 25C my card idles at ~45C and on game load ~65C. This is on a custom fan profile though, 30% up to 50C, straight line from (30%,50C) to (100%, 100C)