When we first looked at the Radeon HD 5770 FleX board we were impressed that Sapphire had actually taken the time to acknowledge one of the biggest issues with Eyefinity and was able to fix it. The issue we speak of is the need to have a DisplayPort monitor to make use of the technology. For some it is not an issue, especially if you're only on one monitor and you are going to buy three new ones for your setup. If you are not though, and you already have a couple of monitors, the need for a DisplayPort enabled one is just a pain. What the Radeon HD 5770 FleX edition allowed us to do was use three DVI monitors on a single card. With the inclusion of a DisplayPort monitor you could kick it up a notch. - TweakTown

Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 FleX Card Version Preview

As for the card itself, it resembles the Radeon HD 6950 1GB version we recently looked at that carries with it the same cooler. It's an great looking cooler that has a large fan in the middle. And if you look closely, you can also see the heatpipes coming out of the heatsink. Looking around the rest of the card, you're not going to find too much that you haven't seen before. The power is provided with the help of two 6-pin PCI Express connectors and we've got a single CrossFire connector allowing you to run up to two of these cards together. Looking at the connectivity, you are again not really going to see anything too different either.

On a whole, this is a really great card, but it can only be as great as sales teams make it by increasing awareness on Eyefinity. These multi monitor setups aren't anything new in the corporate environment, but the ability to move away from the multiple card setups or adapters like the TripleHead2Go is what makes a board like this attractive. Of course, outside of typical corporate environments, people who work from home or do a lot of work from home would again enjoy something like this, as it offers the same kind of benefits. The FleX series creates the ability to use Eyefinity without the cost associated with going the DisplayPort path.

What the Radeon HD 6870 FleX edition does offer though, is those improvements that the Radeon HD 6000 series brought with it along with support for up to five monitors instead of four with the assistance of a DisplayPort one. We really like this card, and we really like that Sapphire continue to think out the box and offer us something new. Let's hope though, that the people selling it can inform people what exactly is on offer along with the benefits this graphics card offers over an dual card NVIDIA setup or an single card AMD setup which requires at least one DisplayPort monitor, or an expensive active adapter.