Introduction

Who would've thought we'd ever be looking at XFX cards based on an AMD GPU? It's been a long time since we've looked at something from XFX. Going through our content archive, it was August of 2007 and the victim was the 9800 GTX+.

So much has happened since then, though, and in that time we've seen the Black Edition series created from the company; a series that has had some of the best looking cards around. I say best looking as I haven't had the chance to look at one until today. Today we see if the Black Edition is all bark and no bite, or if its bark is just the entree to a menacing bite for main.

Before we look at the performance of the card, though, we'll first look at the package that XFX has put on offer. Once that's done we'll take a look at the card itself and see what exactly the Black Edition brings to the table from the outside, then we'll take a closer look at the clocks and what's on offer from this series.

Once all that's done, it's time to get into the fun stuff to see just what kind of performance XFX is able to offer us with the HD 6870 1GB Black Edition. Before that, though, let's get into the package.

The Package

Looking at the package, it's very North America. That's not a bad thing; quite the opposite actually. Compared to what we see from most of our Asian counterparts that include really only the bare essentials, we more often see North America focused companies really amp it up in the bundle.

Sure, we've got the normal extras like some paperwork, driver CD and CrossFire bridge, but the extras like the unreal feeling Black Edition case badge, Do Not Disturb, I'm Gaming door hanger and sticker really separate this from a lot of other bundles.

It's really not a lot when it all comes down to it, but it's the little extras that you do get when buying the card that users will really appreciate.