The modification to the power connector seen on some Radeon HD 6900 series cards was a conscious development decision. The reference boards use both fan and heatsink designs from multiple vendors and it was discovered some material produced on initial designs required adjustment. As a result we modified the PCIe power connector for a very small number of boards using affected components, which were mostly used for samples, as the most time and cost efficient solution to bringing the product to market in volume. This minor modification to the connector in no way affects the operation of the card and our partners have designed solutions which do not require this modification.