HIS Radeon HD 6990 Crossfire review

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/13/2011 02:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

The Specifications

The Specifications

So then, it is based on two Cayman GPUs, now we can describe the product very easily. Take a Radeon 6970 and multiply everything by two. And that is roughly the R6990 in a nutshell, features and specification wise, yet now it's one card.

Now before I show you the final specifications of the Radeon HD 6990, you need to understand that the card has two modes, normal and unlocked.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics card features dual-BIOS capabilities. This feature is controlled by an Unlocking Switch sitting closely next to the CrossFireX connector on your board. The switch toggles between the factory-supported Performance BIOS of 375W TDP (BIOS1), and a more extreme Performance BIOS (BIOS2) that unlocks higher clock speeds and up to 450W TDP of performance.

For end users to enable this higher performance BIOS, they will have to remove a label covering the dual BIOS switch and set the BIOS switch to the desired position outlined below:

Position 1 Extreme Performance BIOS (BIOS2).
Position 2 (default shipping position) factory-supported Performance BIOS (BIOS1).

Let's place that in a table:

	Radeon HD 6950	Radeon 6970	Radeon 6990	Radeon 6990 Unlocked
Fab Process	40nm	40nm	40nm	40nm
Die Size	389 mm2	389 mm2	389 mm2 x2	389 mm2 x2
Transistors	2.64 Billion	2.64 Billion	5.28 Billion	5.28 Billion
Core Clock / MHz	800	880	830	880
Memory Clock / MHz	5000	5500	5000	5000
Memory Bandwith	160 GBps	176 GBPs	320 GB/s	320 GB/s
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Shader processors	1408	1536	3072	3072
Compute performance	2.25 TFLOPS	2.7 TFLOPS	5.10 TFLOPS	5.40 TFLOPS
Color ROPs	32	32	64	64
z/Stencil ROPs	128	128	256	256
TDP Gaming	140 W	190 W	350 W	415 W
Idle power	20 W	20 W	37 W	37 W

The Radeon HD 6990 comes armed with an astonishing 3072 shader processors, thus 48 SIMD based shader clusters, split up in a twofold engine per GPU. The domain and shader clock is locked in at 830 or 880 MHz. The card comes paired with 4 GB of memory clocked at (effective) 5000 MHz (2GB per GPU). The TDP of this product is 350W in default mode, and in unlocked mode the card can consume 415W with a hefty game. There's room left for overclocking in the unlocked design though, you may take the card up-to roughly 450W.

Now, since we have all this knowledge let's just compare this product with some others. Let's have a quick comparative overview of some of the specifications representing a certain scope of other performance parts, you'll notice that the differences are just HUGE, I've inserted the "default" performance mode in there, not the unlocked one:

Specifications	Radeon HD 5770	Radeon HD 5850	Radeon HD 6850	Radeon HD 6870	Radeon HD 6950	Radeon HD 6970	Radeon HD 6990
GPU	Juniper XT	Cypress Pro	Barts Pro	Barts XT	Cayman Pro	Cayman XT	Cayman XT
Manufact. tech.	40nm	40 nm	40nm	40nm	40nm	40nm	40nm
GPU frequency	850 MHz	725 MHz	775 MHz	900 MHz	800 MHz	880 MHz	830 MHz
Stream processors	800	1440	960	1120	1408	1536	3072
Memory Datarate	4800 MHz	4000 MHz	4000 MHz	4200 MHz	5000 MHz	5500 MHz	5000 MHz
Memory bus	128-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit x2
Memory buffer	1 GB GDDR5	1 GB GDDR5	1 GB GDDR5	1 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5	4 GB GDDR5
Power consumption	108W	151W	127W	150W	150W	190W	350W
Idle Power	-	-	19W	19W	20W	20W	37W

Impressive stuff... huh? The card of course is an up-to-date DX11 class product with a couple of new features. Features wise, the graphics cards will be very similar to the last generation products and is merely an advanced, updated model. However some features like one DVI and four DisplayPort 1.2 monitor connectors are present for a full Eyefinity experience up-to five cards with just one R6990.

Now before you get concerned about the four DP connectors, the card will ship with 3 adapters to enable Eyefinity gaming out of the box for all users. The product will ship with:

1x mini DisplayPort to passive single-link DVI adapter
1x mini DisplayPort to active single-link DVI adapter
1x mini DisplayPort to passive HDMI adapter

The adapter configuration will enable 3x1 gaming out of the box with DVI panels but with additional display adapters or Display Port displays you will be able to drive up to 5 displays in portrait Eyefinity (5x1 Portrait mode) for the rather grand gaming experience.

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