Radeon HD 6990 review -
Introduction
Aaah, it's Monday morning, 9AM - with a cup of coffee in my right hand staring at the monitor, looking outside through the office window where there is a clear blue sky and the sun is shining. Sitting 3 meters away from me is "Diablo" our primary mean graphics benchmarking machine, sitting in it, is this red little devil armed by two GPUs and a lot of features. Heck yeah, last week the Radeon HD 6990 arrived here in the office, and is sitting like two buns in an oven waiting to be consumed. It's gonna be a good day.
Radeon HD 6990 ladies and gentlemen is AMD's latest ATI Radeon HD dual-GPU based graphics card. And for now it will be the fastest 'single' graphics card available on the planet. The performance numbers you will see are anything short from astonishing, breathtaking stuff for a wicked product.
For many weeks now the Radeon HD 6990 has been a product of much discussion. Nobody really could confirm what GPUs would be used, how much graphics memory it would get and so on. Well, rest assured. AMD stuck two Cayman XT GPUs (R6970) onto the PCB and allows them to be clock at R6970 speeds as well, in fact you'll get options in clock-frequencies and TDP with the help of a small micro-switch seated on the card, which leads to 2 vBIOS, one with more acceptable TDPs and the other enabling a higher clock frequency mode. Now I've stated it, Cayman XT GPUs, that means the full shader processor count inside that GPU is available, that sums up towards 3072 shader processors (!)
Memory wise, AMD decided not to skimp here either, the Radeon HD 6990 is a card that will be perfectly suited for Eyefinity solutions, say 3 to 5 monitors PER Radeon HD 6990. In such setup it's wise to have a little more memory per GPU, especially with stuff like high anti-aliasing levels in mind. As such the Radeon HD 6990 comes with a flabbergasting 4 GB of graphics memory, that's two GB per GPU.
All in all, we'll have a lot to talk about today, we'll have a quick chat about verbs like Barts, Cayman and Antilles, then we'll describe the architecture a bit better, we'll have a close look at the products with the help of a photo-gallery ... and well that's all followed by power consumptions, heat levels and performance measurements of course.
Next page please.
We test and review the PowerColor Radeon HD 7850 SCS3 today. This stock clocked Radeon HD 7850 is cooled passively, meaning it has no fans tool it down. That also means it's rather silent as it does not make any noise. But what about temperatures then you must be wondering ?
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7790 2GB OC review
We test and review the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7790 2GB OC edition, also known under SKU code GV-R7790OC-2GD. We benchmark the product incl FCAT Frametimes. The new graphics card is intended to boost a little more performance into entry-level gaming. The Gigabyte HD7790 OC 2GB clocks in at 1075 MHz on the boost engine, packed with totally silent custom cooling.
MSI Radeon HD 7790 TurboDuo OC review
We test and review the MSI Radeon HD 7790 OC edition, also known under SKU code R7790-1GD5-OC incl FCAT Frametimes. The new graphics card is intended to boost a little more performance into entry-level gaming.
Radeon HD 7990 review
We review the new AMD Radeon HD 7990 including FCAT frametime measurements. The dual GPU product that you guys learned to know under codename Malta finally is released. AMD it doing it in style, two fully equipped Tahiti XT2 GPUs versus good yet silent cooling. In this review we'll look at the product, the architecture, the benchmarks, including frametime based FCAT measurements. Head on over towards our AMD Radeon HD 7990.