AMD Radeon HD 6990 Review: Sumptuous Dual-GPU Power

User Comments: 43

1. March 10, 2011 5:21 AM
   

   Mizzou said:

   Good review, $700 is pretty steep even though this card churns out impressive frame rates across the board. Now we wait for Nvidia's answer to see who will claim the performance crown this time around.

   Reply
2. March 10, 2011 5:57 AM
   fpsgamerJR62 said:

   That's one big graphics card ! How does one even install a foot long graphics card in a regular ATX case ? Put two of these monsters in Quad Crossfire configuration and you'll probably need to run a dual PSU setup as well.

   Reply
3. March 10, 2011 6:18 AM
   

   princeton said:

   I don't even think it'll fit in my antec 900 two. That's definitely a monster card.

   Reply
4. March 10, 2011 6:26 AM
   Guest said:

   There is no problem of space in my case but price and power consuption is extremely high.

   I will wait for next hd 7000 series using 28 nm process and will be much more efficient.

   Reply
5. March 10, 2011 6:57 AM
   

   Kibaruk, TechSpot Paladin, said:

   The power efficiency and the fact that you dont need an extremely bulky case or a crossfire-able mobo, meaning you can set it up as you please for me at least are $100 well spent (And considering you have the money to spend on this it is not a crazy buy).

   Reply
6. March 10, 2011 7:10 AM
   

   stewi0001 said:

   I love how my graphic card is not even on the comparison tests lol! Yea $700.... I do not care for that price, you could almost buy a whole new machine. Especial with how video cards turn over as fast as cell phones. What surprises me the most is how Inefficient the hardware still is since they still have to put massive heatsinks on them. Overclocked hardware I understand but it is just a thought.

   Reply
7. March 10, 2011 7:17 AM
   PinothyJ said:

   I can only imagine PowerJack - [link] - sales are going to go through the roof with those physical specifications! It'll be interesting to see what other manufactures can do to reduce that massive size and weight.

   Impressive though?

   Reply
8. March 10, 2011 10:26 AM
   Guest said:

   I kind of regret buying my gtx 570 sli after looking at this monster

   Reply
9. March 10, 2011 11:05 AM
   herpaderp said:

   @Guest

   I hope you're joking

   Reply
10. March 10, 2011 11:06 AM
    Omnislip said:

    If nVidia are able to come close to matching this price, I'm sure their performance will blow this one away... Look how high the 580 is!

    Reply
11. March 10, 2011 11:16 AM
    Staff
    

    Per Hansson, TS Server Guru, said:

    Now if only there where, I don't know, actually games made to take advantage of these cards?

    -Yea I know, silly idea...

    It's nice to find we can finally play Crysis at full, in 2560x1600 (Of course without antialiasing)

    For all other games we need to crank it up to 4x or 8x MSAA before we get the FPS down to around 100.

    Yea, I can really see the need for these card, really I do...

    -Fires up Crysis 2 ConsoleVersion? on his 3 year old 8800GTS 512MB and watches it play just fine

    Reply
12. March 10, 2011 11:52 AM
    

    dividebyzero, trainee n00b, said:

    This card, as well as Crossfired HD6970/6950 or SLI'ed GTX580/570 aren't aimed at 2560x1600 res. They are aimed at two specific groups.

    1. Multi-monitor gamers. 5040x1050 and up (People who would buy the card)

    2. Marketing hype and fanboy-fodder (People who won't buy this card).

    Pretty simple strategy really. Top the benchmarks with the übercard and watch the masses gobble up the entry and mainstream versions -the illusion of performance by association.

    "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" -Bob Tasca

    @herpaderp

    I think you'll find that "Guest" is a fully paid up member of the local Flamebait union- trust me I've studied them in petri dishes when I was doing my dissertation as a Trollatrician.

    One thing the card has going for it is that it must be built like a tank. Tweaktown managed to clock the core to 1000MHz...the only downside (apart from increased power draw) seems that the card's fan needs to ramp to 100%....and 90.2dB. Vendor non-reference cooling might be advantageous in this case.

    Reply
13. March 10, 2011 4:23 PM
    Classic Rock said:

    I'd like to see a benchmark of two of these in Xfire on the new 1155 platform just to see if the x8 bandwidth of the PCI-E lanes cause a performance hit.

    Reply
14. March 10, 2011 5:22 PM
    Guest said:

    If I had that kinda money, I'd buy 2 twin frozr III 6950's, flash to 6970 than xfire. Or just spring for the 6970 editions. 6990 and 590 will be beasts, but I dunno where the usage is practical outside of extreme benchmarking.....

    Regenweald.

    Reply
15. March 10, 2011 6:12 PM
    

    St1ckM4n said:

    What happened to the 'overclock switch' ?

    Reply
16. March 10, 2011 6:19 PM
    

    red1776, Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, said:

    If nVidia are able to come close to matching this price, I'm sure their performance will blow this one away... Look how high the 580 is!

    You are leaving out one very important part of the equation Omni. The power usage/cooling/PCIE spec/warranty are all acting as the great equalizer here. .you can damn well bet that AMD would have ramped up two full and complete 6970's if they could simply ignore these issues (they did to an extent). The same goes for Nvidia. Two full blown 580's is pushing 500w, they will have some limiting factors at work as well.

    Reply
17. March 10, 2011 8:02 PM
    tacobfm said:

    STOP HATING TECHSPOT U KNOW THESE ARE COOL.

    But yeah, its performance is what it should be and I think the price is justfiable - for now.

    Reply
18. March 10, 2011 8:24 PM
    Guest said:

    Well, to be completely honest the performance is mindblowing, but I have to say it's still overpriced. I'd rather buy two 6970's or just buy two 6950's and flash them, saves money and squeezes out more performance. Also, the noise factor seems to pull me back too.

    However, I did find the power consumption and heat temperatures to not be half bad for its performance, but still not enough to make me buy it. I mean $700? Really? Did AMD forget it had the 6970 or something? $650 or $600 is more realistic, and would make this card completely worth it. I'm eager to see nVidia's GTX 590, if they can pull off around the same performance with a cheaper price tag I'll be incredibly impressed, if not, I'll just stick to the two 6970's.

    This card is really only appealing to people with only one PCI-E x 16 slot open, (And if they can have this card without bottlenecking it I don't see how they only have one slot open in the first place...) or to people who want to say "1 h4ve t3h m0sT l337 c4rd".

    ....Or to people who like big numbers....

    Reply
19. March 10, 2011 8:51 PM
    

    princeton said:

    Guest said:

    Well, to be completely honest the performance is mindblowing, but I have to say it's still overpriced. I'd rather buy two 6970's or just buy two 6950's and flash them, saves money and squeezes out more performance. Also, the noise factor seems to pull me back too.

    However, I did find the power consumption and heat temperatures to not be half bad for its performance, but still not enough to make me buy it. I mean $700? Really? Did AMD forget it had the 6970 or something? $650 or $600 is more realistic, and would make this card completely worth it. I'm eager to see nVidia's GTX 590, if they can pull off around the same performance with a cheaper price tag I'll be incredibly impressed, if not, I'll just stick to the two 6970's.

    This card is really only appealing to people with only one PCI-E x 16 slot open, (And if they can have this card without bottlenecking it I don't see how they only have one slot open in the first place...) or to people who want to say "1 h4ve t3h m0sT l337 c4rd".

    ....Or to people who like big numbers....

    I can't think of any boards that can use a cpu that won't bottleneck this card that only have one slot. Almost every board can do x8 x8 so this product is really just so AMD can claim the fastest card crown(until Nvidia releases)

    Reply
20. March 11, 2011 3:07 AM
    Staff
    

    Julio Franco, TechSpot Editor, said:

    What happened to the 'overclock switch' ?

    Thanks for the feedback. Added to the end of the review:

    Update - Dual-BIOS support: Some of you noticed we didn't mention one of the Radeon HD 6990's unique features. <a href="http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/a
    d-radeon-hd-6000/hd-6990/Pages/amd-radeon-hd-6990-overview
    aspx#4">Dual-BIOS support</a> can be toggled from a physical unlocking switch on the card, which switches between the factory-supported BIOS of 375W (tested throughout this review) and an "Extreme Performance BIOS" that boosts core clock speed from 830MHz to 880MHz and in the process throttles power consumption to a staggering 450W. What you should know: performance difference was negligible when overclocking the card.

    Reply
21. March 11, 2011 3:17 AM
    

    Leeky said:

    Well, lets see what nVidia bring to the table now.

    Whoever wins this contest gets the millions of dollars on the back of the "I got x because they make the worlds best GPU" race.

    As I understood it though, the HD5970 decimated all competition, even XF GPUs, but this is no better than two separate GPUs of the same type -so have we really progressed when someone could achieve better results using two of the same HD6970s in XF?

    Reply
22. March 11, 2011 4:05 AM
    

    dividebyzero, trainee n00b, said:

    The present situation is not greatly removed from the HD 5970. [link] , even though the latter is ostensively running the same GPU's. The difference being that the 5970 runs at 5850 clocks (725MHz as opposed to 850MHz).

    The 6990 vs 6970 CFX is a little more complicated in that the GPU's in the 6990 at binned for substantially lower voltage (1.12 v 1.17) and the 6990 is using the "old" 5Gb vRAM which demands less voltage as well as a slightly lower core/shader clock, but essentially the difference in performance between the 6990 and CF'ed 6970's is much less than that of the previous cards- mostly due to the similarity in core/shader/memory clocks. A certain percentage of that difference can also be attributed to driver immaturity.

    Reply
23. March 11, 2011 4:51 AM
    

    Leeky said:

    Thanks DBZ.

    So do you feel the performance of the HD6990 will increase as the drivers mature then?

    I definitely see the reason to order one, especially if your stuck to one GPU only due to case, PSU, or motherboard restrictions - besides a single GPU is much easier maintenance than dual GPUs, even if it has come a very long way in the last couple of years.

    I guess I need to hurry up and decide what one I'm going for - I've been holding out for months now, waiting for the next one to arrive, but I'm beginning to realise that this way of thinking is just meaning I'm sat still while everything else runs rings around me.

    Reply
24. March 11, 2011 2:27 PM
    Guest said:

    Does 6990 still consumes 600 watts as I read emails?? If so,, please allow users to power down to 25 watts for reading emails or browsing.. . I have nothing against hard core gamers with outrageous demands for power only on temporary basis.. It is still ess than having them drive around in a car!!

    Reply
25. March 11, 2011 2:43 PM
    

    dividebyzero, trainee n00b, said:

    @Leeky

    I don't think you'll see any big performance increases with more mature drivers. For all the hoopla surrounding driver releases they never deliver across the board sizeable gains. What I think you will see is a more consistant performance in relation to crossfired 6970's. The 6990 will never beat the dual card setup simply because it is clocked 6% lower in core/shader and 10% lower in memory. These lower resources seem to be mitigated slightly by the better performance offered by the 6990's internal bridge chip over the conventional Crossfire connector - I would stress that this is my observation and not an established fact, although the Crossfire ribbon connector does have potential for bandwidth limitation.

    Dual cards still have more downside than upside as far as I'm concerned.

    Driver support tails off considerably quicker for dual-gpu cards,

    If a game has a SLI/Crossfire driver glitch then switching out of multi-gpu mode is painless if you're using two discrete cards.

    Dual-gpu cards traditionally have higher RMA and failure rates. They are more complex, have to handle higher voltages and heat output. A cracked solder joint on a duallie for instance presents a bigger user problem than the same scenario on one of a pair of single-gpu cards.

    Dual-gpu cards carry a price premium for the given performance-partially due to manufacturing complexity, partly due to the binning process needed to identify suitable gpu's, and partly to keep customer demand down, since duallies aren't money spinners and an AIB will make more profit from selling two single-gpu cards.

    With regards this particular dual-gpu card...it has the potential to become a white elephant if AMD and their board partners don't clarify the warranty status of the card. You will note that it isn't being offered for sale in a number of large markets where you expect it to sold. Scan in the UK, Newegg in the U.S. being prime examples. AMD or the AIB's will simply have to eat the any losses incurred -and that includes system failures due to over-current draw or recall the card and lock the BIOS down to 830MHz/375w -which should be it's death-knell since anyone buying this card is certainly looking at overclocking and benchmarking.

    Economically (I'll use Overclockers.co.uk for costings since they have most of the UK's 6990 stock) and using like-for-like comparison

    HD 6990 is £557.99 inc VAT (cheapest price on the site)

    or 2 x HD 6970 (at £264.98 inc VAT ea.) £529.96

    or 2 x HD 6950 2Gb (at £209.99 inc VAT) £419.98

    The 6990 can be overclocked to ~920 to 950MHz and 5200-5400 memory before noise levels start playing a significant factor. Tweaktown managed 1000 MHz core at the expense of 100% fan speed and 90dB - a noise level that probably exceeds most developed nations guidelines for preventing industrial deafness.

    Dual 6970's can clock higher in general -the caveat being that stacking the reference cards without a spare slot between them raises temps considerably, so either three slots between PCIe x16 or at least a non-reference cooling card as the primary.

    Dual 6950's of course can be unlocked to 6970 specification, although they can lack overclocking headroom in comparison with the "real" 6970 - but for £100+ saving you can't have everything.

    Reply

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