All hail the new king...HD6990

[Sir Shfvingle]

Today we see the release of the new fastest graphics card in the world: the Radeon HD 6990.
Here is the first review I saw of it. http://www.overclockers.com/amd-rade...s-card-review/

All I can say is, HOLY CRAP
I wanna know what you guys think about this beast. At $700 at least you're getting you're money's worth. Not only is it the fastest, but also the biggest. Look at this: [IMG]file:///C:/Users/SCHNEI%7E1/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-2.png[/IMG]
That and it pretty much requires it's own power supply with a load draw of up to 450W!
GOOD JOB AMD.

[♔DARTH LEGO♔]

lets give it a couple of weeks....

Most of the features being mentioned need to be tested and pulled apart by a vast majority of Techheads before any of it is believable.....or even viable.

PhysX anyone...? SLi....? Crossfire...?

granted its a very impressive chassis, double GPU etc
But already pushing on the one game test, in this case DAII what are other benchmarks going to look like??

[Big Boss]

I am mighty mighty impressed with AMD right now.

They're able to match the temps of nVidia's high end cards and if you overclock it its capable of matching GTX 580 SLI.

[mrcrusty]

This is a good replacement for the HD 5970, though the HD 5970 was far more receptive to overclocking. I doubt I'll ever have the money, need or desire to buy such a behemoth but if I did, setting up one of these with an Arctic Cooling VGA cooler would really boost the e-penis.

Nvidia is likely to release something more powerful but twice as hot and twice as power hungry in the next couple of weeks, so hold onto your hats.

[Sir Shfvingle]

Nvidia is likely to release something more powerful but twice as hot and twice as power hungry in the next couple of weeks, so hold onto your hats.

Oh... *picks hat back up* I haven't heard anything about such a release, though I may not be looking very hard. Any details about this Nvidia card?

[Big Boss]

Oh... *picks hat back up* I haven't heard anything about such a release, though I may not be looking very hard. Any details about this Nvidia card?

Rumoured to be the GTX 590, apparently uses two GF110 cores, ie those found in GTX 580/GTX 570.

[♔DARTH LEGO♔]

Oh... *picks hat back up* I haven't heard anything about such a release, though I may not be looking very hard. Any details about this Nvidia card?

No i think its just a case of who release's their new clobber first, you probably find AMD have pulled hell for leather to get this out ahead of what ever Nvidia is about to release on the market....


...its still very puuurrrtty though and if the dual GPU kicks off successfully we can say goodbye to SLI and crossfire mebbe

[Big Boss]

if the dual GPU kicks off successfully we can say goodbye to SLI and crossfire mebbe

There is almost no way that would happen. For the most part, two seperate cards will still work better than if you put them together on the same chip, ala 2x 6970> 6990. Also, don't forget that there is a substantial market for crossfire and SLI of mid-range cards, ala GTS 450, GTX 460/560, and 6850/6870.

[♔DARTH LEGO♔]

There is almost no way that would happen. For the most part, two seperate cards will still work better than if you put them together on the same chip, ala 2x 6970> 6990. Also, don't forget that there is a substantial market for crossfire and SLI of mid-range cards, ala GTS 450, GTX 460/560, and 6850/6870.

...i love learning

+cookie for you

[Sir Shfvingle]

So if it is two Gf 110 cores, that would probably make it the best graphics card, right? (I mean in performance, not in heat, cost etc)

[Freddie]

I like the revolutionary new gaming feature AMD have added into the Radeon 6990 - the extra immersion you get when flying jets in Battlefield 3. Ouch.

This card is as you would expect overpriced £570 in the UK and $700 in the US. The only silver lining is the 6990 comes 'Eyefinity ready' i.e each card comes shipped with 2 or 3 active display port adaptors already in the box which saves a bit money as those adaptors aren't cheap. Also AMD (and Nvidia) really ought to be fitting bigger fans to their cards as standard, those tiny 60p fans that come on the stock coolers are really not up to it IMO, unless you go 3 slots deep with the heatsink shifting 375 watts of energy requires more pull.

[snuggans]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4209/a...le-card-king/1

the 6990 rocks 2 560's in a couple of the benchmarks, like Metro 2033, Crysis, etc, but then the 2 560's either beats it or comes close in the above benchmarks plus others.

the 6990 tends to come out better the higher the resolution, where it becomes more GPU intensive, but i'm planning on staying in 1680x1050 for quite a while, and in that resolution, the 560's have similar numbers.

two 560's in SLI = $500, less heat, noise, power consumption, and more efficiency with tesselation
a 6990 = $700

in my case, it is really not worth shelling out 200 dollars for it, but it's always good to see some competition. keeps companies on their toes.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

$699.99 is the price tag folks.

Given almost-embarrassing fan steppings, multiple attempts at functioning CrossFire profiles, driver anomalies, and a general reluctance to talk about the logistics of actually selling the Radeon HD 6990, I get the sense that AMD rushed this launch. Marketing 101: it’s better to claim first-place today and possibly get passed up tomorrow than have to launch a second-place card tomorrow.

So, we end up with a flagship board that is undeniably fast. It’d really be an all-out rock star if performance were our only consideration. As it sits, though, heat and noise are this card’s enemies in the same way they plagued Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 480.

Those detractors might even be forgivable if there weren’t better options available. Let’s just assume two of these in quad-CrossFire isn’t even an option for most people, and you’re looking at the best possible way to leverage two GPUs. A pair of Radeon HD 6970s sacrifices nothing except space in your case. That combo is faster, quieter, and more effective at dealing with heat. A pair of GeForce GTX 570s would be a great alternative, too. You give up a bit of speed in some situations, but they’re even quieter than the 6970s.

Skip the Radeon HD 6990 altogether and take advantage of fantastic CrossFire and SLI scaling using more elegant single-GPU cards.

It is the best dual slot card to be sure, but the fact is you're still better off with a pair of 6970's or GTX570's for price, performance, heat, and noise.

[ROFL Copter]

But who actually uses, or needs, two cards anyway?

[Top-Tier-Tech]

But who actually uses, or needs, two cards anyway?

Me.... Even two GTX570's don't push 60FPS to my 55" 1920x1080 screen with all games maxed.

[Ishan]

Similar threads merged and thread title changed.
And i use 2 cards as well, 2 GPUs also come in handy when recording gaming.

[mrcrusty]

HD 6990 is not for normal gaming resolutions. If you're not rocking 2500x1600 or an eyefinity resolution, you're wasting your time. The extra memory helps it really jump out of the gates compared to configurations that are not Crossfire'd 6970s. At 2500x1600, they are competitive with GTX 580 SLI IIRC, that's when they start becoming worth it.

When you've got a massive ass monitor to go with your 980x and other overpriced parts that us poor people will never get.

[Ishan]

@crusty
And you wonder why i picked a 20'inch monitor.
Lol seriously though HD gaming on uber resolutions is very expensive, i miss Voodoo days.

[paradamed]

Hi guys I have a question, kind of a noobish one for you. Does all of today's graphic cards have 2 gpus? My last graphics card is a 4870x2 that has 2 cores. I believe that from there on all graphics card have 2 cores (even 'though they dont use the x2 stuff in the brand name), right?

[Ishan]

No generally it's only one GPU if it's 2 then it's mentioned on the box it self.