bystander :
I think you may be surprised to learn that there is almost nothing special about a 7990 in terms of drivers. It is just 7970's in crossfire, and behave the same with with ever so slight changes. The 690 is nothing but two 680's and it doesn't perform better than 680's either.
Actually "bystander" I am familiar with your posts and generally respect your opinion. About the only thing I find surprising is that so far on these comments, I'm not learning anything from you at all.
While this new 7990 is indeed basically two 7970's in CF one very important difference is that these two GPU's are connected via a "PEX 8747 switch—the same one Nvidia uses to enable inter-GPU communication on the GeForce GTX 690". Nvidia was able to get micro-stutter under control with the development of the same type of frame pacing driver that AMD is now developing for the 7990.
So yes it is important that for the 1st time this is an official AMD card and AMD is now (also for the first time) officially supporting and writing drivers for it instead of just relying on it's 7970 drivers.
The only unfortunate thing here is that we have to wait until June/July to get even beta drivers (see de5_Roy's post) But again it shouldn't be a big surprise that new hardware will benefit from maturing drivers.
I know your thinking "this isn't new hardware" but it is to AMD, the makers of the GPU's on that hardware and the arguably best developers of drivers for that particular configuration.
bystander :
Anyways, don't expect much other than the a microstutter fix in the near future and as far as the bias goes, if that is the case, every review site that used FCAT is biased as they all came to the same conclusion.
Good a micro-stutter fix is all this card needs to be the best gamer as well as the best all around graphics card on the market.
I think it was very good that FCAT was used in this review and wish it was used in more as it presents more accurate facts.
I also don't have a problem with anyone saying that at this moment in time the GTX 690 is the best gamer because that is in fact the truth.
I would also not have as much of a problem if this was a HD 7990 vs GTX 690 review but, it was supposed to be a review of the HD 7990 not just a somewhat biased shoot-out.
In short I have no problem with the facts that were presented in this review, just the way in which they were presented (as is clearly evidenced in my 2nd post).