AMD Radeon HD 7990: Eight Games And A Beastly Card For $1,000

[cangelini]

We've been waiting for this since 2011. AMD is ready to unveil its Radeon HD 7990, featuring a pair of Tahiti graphics processors. Can the dual-slot board capture our hearts with great compute and 3D performance, or does Nvidia walk away with this round?

AMD Radeon HD 7990: Eight Games And A Beastly Card For $1,000 : Read more

 

[blackmagnum]

If I had 1,000 dollars... I would buy a Titan. Its power efficiency, drivers and uber-chip goodness is unmatched.

 

[whyso]

Power usage?

Thats some nice gains from the prototype driver.

 

[ilysaml]

Nice article!! Unbeatable performance out of the box.

 

[17seconds]

Sort of seems like a mess to me. The game bundle is nice.

 

[timw03878]

Here's an idea. Take away the 8 games at 40 bucks a piece and deduct that from the insane 1000 price tag.

 

[donquad2001]

this test was 99% useless to the average gamer,Test the card at 1900x1080 like most of us use to get a real ideal of what its like,only your unigine benchmarks helped the average gamer,who cares what any card can do at a resolution we cant use anyway?

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]whyso[/nom]Power usage?Thats some nice gains from the prototype driver.[/citation]
Power is the one thing I didn't have time for. We already know the 7990 is a 375 W card, while GTX 690 is a 300 W card, though. We also know AMD has Zero Core, which is going to shave off power at idle with one GPU shut off. I'm not expecting any surprises on power that those specs and technologies don't already insinuate.

 

[ASHISH65]

nice article! here comes the Competitor of gtx 690!

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]donquad2001[/nom]this test was 99% useless to the average gamer,Test the card at 1900x1080 like most of us use to get a real ideal of what its like,only your unigine benchmarks helped the average gamer,who cares what any card can do at a resolution we cant use anyway?[/citation]
If you're looking to game at 1920x1080, I can save you a ton of money by recommending something less than half as expensive. This card is for folks playing at 2560 *at least.* Next time, I'm looking to get FCAT running on a 7680x1440 array

 

[hero1]

Nice article. I was hopping that they would have addressed the whining but they haven't and that's a shame. Performance wise it can be matched by GTX 680 SLI and GTX 690 without the huge time variance and runt frames. Let's hope they fix their whining issue and FPS without forcing users to turn on V-sync. For now I know where my money is going consider that I have dealt with AMD before:XFX and Sapphire and didn't like the results (whining, artifacts, XF stops working etc). Sorry but I gave the red team a try and I will stick with Nvidia until AMD can prove that they have fixed their issues.

 

[ohim]

Why are all you people, that this card is not made for, complain about the price tag? AMD / Nvidia for sure don`t really make a profit if any out of these monsters. They are just for show like in the CPU business.
People mostly buy Intel (I3/i5 a lot more than i7) just because Intel can provide top of the line CPUs in the i7 Extreme range. Same goes here, if some hears that AMD has a better 1000$ card than Nvidia, they will probably spend 100-200$ for an AMD card and not Nvidia.
Power ... unless you`re not a guy who saves 2 years in a row for this card to have a 6 months nerd gaming glory you won`t care that much how power hungry this card is.

Is just like asking Ferrari or Lamborghini how many mpg their cars do.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

1.I wonder if inserting all those pauses in the rendering pipeline for smoothness harms the compute performance.

2. Regarding the fan noise and the hum : It would be interesting to know how much noticable is the fan noise and the hum with increaseing listner distance. IOW, which noise is more noticable at near/medium/far distances ?


Drivers still are AMD's biggest weakness. I would have expected AMD to havetop-notch , A-one drivers to go with the HD7990. After all, this is AMD's halo product. The first impression is what matters. The conclusion is basically "Card is good. Drivers are poor, with better coming in future". So ultimately its selling a promise, which may/may not succeed. It appears to me that AMD doesnt value its own products.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

Ohh, and a video conversion test would have been nice too. (Is there any software available that supports CFX ?)
Also, has the Video Conversion Engine in AMD taken off ?

 

[jezus53]

It's very interesting that AMD couldn't find a capacitor that wouldn't cause this noise. I feel once third party vendors get the reference they'll find ways of removing that. Hope they fix it soon or else nVidia will have a new line of cards while AMD is having problems with neatly two year old chips!!!

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]hero1[/nom]Nice article. I was hopping that they would have addressed the whining but they haven't and that's a shame. Performance wise it can be matched by GTX 680 SLI and GTX 690 without the huge time variance and runt frames. Let's hope they fix their whining issue and FPS without forcing users to turn on V-sync. For now I know where my money is going consider that I have dealt with AMD before:XFX and Sapphire and didn't like the results (whining, artifacts, XF stops working etc). Sorry but I gave the red team a try and I will stick with Nvidia until AMD can prove that they have fixed their issues.[/citation]
Unfortunately I'm really not sure the whining issue is something that can be fixed with a driver update. I think it has more to do with the hardware on the board than anything else. But it's good to see that AMD has finally recognized the frame time variance and micro-stutter problem, and are actively pursuing a solution. Although the test in the review was limited, I think it's telling that every gamer tested was able to recognize the difference between AMD and Nvidia cards, and even the difference brought by AMD's own prototype drivers.

 

[hero1]

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]Unfortunately I'm really not sure the whining issue is something that can be fixed with a driver update. I think it has more to do with the hardware on the board than anything else. But it's good to see that AMD has finally recognized the frame time variance and micro-stutter problem, and are actively pursing a solution. Although the test in the review was limited, I think it's telling that every gamer tested was able to recognize the difference between AMD and Nvidia cards, and even the difference brought by AMD's own prototype drivers.[/citation]

I know and that's what I meant by hopping that they would have addressed the whining with this card. It happens to all their cards, well the ones that I have owned especially the XFX and if they knew what causes then they should have fixed it.

Let's hope that the prototype driver will also translate to better drivers for all their GPUs and address the frame rate issues. Other than that, it is a good card but I think, for my personal use since I was waiting to see what this can offer, I will just get the GTX 680 or the GTX 780 next month and will definitely go back to AMD if they address those issues.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]whyso[/nom]Power usage?Thats some nice gains from the prototype driver.[/citation]

For everyone seeking power and heat results:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6915/amd-radeon-hd-7990-review-7990-gets-official/16

It consumes a lot of power under load, substantially more than the GTX690, but like Chris said that's to be expected. The big difference with the 7990 seems to be acoustics in relation to temps at load. It's a massive improvement over the 6990, and pretty much on par with the GTX690. Unfortunately the coil whine seems to undo a lot of the improvements made to the stock cooler, but all things considered it's pretty impressive what AMD was able to do in this area, especially in comparison to unofficial solutions from other vendors (dual slot, only requires 2 8-pin).

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]hero1[/nom]I know and that's what I meant by hopping that they would have addressed the whining with this card.[/citation]
Sorry, that's a reading fail on my part. Thought you said, 'hope they'll address the whining' or something to that effect.

 

[hero1]

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]Sorry, that's a reading fail on my part. Thought you said, 'hope they'll address the whining' or something to that effect.[/citation]

No problem.

 

[bartholomew]

A Price tag of $849.99 would had been quite aggressive & increased its value significantly.

 

[vmem]

Great article, lots of interesting facts.

that aside, it seems the card is good overall, but plagued with the usual slurry of small issues from AMD, namely the capacitor whine and poor drivers (with update to come I guess). It is interesting to once again see how much Tomb Raider results falls apart from the rest. if the next xbox indeed uses AMD hardware, the gaming world could be turned upside down

 

[captain_jonno]

As a GTX 690 on a 30" 2560x1600 im impressed. OpenCL it fkn owns. good for bitcoining i guess. But yeh if it was say at $799 people would go nuts for it. I have been an AMD/ATI guy when it counts, but the drivers compared to Nvidia its really make it hard to pay such a price

 

[Bloob]

So basically this card is pointless. Can't imagine anyone planning to buy either 7990 or 690 caring about bundles, but rather they'd be after the top performer, which is the 690. This from someone who built his 3 months old rig with 8350 & 7850.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

The interesting question is whether HD7990 will still be as lucrattive if it is priced at $899 or such