Radeon HD 7990 And GeForce GTX 690: Bring Out The Big Guns

[Vatharian]

Housing two 7990 or 7970x2 in ine case with OCed CPU forces me to buy 1500W power supply. While only gaming I could theoretically duck just under 1200W, but probably only on single-rail PSU and when something (PhysiX? Havok? heavy video encode), would blow me past PSU spec. And you DO NOT WANT 1.2 kW unit on single rail to short circuit. Probably main line breaker will fire sooner than OVP inside. Also, @formatC: I'm supprised you have in Germany 1 kW/h. The whole rest of world counta used energy in kWh. Dividing power (Watt) by time (hour, second) has no sense. 1 Watt is 1 Joule of work in 1 second, so you'd get... 1 J per squared second... Wait, did you just invent energy's flow acceleration? 1 kWh which is 3.6 MJ is energy unit, 1 Watt is energy used in time (or speed at which you use energy).

 

[Vatharian]

*OCP, not OVP, sorry. I thought about it and wrote another.

 

[FormatC]

@Vatharian:
This was a mistake. After 14 hours of work it looks im my eyes like nitpicking.

 

[madjimms]

WOW AMD really needs to work on power consumption.

 

[Guest]

Wth does adaptive v-sync have to do with multi-gpu microstuttering?

IMO, you dropped the ball on this one. Obviously, if you're using double buffering, don't use vsync, you should be using triple buffering anyway. This is a seperate issue than multi GPU microstuttering.

 

[neon neophyte]

let's keep in mind the 7990 is 150-200 bucks cheaper

 

[colson79]

[citation][nom]Vatharian[/nom]Housing two 7990 or 7970x2 in ine case with OCed CPU forces me to buy 1500W power supply. While only gaming I could theoretically duck just under 1200W, but probably only on single-rail PSU and when something (PhysiX? Havok? heavy video encode), would blow me past PSU spec. And you DO NOT WANT 1.2 kW unit on single rail to short circuit. Probably main line breaker will fire sooner than OVP inside. Also, @formatC: I'm supprised you have in Germany 1 kW/h. The whole rest of world counta used energy in kWh. Dividing power (Watt) by time (hour, second) has no sense. 1 Watt is 1 Joule of work in 1 second, so you'd get... 1 J per squared second... Wait, did you just invent energy's flow acceleration? 1 kWh which is 3.6 MJ is energy unit, 1 Watt is energy used in time (or speed at which you use energy).[/citation]

The 7970's looked better in that review to me. High overall frame rates than the 680's and this was done a while ago before the huge driver improvements on the 7970.

 

[Novuake]

[citation][nom]g-unit1111[/nom]What's with the gigantic coolers on these video cards? Do they really need that much cooling? Why don't they just go liquid?[/citation]

Yes they do need this cooler if you look at thermal/power envelope. As for liquid??? LOL liquid would cause thousand of issues kinda making warranty an issue. Besides, where would you mount the Radiator???

 

[Guest]

3 slot design? That's like a (not so) little computer inside your computer. Lets see...how did that meme go?

"Yo dawg, I herd you like computers, so I put a computer in your computer, so you can game while you game"

 

[BestJinjo]

larkspur,

What's the point of linking a review from March?

Actually, GTX690 especially has issues with triple-monitor gaming. It's nearly 30% slower with 3x 1920x1200 monitors compared to HD7970 Ghz CF:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/geforce-gtx-690-sli_6.html#sect3

 

[metalspork]

Please label your axes and units!!

 

[damian86]

Very good review.this is what we want to see. I just thought the his was more quiet in gaming test i thought the 690 was louder..but maybe im wrong. Good stuff!

 

[swordrage]

[citation][nom]amuffin[/nom]Is it just me or do the 7970X2 and 7990 coolers look so fast and fugly?[/citation]

Yeah it's just you.. I love crazy designs.. with edges, curves, colours.. Minimalism is just optimization. u can't call that a design.

 

[lyncer777]

im an AMD fanboy and i hate Nvidia.

 

[rdc85]

Is this Radeon Pro soft can work wth all CFX setup?

It's seems very usefull tools... ( maybe someone can write an user guide here )

 

[gianny37]

I don't know if it's just me but I'm getting 6422 points in the gpu extreme preset in 3d mark 11 with my 690 and 310 beta driver?? any thoughts?

 

[gianny37]

oh and im getting 19943 points gpu performance preset bench with my 690?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

really dont care about the cards as i have no need for such performance, nor can i afford it. But i was very excited about the microstuttering fix, having just bought a second 6850, have yet to install it though.

 

[FormatC]

@gianny37:
Which version of 3DMark11? Each version performs different! To compare all single benches I'm using a non-updated installation from December 2011. Each system performs different also. The only point is to compare the cards to each other.

You can not compare apples and oranges.

@surfa:
This is a kind of dynamic frame limitiation, not more You are right, triple buffering is better for smoother pictures but it increases the latency.

 

[army_ant7]

1 kW/h in Germany: 0.25 Euro (approx. 0.34 USD)
This IS an issue.

@Vatharian:
This was a mistake. After 14 hours of work it looks im my eyes like nitpicking.

Igor, an honest mistake. I was planning to point that out as well, though not as unspleasantly as Vathatian did. I hope he/she was just being playful and not mocking.

where can I download RadeonPro 1.1.1.0

I can only find 1.1.0.6
http://www.radeonpro.info/en-US/Downloads/

1.1.0.6 is missing Dynamic Framerate Control

Check out this page.

Wth does adaptive v-sync have to do with multi-gpu microstuttering?

I'm curious as well... I'm wondering if frame latency is kept stable by Adaptive V-sync because GPU resources aren't "wasted" on extra (from the refresh rate) frames and not limited either when a frame being processed "misses the train" (the vertical blank interleave). Is that why? (I don't feel like that's the whole story.) Also, does the RadeonPro's method work exactly the same as Nvidia's? (I wonder if some idea stealing was involved. Just a personal concern of mine. Hehe...)

Yeah it's just you.. I love crazy designs.. with edges, curves, colours.. Minimalism is just optimization. u can't call that a design.

I think Steve Jobs and/or some guys at Apple do call it "design," and it sold. Hehe... I'm not all for design, but I am for optimization. (I'm not saying that Apple products are optimized.)

 

[adrhellb]

[citation][nom]twinshadow[/nom]if you are spending 1000$ dollars on a video card paying a Power bill is not an issue[/citation]

Actually, it is and issue. Many entusiasts/gamers, including myself, don't blindly seek out the parts with the most performance. I like to find quality parts that fit and makes a good looking and well balanced rig (but obviously still as high-end as possible.) Having a 600watt oven in my case is NOT justified by ~+10% performance.

 

[mellomaster]

Glad to finally see the big cards go at it. Wish AMD had actually supported the 7990 instead of HIS and Powercolor going on their own. Overall, I still would go with the GTX 690... maybe I just love the cards sleek look and low noise or maybe my bad AMD experiences from years ago have skewed my vision. Either way, great review!

 

[twinshadow]

[citation][nom]adrhellb[/nom]Actually, it is and issue. Many entusiasts/gamers, including myself, don't blindly seek out the parts with the most performance. I like to find quality parts that fit and makes a good looking and well balanced rig (but obviously still as high-end as possible.) Having a 600watt oven in my case is NOT justified by ~+10% performance.[/citation]


Sounds like to me you have budget and you stick to it its ok most people can’t afford to buy all high in parts I certainly can’t. The person that’s buying this card mostly drives an 80,000 car and most likely has a custom case that supports a ton of water cooling so sound and heat is not a factor. By saying that worrying about a power bill it’s not on this person’s mind, also when you are playing games it only got up to 350 – 370 watts.

 

[gianny37]

im using the latest version of 3dmark 11... but never mind i was using an extra +100 on the core and +100 on the memory hehe =] but still i'd rather do that...

 

[army_ant7]

About this talk of: if people who buy cards like this would be concerned about power. I would say that it's foolish to make it sound absolute, as if every single person who would buy cards like these wouldn't care about power. I mean, what is a person to make such absolute claims? "Most" sounds more acceptable, but unless one can present statistics, it's really moot (making claims as well would be pointless without objective data).