Radeon HD 7990 In CrossFire: The Red Wedding Of Graphics

[cangelini]

We just got our hands on two more Radeon HD 7990s, bringing the lab's total to three. That might sound like the makings of a 1000 W gaming fest. But we cut the experience short when we noticed some crazy-high temperatures and not-so-nice acoustics.

Radeon HD 7990 In CrossFire: The Red Wedding Of Graphics : Read more

 

[Guest]

Hmmmmmm...I see. Runs too hot. You guys are in Bakersfield right? I'll tell ya what. Since we're gonna hit 100+ here anyway pretty soon, I'll shall relieve you of said cards and give you my Lasco standing upright fan. It does a way better job of cooling at the cost of acoustics. Fair deal??? XD

 

[016ive]

2000$ for a heating system for one room!

 

[blakphoenix]

Nice and detailed read, I would wonder how they went if you had a side fan on the case (or did I miss that this test did have that)? Love how far you went with getting answers from other companies though, nice to see.

 

[Combat Wombat]

That 4 min's of gameplay would be worth burning out my new motherboard.

7990's here I come! Not.

 

[de5_Roy]

let's see...
the frame pacing driver that amd said would be available in june, isn't available yet.
7990 came out over a year after 7970.
7990(reference cooler) has problems.
dual 7990(reference cooler) have even more problems.
titan has high demand, enough to outsell dual gpu cards.
nvidia has better drivers as of now.
nvidia let gtx690 sell for a year before launching titan and gtx780 while improving drivers further (and before making fcat available outside *wink*wink*).
oh.. i forgot about the free games. free games always make problems go away....
.... nicely done, amd. :lol:

i like tahiti(gcn) and it's performance. don't like the injustice amd's doing to gcn based cards.

 

[Twoboxer]

I wonder if a Silverstone FT02 could keep them from getting toasty

 

[17seconds]

No big surprise. I wonder how many people actually own a dual 7990 setup. Can't be many, but surely they exist in the hands of owners with too much money and not enough common sense.

 

[sarinaide]

Most 7990 buids we have done have been with water cooling, not only is it better for aesthetics HS/F cooling is just not good enough for its full Tahiti cores, underwater there are no thermal issues albeit needing to spend extra on cooling. For a hardcore enthusiast its acceptable.

 

[Arls]

Liquid cooling it is....

 

[CommentariesAnd More]

This is just why I XFired 7970s for a build I made recently. The 7990 has the worst cooling you will find for a Dual GPU card. The Performance was also less by 5FPS and the issues were much less than what I read for the 7990s review. But games , are the simplest option to make up the loss according to AMD. Plus it was more expensive. Here in India the 7990s cost like 80,000 INR ( 1335 USD ) and that too after searching em for a week , thanks to no stock out here in India. Whereas I got the 7970s for under 60,000INR ( 1000 USD ) Yeah , I felt like LOL! But anyways , Games can make for the difference , but I still wont prefer it.

 

[yyk71200]

Ugh... Why did they even bother making this card? Bragging rights? They would have been better spent this afford toward releasing the next generation sooner.

 

[slomo4sho]

I fail to see the purpose of this article.

 

[Soul_keeper]

Excellent article, nice to see some honesty and constructive criticism.

 

[Memnarchon]

Great article. People that spend $1000 or $2000 only for GPU(s) they surely want to know what they are buying.

AMD, you are making wonderful single GPU cards. Stop destroying your name by creating dual GPUs with problems. Just stop...

 

[bin1127]

I like how the article added in that demand for dual gpu dropped to rock bottom with the release of titan. I'm surprised how many people there are that buys these monster cards.

 

[Soda-88]

Idk about the general consensus, but if I was to spend $2000 on graphics alone, I'd sure as hell get at least $400 worth of water cooling to make sure my entire rig doesn't melt/catch fire.

 

[sarinaide]

let's see...
the frame pacing driver that amd said would be available in june, isn't available yet.
7990 came out over a year after 7970.
7990(reference cooler) has problems.
dual 7990(reference cooler) have even more problems.
titan has high demand, enough to outsell dual gpu cards.
nvidia has better drivers as of now.
nvidia let gtx690 sell for a year before launching titan and gtx780 while improving drivers further (and before making fcat available outside *wink*wink*).
oh.. i forgot about the free games. free games always make problems go away....
.... nicely done, amd. :lol:

i like tahiti(gcn) and it's performance. don't like the injustice amd's doing to gcn based cards.

New Zealand was out before Malta, just never official, but unlike most Dual GPU's it was an experiment at putting uncapped top line GPU's on a single PCB, but clearly the power demand moreover the heat is to high for fully fledged Tahiti XT cores to be thrown on at once.

New drivers will release soon so the point is moot.

Nvidia drivers, the ones that saw a vastly superior GTX680 at launch end up around 10% slower than the 7970 after new catalyst drivers. To me the only thing AMD are doing wrong is releasing sea Islands in such close proximity to Volcanic Islands early next year but can't say you are not spoiled for choice.

 

[scrumworks]

A full GPU article without any benchmarks, just for dissing AMD. Tom's continues with the good ol' bias.

 

[Memnarchon]

Nvidia drivers, the ones that saw a vastly superior GTX680 at launch end up around 10% slower than the 7970 after new catalyst drivers.

You are being confused with the 7970GE. GTX680 is still better than 7970 non-GE. When GTX680 was launched GE didn't exist. That's why AMD released GE anyway in order to take the single performance crown back.

 

[ubercake]

If I were AMD, I'd start to take the issues extremely seriously. First, they need to fix their microstutter issues across the board for single gpu and especially crossfire setups where it's more pronounced.

After that, they can focus on producing something that uses crossfire tech such as the 7990s.

I mean... If you produce a product that relies on flawed tech (microstutter in crossfire), fix the flawed tech, then produce the product (7990). It's like a house made of straw.

Consumers need competition in this space. I want to have choices when it comes to multi-card setups. Currently, there's only one company that produces a consistently solid multi-card solution: Nvidia.

 

[spentshells]

OUCH! Scathing

 

[daveys93]

I like how this article started with the intent of benchmarking Xfire'd 7990's and turned into a full analysis of the thermal issues preventing the benchmarking from happening. I especially like how Tom's reached out to the boutique builders for confirmation of the issues; side note of interest was the extent to which the boutique builders test the configurations they offer, quite impressive.

 

[Patrik Eskelinen]

Can I make a request for the editors? (I've been reading TH for like 5 years now, and this will be my first ever comment, so cheers to that!) Would it be possible to have audio samples???? I actually live in Finland, and for the love of meself, I've never, ever, even seen a system with a 780 GTX, nor a 7990HD. I've only ever glimpsed at those in shops, within closed carton boxes... So, I mean. There's constantly these complaints about noise, but for a person like me, who can't afford a system even close to any of these monster specs is goddamn curios to actually hear this kind of system. And I bet that if you can measure the noise in very professional, you can also record it to for our pleasure? As a bonus and to complement my first ever comment, thx for the great reviews and articles published.

 

[bunz_of_steel]

Time to start selling Video cards with water blocks!