Report: AMD to Discontinue Radeon HD 7990 in Q3 2013

[N.Broekhuijsen]

A report indicates that AMD might be ending the life of the Radeon HD 7990 "Malta" graphics card.

Report: AMD to Discontinue Radeon HD 7990 in Q3 2013 : Read more

 

[smeezekitty]

Unconfirmed

 

[JJ1217]

Understandable. You can't expect people to buy a $1000 card especially when AMD cards are littered with crossfire issues. And it is most of the time $200 more than two 7970's (close to $400 if you caught those 7970's near $330).

 

[jdlobb]

The GeForce Titan really changed the game for the $1000 GPU market. I simply can't imagine why anybody would buy one of these dual GPU cards, either the 690 or the 7990, when you can buy a Titan for the same price, have nearly the same overall speed without all of the SLI/Crossfire issues. I remember reading in one of the GPU reviews not long ago, i think it was the one about testing crossfired 7990s, where a rep from one of the custom gaming rig assemblers said that when the Titan came out demand for the 690 and 7990 dropped to near nothing.

What AMD needs to do is push out their own response to the Titan, a monster single GPU card with an enterprise pedigree.

 

[Azn Cracker]

^ actually the gtx 690 was faster than the titan by a pretty big margin. Either way, both are expensive and not worth it.

 

[smeezekitty]

What AMD needs to do is push out their own response to the Titan, a monster single GPU card with an enterprise pedigree.

Absolutely

 

[blppt]

I really dont get it....if AMD is having CFX latency issues with the 7990, shouldnt the problem be even worse with crossfired 7970s, or at the very least, the same? Wouldnt they in effect be admitting that their entire CFX driver base is flawed?

Because, based on my understanding, having both chips on the same board should DECREASE the SLI/Crossfire issues, not make them worse.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

It wouldn't really surprise me. Quite a few sources have indicated that the card hasn't been selling well since launch, likely due to AMD's ongoing micro stutter issues. What gets me is that they were aware of the driver issues long before launch, yet they still chose to release the card, and on top of that charge top dollar for it.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Wouldnt they in effect be admitting that their entire CFX driver base is flawed?

Well ya, it is. They acknowledged the problem a long time ago and have been actively working on a solution since.

 

[renz496]

^ actually the gtx 690 was faster than the titan by a pretty big margin. Either way, both are expensive and not worth it.

690 is faster but Titan was able to out sell the total sold 690 for a year just in three months. even nvidia themselves are surprised with that. anyway i bet most titan end up with professional or small company that can't afford to get full fledged Tesla

 

[bystander]

I really dont get it....if AMD is having CFX latency issues with the 7990, shouldnt the problem be even worse with crossfired 7970s, or at the very least, the same? Wouldnt they in effect be admitting that their entire CFX driver base is flawed?

Because, based on my understanding, having both chips on the same board should DECREASE the SLI/Crossfire issues, not make them worse.

The crossfire problem isn't a latency issue, it is a frame metering issue. Crossfire on a single board or on two different cards does not fix the metering issue. They are working on a new set of drivers which will make the frame variance between multiple GPU's more consistent.

 

[midnightgun]

Might also have something to do with most boutique builders not using the card due to heat / throttling issues on the top card

 

[vmem]

unconfirmed, but could this mean that they may need even more time to fix xfire drivers for the HD 7000 series, or they're not 100% repairable (making the 7990 a bad value)?

all in all this would be understandable, especially if they plan on getting a fresh "restart" in october with the HD9000 series, would be awesome if a HD 9990 launches before xmas lol

 

[renz496]

unconfirmed, but could this mean that they may need even more time to fix xfire drivers for the HD 7000 series, or they're not 100% repairable (making the 7990 a bad value)?

all in all this would be understandable, especially if they plan on getting a fresh "restart" in october with the HD9000 series, would be awesome if a HD 9990 launches before xmas lol

9990? if there will be one then we might have a gpu alone will consume 400-500w when fully loaded.

well joking aside maybe the frame metering tech could be well need the hardware portion as well not a fully software solution. i mean the frame metering only available with kepler and not fermi or much older gpu from nvidia. anyway i'm interested to see how exactly amd going to tackle the issue when they officially release the driver at the end of this month

 

[Maximus_Delta]

above is a negative ghost rider... nVidia first implement frame metering as entirely software, only later making it hardware to reduce the few % CPU load... don't worry AMD have got this and most CrossFire rigs are far from short on CPU muscle to power this.

 

[vmem]

well joking aside maybe the frame metering tech could be well need the hardware portion as well not a fully software solution. i mean the frame metering only available with kepler and not fermi or much older gpu from nvidia. anyway i'm interested to see how exactly amd going to tackle the issue when they officially release the driver at the end of this month

My thoughts exactly. AMD's new management has really been on the ball for the past couple of months, and I think they finally have a marketing team that understands the importance of brand image. Nvidia's new stress with the frame metering technology (rightfully so) caught them by surprise, and we won't see the "complete fix" for this until their next generation of hardware

 

[vmem]

above is a negative ghost rider... nVidia first implement frame metering as entirely software, only later making it hardware to reduce the few % CPU load... don't worry AMD have got this and most CrossFire rigs are far from short on CPU muscle to power this.

true. but while I love my AMD hardware, be both know that AMD and Nvidia hardware are not the same (as in architecturally). I think it is possible that AMD has run into a few problems that can't be fixed easily (or optimally), and the problem is significant enough to abandon the 7990 and just move on

 

[17seconds]

After the disaster of the 6990, and now this, it seems like AMD shouldn't have bothered to release the 7990 at all. All it has done is backfire and throw a huge spotlight on the failings of their technology.

 

[albert 89]

AMD should do the public a favour and create a new developer department that not only caters for CPU's drivers but for its own video cards.
Maybe all of AMD's drivers can be open source, to reduce costs ???

 

[BranFlake5]

I'm truly losing faith in AMD, They make competitive pricing harder when their tech doesn't work as well. I want low tech prices!

 

[bryonhowley]

I guess I have been lucky with my Crossfire Sapphire HD 7950 and Crossfire Sapphire HD 7970 rigs because I have not had any issues with either one not to say I have had any problem with my SLI GTX 670 setup either. I have a FX-8120 with a Crossfire Sapphire HD 7950 a FX-8350 with a Crossfire Sapphire HD 7970 and a i5 3570K with a SLI Gigabyte GTX 670(Winforce2). All running on there own 3x Asus 27" monitor setup. The only real problems I have had with any of them is Nvidia's incomplete Surround driver support it is just not as complete as AMD's Eyefinity.

As for the 7990 I personally would never buy any dual GPU card no matter what weather Nvidia or AMD for one if something goes wrong you can't just pull one card and keep using the rig you are out of luck. With a standard SLI Crossfire setup if one card goes down you can still use the system by just removing the bad card.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

I really dont get it....if AMD is having CFX latency issues with the 7990, shouldnt the problem be even worse with crossfired 7970s, or at the very least, the same? Wouldnt they in effect be admitting that their entire CFX driver base is flawed?

Because, based on my understanding, having both chips on the same board should DECREASE the SLI/Crossfire issues, not make them worse.

well, yeah, the problem does exist across the board, and has existed in crossfire since the day it was introduced. They have a beta driver out that helps in some games. You really need to catch up and read all the crossfire/frame time metering articles, nearly every major tech site has done a similar article with same conclusions.
http://techreport.com/review/24553/inside-the-second-with-nvidia-frame-capture-tools/3
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-benchmarking-frame-rate,3466-2.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7990-review-benchmark,3486-3.html

 

[boytitan2]

Is some one going around down voting all the comments this is the second time a article some what negative atircle on amd has had a high number of comments have thumbs down the first time this happened was when the information about amds new cpu's high total watt usage was released. Who ever is doing it just leave.

 

[wanderer11]

I don't understand all the hate for CF in these comments. I have two 7870s and it runs great. I haven't had a single issue with it yet and everything feels just as smooth as when I had one card.

 

[kartu]

During recent years I used:

4850
6850
7870 <= now

never had any issues with drivers (nor when playing "corrupt by nVidia partnership software" games)

Supporting nVidia means supporting proprietary crap (CUDA, physX (buying a company and corrupting it's code not to work with competitors hardare, a way to go doNtvidia) and killing the competition. (nVidia kept to dominate the market even in times of Fermi like garbage)
While AMD sticks to open standars available to all players, like OpenCL