Conclusion
To many, PowerColor’s HD 7990 Devil 13 will be nothing more than a trophy product which has no place in today’s market. But dismissing it as a plaything and mere status symbol for rich gamers would be a mistake. Even though the Devil 13 does cost a small fortune and there are some glaring sacrifices to be made when owning one, PowerColor’s promises of extreme performance were anything but empty. This is actually one hell of a technological achievement on a great many fronts.
Without talking about periphery items like power consumption and noise –we’ll get to those in a moment-, it is the Devil 13’s in-game performance which deserves the bulk of this conclusion’s space. Due to some additional latency caused by the Gen 3 PLX chip, it is typically a few percentage points behind a dual HD 7970 solution but it doesn’t feel any slower. In addition, pressing that little red button on the I/O panel kick things into high gear by loading an OC BIOS. Using this unique feature allows the HD 7990’s cores to operate at HD 7970 GHz Edition frequencies which results an across the board performance increase of between 5-10%. Even without an enabled OC BIOS, the Devil 13 is able to hang tenaciously onto the GTX 690’s coattails and can compete on an almost level footing at higher resolutions.
In some cases the PowerColor's flagship can be considered –by a long shot- the fastest graphics card in the world but in other situations AMD’s lack of driver optimizations drags it backwards by leaps and bounds. Even after months of publicized issues, Crossfire profiles for The Witcher 2: EE, Crysis 2 and Skyrim are still either missing or horribly broken. This brings us to one of the major pitfalls associated with buying such an expensive graphics card: regardless of how much is spent, your money will be absolutely wasted if drivers and dual GPU optimizations can’t keep up with game releases. So, as with the GTX 690, be prepared for at least some frustration along the road to gaming nirvana.
Cramming a pair of Tahiti XT cores onto a single PCB wasn’t easy and at times the HD 7990 Devil 13 makes that challenge all too evident. The heatsink needed to be massive, power is fed through an advanced 12+2+2 phase PWM and the card weighs a ton, potentially causing damage to your system if it isn’t properly supported. As a result, the rampant heat production –especially when using the OC BIOS- is barely held in check even though the Devil 13’s fans try with all their might to keep up. This makes overclocking nearly impossible without wearing earplugs. Power consumption is also astronomical but not quite as high as two HD 7970 cards due to the hand-selected and highly binned cores being used to avoid excessive stress upon the PWM.
Then there’s the price. $999 places PowerColor’s HD 7990 Devil 13 into an elite bracket, especially when one considers only 200 will be shipped to retailers around the world. But even with high end features and excellent performance, it isn’t a very good value. Ultra high end cards never are. Currently NVIDIA’s GTX 690 is priced identically, as is a GTX 680 SLI solution and both choices provided more consistent performance across our chosen games. Meanwhile, a pair of HD 7970s goes for some $200 less and even two HD 7970 GHz Editions can be found for a shade under $900. With this in mind, recommending the HD 7990 becomes very hard.
Regardless of its minor issues, the Devil 13 is a tour de force for PowerColor. PowerColor pushed ahead and released a card some thought would never come to fruition and they did so without asking gamers to sacrifice too much…other than a thousand bucks. For the technology behind its facade, tenacious persistence, a high end design that seems to partially justify its premium and great all-round gaming performance, the Devil 13 deserves some serious street cred despite an astronomical price. We just hope other manufacturers will choose PowerColor's path to take a few risks since this market needs some excitement every now and then.
Conclusion
To many, PowerColor’s HD 7990 Devil 13 will be nothing more than a trophy product which has no place in today’s market. But dismissing it as a plaything and mere status symbol for rich gamers would be a mistake. Even though the Devil 13 does cost a small fortune and there are some glaring sacrifices to be made when owning one, PowerColor’s promises of extreme performance were anything but empty. This is actually one hell of a technological achievement on a great many fronts.
Without talking about periphery items like power consumption and noise –we’ll get to those in a moment-, it is the Devil 13’s in-game performance which deserves the bulk of this conclusion’s space. Due to some additional latency caused by the Gen 3 PLX chip, it is typically a few percentage points behind a dual HD 7970 solution but it doesn’t feel any slower. In addition, pressing that little red button on the I/O panel kick things into high gear by loading an OC BIOS. Using this unique feature allows the HD 7990’s cores to operate at HD 7970 GHz Edition frequencies which results an across the board performance increase of between 5-10%. Even without an enabled OC BIOS, the Devil 13 is able to hang tenaciously onto the GTX 690’s coattails and can compete on an almost level footing at higher resolutions.
In some cases the PowerColor's flagship can be considered –by a long shot- the fastest graphics card in the world but in other situations AMD’s lack of driver optimizations drags it backwards by leaps and bounds. Even after months of publicized issues, Crossfire profiles for The Witcher 2: EE, Crysis 2 and Skyrim are still either missing or horribly broken. This brings us to one of the major pitfalls associated with buying such an expensive graphics card: regardless of how much is spent, your money will be absolutely wasted if drivers and dual GPU optimizations can’t keep up with game releases. So, as with the GTX 690, be prepared for at least some frustration along the road to gaming nirvana.
Cramming a pair of Tahiti XT cores onto a single PCB wasn’t easy and at times the HD 7990 Devil 13 makes that challenge all too evident. The heatsink needed to be massive, power is fed through an advanced 12+2+2 phase PWM and the card weighs a ton, potentially causing damage to your system if it isn’t properly supported. As a result, the rampant heat production –especially when using the OC BIOS- is barely held in check even though the Devil 13’s fans try with all their might to keep up. This makes overclocking nearly impossible without wearing earplugs. Power consumption is also astronomical but not quite as high as two HD 7970 cards due to the hand-selected and highly binned cores being used to avoid excessive stress upon the PWM.
Then there’s the price. $999 places PowerColor’s HD 7990 Devil 13 into an elite bracket, especially when one considers only 200 will be shipped to retailers around the world. But even with high end features and excellent performance, it isn’t a very good value. Ultra high end cards never are. Currently NVIDIA’s GTX 690 is priced identically, as is a GTX 680 SLI solution and both choices provided more consistent performance across our chosen games. Meanwhile, a pair of HD 7970s goes for some $200 less and even two HD 7970 GHz Editions can be found for a shade under $900. With this in mind, recommending the HD 7990 becomes very hard.
Regardless of its minor issues, the Devil 13 is a tour de force for PowerColor. PowerColor pushed ahead and released a card some thought would never come to fruition and they did so without asking gamers to sacrifice too much…other than a thousand bucks. For the technology behind its facade, tenacious persistence, a high end design that seems to partially justify its premium and great all-round gaming performance, the Devil 13 deserves some serious street cred despite an astronomical price. We just hope other manufacturers will choose PowerColor's path to take a few risks since this market needs some excitement every now and then.
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