Comment Thread for AMD HD 6990 Review

[Souljah]

newegg in the US is selling some 6990's for $760.00 shipped. What a Joke. Newegg.com - PowerColor AX6990 4GBD5-M4D Radeon HD 6990 4GB 512 (256 x 2)-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

[AkG]

Originally Posted by CMetaphor

That comment just sounds disrespectful, and I really don't appreciate it. WGSF is probably at the forefront of multi-monitor gaming, with more experience and expertise than Anyone. And my point wasn't really the difference in frames, but that a 6990 does it in one card... with an option to add a second. With a 6970 Xfire setup you'd be hard pressed to get a quad fire board that will perform, not overheat, and still beat a far simpler 2-card 6990 setup.

Again though, these hypothetical situations are for extreme enthusiasts only. But my point is that the 6990 may be an option for them, over a trifire/quadfire 6970/6950 setup.

Sorry Cmet but you are being overly sensitive. I'd trust Sky's numbers over anyone else....for the simple fact he doesnt have an axe to grind. If he says it didnt outperform....then it didnt outperform. For you to NEED to look around that hard to justify your POV....well maybe you should take SugarJ's suggestion the way its meat to be taken and step back, take a deep breathe and realize that good, bad or indifferent it doesn't affect you personally. Having this big an emotional investment in a certain company is not good for your health mate. Its a good dual card. 9 times out of 10 two single cards will beat a dual. Thats just the way it is and probably the way it always will be. Nothing more nothing less.

[JMCD]

Originally Posted by CMetaphor

Impressions?
Heat exhausting out the back = Still don't like that idea at all, I'll wait for more reviews on it.
At least with the cores being spaces so far apart (to the edges of the card even) the heat of the cores themselves seem very well managed.

Performance, yes it's slightly behind a pair of 6970s. But, we all have to remember that a 5970 wasn't even close to Xfire 5870s last time around, so thats a good improvement IMO. Also, at $700 the price is on par with two 6970s.

So why get this card? Simple. If noise isn't your greatest concern, a you need maximum performance, you get one of these. Then later on, you get a second one for Quadfire. You're paying to have the performance (almost) of two 6970s in half the space. Simple as that.

Now, my biggest question is, do I get one of these and do the Quadfire thing down the road, or get two 6970s and OC the crap out of them and be happy... 5600x1200 is alot of pixels i want to push. Hmmm... Must read more reviews first

My friend and I both run eyefinity, he has 5760x1200 and I have 5760x1080. I own 2x5870 and he had 2x5970. Half of the games wouldn't work from him in quadfire, but I had no issues. I don't know if ATI has resolved quadfire eyefinity, but I would say that you're better off with two very powerful cards in 2 way xfire than 4 any day.

[CMetaphor]

Originally Posted by AkG

Sorry Cmet but you are the one who is being overly sensitive. I'd trust Sky's numbers over anyone else....for the simple fact he doesnt have an axe to grind. If he says it didnt outperform....then it didnt outperform. For you to NEED to look around that hard to justify your POV....well maybe you should take SugarJ's suggestion the way its meat to be taken and step back, take a deep breathe and realize that good, bad or indifferent it doesn't affect you personally. Having this big an emotional investment in a certain company is not good for your health mate. Its a good dual card. 9 times out of 10 two single card will beat a dual. Thats just the way it is and probably the way it always will be. Nothing more nothing less.

Whoa. Hang on there now.

I'm Agreeing with every one of these points. But there are exceptions to these rules at times. And once AGAIN, I'll say that my point wasn't about the framerates, it was that you get similar performance from One card as opposed to Two. And that having just One card can allow you do go Xfire more easily and with more options. That's all. No "being sensitive" or whatever you thought that was.

I also didn't "Need" to look around, I look at WSGF reviews second right after HWC's.

But anyways... Enough with this please No more arguing when we're actually agreeing, lol

[SKYMTL]

I see the cards are out with the price premium I predicted attached. $750 for this card is absolutely ridiculous.

[Levesque]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

I see the cards are out with the price premium I predicted attached. $750 for this card is absolutely ridiculous.

Are you sure? I paid my 6970 310$ and my 6990 729$ today. So 1000$ for 3 GPUs.

2X GTX 580 in SLI cost around the SAME 1000$ in Canada, and with LESS VRAM.

So the 580 SLI set-up price is MORE ridiculous IMHO.

I'm pushing 3X30'' LCD. So which set-up is the most ''ridiculous'' for the price? Do you really think the 1000$ 580 SLI set-up will keep up with the 3 AMD GPUs, for the same price?

[draemn]

The Antilles design represented a unique challenge since individually, two Cayman cores and their associated 2GB of memory would have easily burst through the 375W ceiling needed for PCI-E certification and compatibility with the largest cross section of motherboards and power supplies.

Technically the PCIe certification is 300w... I thought 375w sounded wrong, so I looked it up.

[LarkStarr]

Well in reference to the two multi-monitor benchmarks.. why are the scores so different? Unless the WSGF benchies are done at a higher setting (8xAA?) that would give an advantage to the 6990?
Either way, it's good to review multiple trusted sources regardless, in my opinion.

And indeed taking a look at a few sources and benchmarks I have to say.. what a useless card! Too pricey for the performance, and the 6970CF does indeed seem to beat the 6990 in most benchmarks at a lower cost. that being said the thing does get throttled due to heat/power, it's noisy and apparently it's bottle-necked by the memory bandwidth.. I do wonder what this thing could achieve water cooled and trucking at full load. But at that price point, it simply makes more sense to Xfire 6970's. Let's see some 2x6990 benchies wooo!

However I do believe it's the first single card that can play Crysis with a minimum FPS of >30.

[Souljah]

Originally Posted by Levesque

Are you sure? I paid my 6970 310$ and my 6990 729$ today. So 1000$ for 3 GPUs.

2X GTX 580 in SLI cost around the SAME 1000$ in Canada, and with LESS VRAM.

So the 580 SLI set-up price is MORE ridiculous IMHO.

Both are ridiculous if you ask me. If AMD were smart, they would of tried to stay within the $575-$625 mark and sold the crap out of these cards.

Every Dual GPU card that AMD has released in the past has always been cheaper then its xfire counterpart. The 5970 MSRP was $599 while a 5870 was around $380.00. The same goes for the 4870x2 and so forth.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by jurassic1024

i found the 11.4 Previews already, but where did you get the Cap 11.2 R4's please?

Hasn't been posted it seems.

Originally Posted by draemn

Technically the PCIe certification is 300w... I thought 375w sounded wrong, so I looked it up.

Please look at the "high power extended" spec from the PCI SIG. It is listed under the v1.0 spec but you'll need to go into the PDF which will require a login.

375W is allowed (even though the official spec goes up to 300W) as long as no more than 75W is drawn from the PCI-E slot itself.