Review: AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB

by Tarinder Sandhu on 24 April 2013, 05:00 3.5

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabvev

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System setup and notes

AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB specs

GPU Comparisons
Graphics Card GPU Clock
(MHz)		 Stream
Processors		 Shader Clock
(MHz)		 Memory Clock
(MHz)		 Memory Bus
(bits)		 Graphics Driver Approx Price
AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB 950/1,000 2,048 x 2 950/1,000 6,000 384 x 2 Catalyst 13.5 beta 2 £850+
AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz 3GB 1,000 (1,050) 2,048 1,000 (1,050) 6,000 384 Catalyst 13.2 beta 6 £350
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB 837 (876) 2,688 837 (876) 6,008 384 GeForce 314.09 £850
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB 915 (1,019) 3,072 915 (1,019) 6,008 256 x 2 GeForce 320.00 £800
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB 1,006 (1,058) 1,536 1,006 (1,058) 6,008 256 GeForce 314.07 £360

HEXUS High-End Test Bench
Processor Intel Core i7-3770K (3.50GHz, 8MB cache, quad-core)
CPU Cooler Intel reference E97378-001
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4 TH
Memory 8GB G.Skill RipJaws (2x4GB) DDR3 @ 1,600MHz
Power Supply Corsair AX750W
Storage Device Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD
Optical Drive Generic 24x DVD-RW
Chassis Corsair Graphite Series 600T
Monitor Dell 3007FPW and 3x BenQ EW2430
Operating system Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit, SP1)

HEXUS Super-High-End Benchmarking Suite
3D Benchmarks Mode and Resolutions Quality Settings
Call of Duty: Black Ops II DX9 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 4xMSAA, High/Extra Preset
Crysis 3 DX11 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 4xMSAA, High Preset
DiRT Showdown DX11 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 4xMSAA, Ultra Preset
Far Cry 3 DX11 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 2xMSAA, Ultra Preset
Just Cause 2 DX10 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 8xMSAA, High Preset
General Benchmarks Description
Power Consumption To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record mains power draw both when idle and while playing Far Cry 3
Temperature To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record GPU core temperature both when idle and while playing Far Cry 3
Noise A PCE-318 meter is used to record noise levels when idle and while playing Far Cry 3

Testing notes

We've tested the Radeon HD 7990 and GeForce GTX 690 on two beta drivers that are to be made public this week. Both drivers promise an extra dollop of performance over that available on current WHQL sets.

Getting a graphics review ready usually entails hours chained to a test system. This time around we had difficulty in obtaining solid numbers in 3DMark's Fire Strike test. Both dual-GPU cards produced hugely sub-par numbers that weren't remedied with an absolutely fresh and fully-updated install of Windows 7 64-bit. We've witnessed others have this problem and it seems to be specific to the Futuremark test; the two cards ran through the real-world gaming benchmarks just fine. As such we have not published the customary results from 3DMark until a fuller investigation can be done.

Understanding just how powerful these cards are, we have tested on a 30in monitor with a native resolution of 2,560x1,600 and then on three full-HD screens that provide an overall resolution of 5,760x1,080.


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