# AMD Radeon HD 7990 Reference Board Pictured, Specs Confirmed in GPU-Z Screenshot



## btarunr (Apr 1, 2012)

Admittedly, this is a terrible day for news on unannounced GPUs, but we rushed it in anyway. Here are the first board shots of AMD's next-generation dual-GPU graphics card, the Radeon HD 7990 (codename: "New Zealand"). Sources told us that AMD working overtime to release this SKU, to restore performance-leadership of the Radeon HD 7900 series. The dual-GPU card, according to the specifications at hand, is bearing AMD's coveted "GHz Edition" badge, its core is clocked higher than that of the HD 7970. 

But first, the board shot. Pictured below is the first picture of this beast. Right away you'll question its authenticity for using a 70 mm fan instead of a lateral-flow blower, but that design change serves a purpose. Despite its high performance, the previous-generation Radeon HD 6990 was plagued with user complaints of high noise. That's because a single, normal-sized lateral-flow blower was positioned in the center, blowing through two sets of aluminum channels, at a very high speed. With the HD 7990, AMD on the other hand, borrowed the ventilation design of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 590, to a large extant. It reused the fan found on reference-design HD 7850 and HD 7770, and placed it in middle of two heatsinks.



 




The picture reveals the card to be fairly long. AMD chose a fancy PCB number to denote "leeeet" (elite), it did a similar word-play with "AUSUM", around the HD 6990. The card is using an AMD-rebadged PLX PEX8747 PCI-Express 3.0 48-lane bridge chip, which features "broadcast" features that makes it fit for dual-GPU graphics cards. Moving on to specifications, the HD 7990 features 1 GHz core clock speed, with 1250 MHz memory. The card has a total of 6 GB GDDR5 memory, 3 GB per GPU. It features completely-unlocked 28 nm "Tahiti XT" GPUs, with 2048 stream processors. It draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include one dual-link DVI, four mini-DisplayPort connectors. Slated for a "hard-launch" on April 17, AMD's Radeon HD 7990 6 GB "New Zealand" will target a price-point of US $849.

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


----------



## dj-electric (Apr 1, 2012)

849$?
TBH that is way lower then what i thought the price-tag would be  considering HD7970. (999$)


----------



## LAN_deRf_HA (Apr 1, 2012)

Are those metal pegs under the fan?


----------



## dj-electric (Apr 1, 2012)

I think they are! Nice design AMD! Waiting patiently!


----------



## robal (Apr 1, 2012)

btarunr said:


> Admittedly, this is a terrible day for news on unannounced GPUs


You bet !

Well, because of that, I'm very sceptical on 1Ghz thing...


----------



## Yo_Wattup (Apr 1, 2012)

Why do they insist on using only one fan? I dont understand???


----------



## dj-electric (Apr 1, 2012)

Because its a Ghz edition fan! its way way better then the reference ugly one...


----------



## librin.so.1 (Apr 1, 2012)

Even when disregarding what day is today, both the card and the GPU-Z shots look fishy to me.

P.S. Say, when in CF\SLI, does GPU-Z report the fillrate of individual GPUs, or a combined value? (Honestly, I forgot which. But, in case of the later, it is obviously a fake. *shrug*)


----------



## btarunr (Apr 1, 2012)

Black Flag said:


> Fake! April fools' day!



http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=163339


----------



## Black Flag (Apr 1, 2012)

For the thread, it's fake. I don't think that 7990 will be launched soon.


----------



## W1zzard (Apr 1, 2012)

Vinska said:


> P.S. Say, when in CF\SLI, does GPU-Z report the fillrate of individual GPUs, or a combined value? (Honestly, I forgot which. But, in case of the later, it is obviously a fake. *shrug*)



it reports the fillrate of the single gpu

dear bta, i told you so:



> btarunr [MSN], 01.04.2012 10:35:30:
> starting work on post
> 
> W1zzard, 10:35:58:
> ...


----------



## Hayder_Master (Apr 1, 2012)

smell April joke, most funny thing i see it's 1ghz speed, lol


----------



## LDNL (Apr 1, 2012)

Here's how you start it
"April fools aside, AMD Radeon HD 7990 Reference Board Pictured, Specs Confirmed in GPU-Z Screenshot"


----------



## Maban (Apr 1, 2012)

btarunr said:


> AMD chose a fancy PCB number to denote "leeeet" (elite), it did a similar word-play with "AUSUM", around the HD 6990.



Looks to me the PCB number says either 109-C33337-300 or 109-C32337-300. Where are you getting "leeeet"?

Just me or does the card seem a little short for dual Tahiti, twenty-four RAM chips, VRMs, and a switch? I calculate it at a full inch shorter than 6990.


----------



## NHKS (Apr 1, 2012)

btarunr said:


> Sources told us that AMD working overtime to release this SKU, to restore performance-leadership of the Radeon HD 7900 series.
> 
> The picture reveals the card to be fairly long. AMD chose a fancy PCB number to denote "leeeet" (elite), it did a similar word-play with "AUSUM", around the HD 6990.





Dj-ElectriC said:


> 849$?
> TBH that is way lower then what i thought the price-tag would be  considering HD7970. (999$)





W1zzard said:


> dear bta, i told you so:









thanks! TPU..


----------



## micropage7 (Apr 1, 2012)

Yo_Wattup said:


> Why do they insist on using only one fan? I dont understand???



coz they move to use 28nm that means less power, less heat but better performance. so thats why they use small and single fan


----------



## librin.so.1 (Apr 1, 2012)

compared to




from http://www.techpowerup.com/161710/AMD-Launches-the-Radeon-HD-7800-Series.html
See the resemblance?
Seriously, even the surface imperfections on the DVI connector are identical. /______/

*sigh*


----------



## radrok (Apr 1, 2012)

Must not fap!!!

Seriously, I have a very very strong perversion with dual GPUs cards :O


----------



## Ghost (Apr 1, 2012)

W1zzard said:
			
		

> definitely fake
> 
> (can't explain more, without telling people what to do better in future fakes  )



This


----------



## qubit (Apr 1, 2012)

Vinska said:


> compared to
> http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-03-04/pit1e.jpg
> from http://www.techpowerup.com/161710/AMD-Launches-the-Radeon-HD-7800-Series.html
> See the resemblance?
> ...



Yes, it looked like an April Fool, but your picture really nailed it. Nice one. 

To bta: write this out (by hand) 128 times: I MUST TRY HARDER!


----------



## Rahmat Sofyan (Apr 1, 2012)

*...*

April Fools Detected


----------



## laszlo (Apr 1, 2012)

vinska got u bt


----------



## Maban (Apr 1, 2012)

laszlo said:


> vinska got u bt



That doesn't mean anything. AMD/ATI is known for photoshopping numerous cards out of one photo. The trollface could very well be on those who think this is fake.


----------



## btarunr (Apr 1, 2012)

qubit said:


> To bta: write this out (by hand) 128 times: I MUST TRY HARDER!



My 2010 joke drove people to suicide. So you know I'm different if I'm joking.



Maban said:


> That doesn't mean anything. AMD/ATI is known for photoshopping numerous cards out of one photo.



They're even worse at presentations.


----------



## radrok (Apr 1, 2012)

Even if this is fake we already know that the 7990 will come out soon, one thing that puzzles me is why on the GPU it doesn't report New Zealand instead of Tahiti, my 6990s on GPU-Z is addressed as Antilles and the GPU on the 6970 shows Cayman XT

Maybe because the GPU is the same and there is no 7990 support out yet for GPU-Z?


----------



## btarunr (Apr 1, 2012)

radrok said:


> Even if this is fake we already know that the 7990 will come out soon, one thing that puzzles me is why on the GPU it doesn't report New Zealand instead of Tahiti



Because GPU-Z 0.6.0 doesn't have tested support for HD 7990. It still recognizes HD 7990 as two HD 7900 series "Tahiti" graphics cards in CrossFire. Things like GPU codename and launch date are parameters that are manually written to GPU-Z's database. With most other things, GPU-Z is taught how to detect them.


----------



## radrok (Apr 1, 2012)

btarunr said:


> Because GPU-Z 0.6.0 doesn't have tested support for HD 7990. It still recognizes HD 7990 as two HD 7900 series "Tahiti" graphics cards in CrossFire. Things like GPU codename and launch date are parameters that are manually written to GPU-Z's database. With most other things, GPU-Z is taught how to detect them.



So my guess was correct, thanks


----------



## dorsetknob (Apr 1, 2012)

congratulations good april "FOOLS"
google search shows ya spoofed many a reputable site with this one
nearly all search results refer back to TPU

one set of fanboys are creaming their pants and the other are sh****g their pants

Myself i will reserve my opinion till there is a test card benchmarked on the site


----------



## Birdman86 (Apr 1, 2012)

Anyway, why not start adding those GHz Edition stickers to HD 7970 and make it a bit harder for GTX 680?


----------



## Maban (Apr 1, 2012)

I gotta ask, what's with all the watermarks on the news images lately? I can understand this type of thing needing them but you've gone as far as watermarking the press release images.

Just noticed there's a "Displays" tab on the GPU-Z pic. What's that about?


----------



## hardcore_gamer (Apr 1, 2012)

Its good to see a 1Ghz Tahiti. AMD should have clocked 7970 at >1Ghz. Its clear that nvidia increased the clock speeds of GTX680 more than they originally planned, to beat 7970.


----------



## NHKS (Apr 1, 2012)

While other forums are seriously making their analysis  on this TPU article and the 'alleged' photo leak <cough cough>... I ve stumbled upon another pic(below) of this card but I am going crazy  over which will be the 'final' version.. anyone want to bet


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Apr 1, 2012)

Vinska said:


> compared to
> http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-03-04/pit1e.jpg
> from http://www.techpowerup.com/161710/AMD-Launches-the-Radeon-HD-7800-Series.html
> See the resemblance?
> ...



I wonder why they would change the PCB markings, serial codes and the fan but forget the DVI imperfections. Stupid noobs.......... or AMD marketing is getting better lol


----------



## btarunr (Apr 1, 2012)

Maban said:


> I gotta ask, what's with all the watermarks on the news images lately? I can understand this type of thing needing them but you've gone as far as watermarking the press release images.



Other sites are copying PRs posted on TPU verbatim, without linking back to us. They're hence freeloading on the contacts and relationships we built with companies tirelessly, over years, which reward us with early access to PRs. 

Not only do we watermark images in PRs, but also make subtle/unnoticeable changes in the wording that allows us to track down sites (using google) that copy PRs posted on TPU, without linking back to us.


----------



## Kreij (Apr 1, 2012)

btarunr said:


> but also make subtle/unnoticeable changes in the wording that allows us to track down sites (using google) that copy PRs posted on TPU, without linking back to us.



And all this time I just thought you made a lot of typos.


----------



## THE_EGG (Apr 1, 2012)

Vinska said:


> compared to
> http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-03-04/pit1e.jpg
> from http://www.techpowerup.com/161710/AMD-Launches-the-Radeon-HD-7800-Series.html
> See the resemblance?
> ...



tru dat. But the serial number under the AMD name near the PCI-e connector is different. But I suppose photoshop can be your friend to change serial numbers.


----------



## NHKS (Apr 1, 2012)

"Two Words Mr.President - Plausible Deniability"






More generally,“plausible deniability” can also apply to any act which leaves little or no evidence of wrongdoing.


----------



## symmetrical (Apr 1, 2012)

lol it's April 1st people...


----------



## hardcore_gamer (Apr 1, 2012)

symmetrical said:


> lol it's April 1st people...



And it's 7990 dude.


----------



## badtaylorx (Apr 1, 2012)

Ill try to ignore the fact that one side is glossy and the other is matte....AMD's light booth is better than that


----------



## entropy13 (Apr 1, 2012)

btarunr said:


> My 2010 joke drove people to suicide.



As Solaris admitted in another thread. :shadedshu


----------



## Delta6326 (Apr 1, 2012)

If you looks at these 2 pics you will notice that they are not the same. 




has metal under fan, thus the heatsink. if you re-read the article 


btarunr said:


> With the HD 7990, AMD on the other hand, borrowed the ventilation design of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 590, to a large extant. It reused the fan found on reference-design HD 7850 and HD 7770, and *placed it in middle of two heatsinks.*



And now take a look at the 7990 pic 





 No metal because it is in the middle of both gpus. also notice how the top of the 7990 from fan to the right has slightly different PCB marking.


----------



## jpierce55 (Apr 1, 2012)

you can also see markings/components at the top of both cards on the right side. That is also different. I wish I was not noticing little details like that!


----------



## Delta6326 (Apr 1, 2012)

jpierce55 said:


> I wish I was not noticing little details like that!



You wish for this 7990 to be fake? I sure don't If its at 1GHz than that would be awesome-sauce!


----------



## NHKS (Apr 1, 2012)

I would prefer this one..


----------



## Lionheart (Apr 1, 2012)

OK is this real or fake, I can't tell and it's april 2nd here so april fools is over ^_^

herpy derp


----------



## librin.so.1 (Apr 1, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I wonder why they would change the PCB markings, serial codes and the fan but forget the DVI imperfections. Stupid noobs.......... or AMD marketing is getting better lol



Well, the most fishy part for me personally is: "why is there nothing under the fan? Is it [a top-blowing fan] supposed to be blowing into a void? Using the positive pressure it creates to vent through the sinks, never mind it is probably not very efficient, etc?;"
And then even more so: "Why is the fan blowing into a space made almost completely out of #0D0908 ???" << LOL


----------



## mtosev (Apr 1, 2012)

today is april 1st so I don't know if this is another joke or if TPU is serious this time.hmmmmmmmm


----------



## btarunr (Apr 1, 2012)

Vinska said:


> Well, the most fishy part for me personally is: "why is there nothing under the fan? Is it [a top-blowing fan] supposed to be blowing into a void?



Because under the fan there's just a baseplate heatsink. The fan's job is to push air laterally, a not-so-old example of this concept is GTX 590:






Not much happening right under that fan.


----------



## radrok (Apr 1, 2012)

I can definitely see some copper heatsinks under that fan, or am I imaginating things?


----------



## jpierce55 (Apr 1, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> You wish for this 7990 to be fake? I sure don't If its at 1GHz than that would be awesome-sauce![/QUOTE
> 
> TBH, I can't afford it, so it does not matter!


----------



## m1dg3t (Apr 1, 2012)

Bad joke, is bad


----------



## librin.so.1 (Apr 1, 2012)

btarunr said:


> Because under the fan there's just a baseplate heatsink. The fan's job is to push air laterally, a not-so-old example of this concept is GTX 590:
> Not much happening right under that fan.



Still does not explain [LOL, quoting myself] :


Vinska said:


> [...] Why is the fan blowing into [...] #0D0908 ???" << LOL



#0D0908 is a color. Nearly entire space under the fan is of this solid color ['sept for the heatpipes, wires and a little of other stuff (those parts being identical to those in the image of 7850, so to note)]

P.S. I am not actually sure if it is a fake or not, and never was. Just, this whole "investigation" & drama thing is fun. + intelligent debate. YAY!


----------



## btarunr (Apr 1, 2012)

Vinska said:


> Still does not explain [LOL, quoting myself] :
> 
> 
> #0D0908 is a color. Nearly entire space under the fan is of this solid color ['sept for the heatpipes, wires and a little of other stuff (those parts being identical to those in the image of 7850, so to note)]
> ...



To be frank, I'm on your side wrt skepticism about this picture. But I'm banking on the plausible-deniability trick PR departments play.

PR departments dealing with sensitive information deliberately don't give 100% accurate pre-launch photos/presentations to give to semi-important people who are not NDA signatories, so if leaked, they could deny them as fake (pointing out flaws). Sometimes they're Mr. Blurrycam shots, sometimes dodgy to the sharp eye. 

We all know how recently, everyone pounced on the first GTX 680 picture by calling it fake on grounds of that poorly-done "GTX x70TI" marking, while others calling it a morphed GTX 580 board. Not much later, it took shape as the real GTX 680. Maybe this pic _is_ fake and poorly done because not even AMD has a polished-looking press-shot of the real thing, maybe it's not. Such <100% accurate pics are shared with entities like distributors. Contrary to popular belief, most leaks originate not from the press, but from the supply-chain. The press is hardly told anything about unannounced products till about a week before launch when they get samples to test.


----------



## WhoDecidedThat (Apr 1, 2012)

At these specs the TDP of this card would exceed 400 W. Which i think is wayyy too much. So i believe it's a fake. But if AMD managed to pull it off with a TDP of less than or equal to 400 W, it's going to crush the hell out of GTX 680.


----------



## librin.so.1 (Apr 1, 2012)

@btarur

Hehe! As I said, I am not sure if it is a fake or not. Heck, I never really cared in the first place. I am here just for the whole process. If someone were to try vigorously to prove it was a fake, I would probably try to defend it as being genuine.

P.S. I am a loyal NV fan, thus, AMD GPUs simply pose no actual interest to me. ;]


----------



## theo2021 (Apr 1, 2012)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> Are those metal pegs under the fan?


they are heatpipes 
but i have to say that the size of this card is very tiny! FAKE


----------



## m1dg3t (Apr 1, 2012)

blanarahul said:


> At these specs the TDP of this card would exceed 400 W. Which i think is wayyy too much. So i believe it's a fake. But if AMD managed to pull it off with a TDP of less than or equal to 400 W, it's going to crush the hell out of GTX 680.



Um i'm pretty sure 2 Tahiti core's would crush a single gk104, that's like comparing CF/SLI to single card


----------



## NHKS (Apr 1, 2012)

btarunr said:


> PR departments dealing with sensitive information deliberately don't give 100% accurate pre-launch photos/presentations to give to semi-important people who are not NDA signatories, so if leaked, they could deny them as fake (pointing out flaws). Sometimes they're Mr. Blurrycam shots, sometimes dodgy to the sharp eye.



such as this gtx690 pcb?







<ahem> plausible ..


----------



## Super XP (Apr 1, 2012)

This is BS. The CPUID is for a single HD 7970 card.


----------



## Rowsol (Apr 1, 2012)

Yo_Wattup said:


> Why do they insist on using only one fan? I dont understand???



I was just about to ask this.


----------



## LAN_deRf_HA (Apr 1, 2012)

theo2021 said:


> they are heatpipes
> but i have to say that the size of this card is very tiny! FAKE



Derr. I'm not talking about the heatpipes. There's like copper dots all over it.


----------



## Zubasa (Apr 1, 2012)

blanarahul said:


> At these specs the TDP of this card would exceed 400 W. Which i think is wayyy too much. So i believe it's a fake. But if AMD managed to pull it off with a TDP of less than or equal to 400 W, it's going to crush the hell out of GTX 680.


Mind you, the 6990 already have a TDP of 375W, with the bios switched it does go beyond 400W.
Anyways, generally Dual-GPU cards tends to have slightly lower power consumption than two equivalent Cards even at equal clock speeds.


----------



## jpierce55 (Apr 1, 2012)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> Derr. I'm not talking about the heatpipes. There's like copper dots all over it.



it almost looks like copper mesh to me


----------



## radrok (Apr 1, 2012)

Zubasa said:


> Mind you, the 6990 already have a TDP of 375W, with the bios switched it does go beyond 400W.
> Anyways, generally Dual-GPU cards tends to have slightly lower power consumption than two equivalent Cards even at equal clock speeds.



450W TDP on AUSUM switch for the 6990.


----------



## dorsetknob (Apr 1, 2012)

Time for someone to confess or move this thread to GN?


----------



## dj-electric (Apr 2, 2012)

*And I thought Germans have no sense of humor...*


----------



## DarkOCean (Apr 2, 2012)

That heatpipe under the fan and the fan itself being to small for such a card gave it away for me.
But i think those specs might be close as amd want to cach up with gtx 690.


----------



## phanbuey (Apr 2, 2012)

Vinska said:


> compared to
> http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-03-04/pit1e.jpg
> from http://www.techpowerup.com/161710/AMD-Launches-the-Radeon-HD-7800-Series.html
> See the resemblance?
> ...



except look at what is behind the fan.


----------



## Zubasa (Apr 2, 2012)

radrok said:


> 450W TDP on AUSUM switch for the 6990.


The point is there are already cards with TDP exceeding 400W


----------



## bencrutz (Apr 2, 2012)

well, under the fan is a heatpipe, but why wuld there be any heatpipe underneath the fan? 

the gpus are supposed to be on the left & right of the fan, so what's the point of that heatpipe under the fan? there's no any gpu in there, and no heatsink 

take a look at this 590 pcb here:





see my point?


----------



## btarunr (Apr 2, 2012)

Thanks for playing!






Partners in crime: TheMailman78 (graphics), W1zzard (GPU-Z, knowhow), myself (everything else).

Sorry to our Russian and Chinese friends.











And many others who we gave trollpowerup:






About 230 unique sites linking into it. Some of them listed them as a joke, most didn't.


----------



## Maban (Apr 2, 2012)

btarunr said:


> Thanks for playing!
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/eERAl.jpg
> 
> ...


That was fun, let's do this again sometime. Still curious about the Displays tab.


----------



## btarunr (Apr 2, 2012)

Maban said:


> That was fun, let's do this again sometime. Still curious about the Displays tab.



Earlier-tested, later-redacted tab that is basically a Monitor-Z. Maybe we'll reintroduce it in the future when someone volunteers to type "1920x1080" and "1366x768" a gazillion times.


----------



## W1zzard (Apr 2, 2012)

Maban said:


> Still curious about the Displays tab.



it's a feature in gpuz that hasnt made it into release. only enabled in debug builds, which i used to fake the screenshot. the screenshot is not photshopped, i fed wrong info straight into the gpuz backend


----------



## librin.so.1 (Apr 2, 2012)

phanbuey said:


> except look at what is behind the fan.



*Points to the avatar of btarunr*



W1zzard said:


> it's a feature in gpuz that hasnt made it into release. only enabled in debug builds, which i used to fake the screenshot. the screenshot is not photshopped, i fed wrong info straight into the gpuz backend



Hehe! No wonder You are 1337 enough to be the author of GPU-Z - You think like a a true programmer! [That was a compliment.] 
P.S.: Yes I am aware my english is quite crappy. 'Am sorry for that.


----------



## qubit (Apr 2, 2012)

Yeah, obvious April Fool.  It takes more than this to trip me up.


----------



## btarunr (Apr 2, 2012)

qubit said:


> It takes more than this to trip me up.



I know.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Apr 2, 2012)

qubit said:


> Yeah, obvious April Fool.  It takes more than this to trip me up.



Yeah you are like some elite internet Columbo!


----------



## Delta6326 (Apr 2, 2012)

Well I was hoping my post may of convinced some people to believe this was real as the thing that gave it away for me was the fan was in the exact same position.


----------



## erig007 (Apr 2, 2012)

seems fake to me.
Here is the real one. Finally got my hands on.


----------



## Rakin (Apr 2, 2012)

Ahahahaha Troll powerup 
I knew it was a fake right after I saw the trollface in the logo of TPU.


----------



## NHKS (Apr 2, 2012)

erig007 said:


> seems fake to me.
> Here is the real one. Finally got my hands on.
> 
> [url]http://www.freeimagehosting.net/t/ifart.jpg[/url]



no.. what u are showing is the  7999999999999999999999999990 and not 7990


----------



## [H]@RD5TUFF (Apr 3, 2012)

I wonder if AMD has finally figured out how to make a proper dual gpu card.


----------



## dlpatague (Apr 3, 2012)

LMAO! Funniest thing today on TomsHardware they posted about this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Radeon-HD7990-New_Zealand-Tahiti-GCN,15198.html

They first posted it up thinking it was real. Then they changed it to say, "Unfortunately, it looks like we just got hit with this as an April Fool's gag. Good one, TechPowerUp!"

Then they relabeled the title of the news post from "AMD Radeon HD 7990 Reference Board" to "AMD Radeon HD 7990 Reference Board (APRIL FOOLS)"

Then they completely removed the news post from their main page. LMFAO!

Talk about late to the game! Wow it's already April 3rd. ROFL!

TechPowerUp 1 TomsHardware 0!


----------

