Sunday, April 1st 2012
AMD Radeon HD 7990 Reference Board Pictured, Specs Confirmed in GPU-Z Screenshot
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.
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.
84 Comments on AMD Radeon HD 7990 Reference Board Pictured, Specs Confirmed in GPU-Z Screenshot
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!
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.
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. ;]
but i have to say that the size of this card is very tiny! FAKE
<ahem> plausible ..
Anyways, generally Dual-GPU cards tends to have slightly lower power consumption than two equivalent Cards even at equal clock speeds.
But i think those specs might be close as amd want to cach up with gtx 690.
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 :rolleyes:
take a look at this 590 pcb here:
see my point?;)
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.
P.S.: Yes I am aware my english is quite crappy. 'Am sorry for that.