Monday, March 4th 2013
AMD Redoing Radeon HD 7990 Under New Codename - "Malta"
AMD topped off its "Southern Islands" graphics card family with Radeon HD 7990 "New Zealand," although it didn't have a reference design board of the said SKU. Around October 2012, AIB partners PowerColor, VTX3D, and Club 3D each released their custom design Radeon HD 7990-branded graphics cards, which packed a duo of Radeon HD 7970 GPUs, a total of 6 GB of memory, making up for a dual-GPU solution. Among most of these, the GPUs were clocked in the neighborhood of 950 MHz, and memory at 5.50 GHz. ASUS joined the party much later with the ROG ARES II, with 1100 MHz core, 6.00 GHz memory, and liquid cooling, but commands a hefty $1,600. Post GTX Titan, ARES II remains, at least according to AMD, the single fastest graphics card. The company seems interested in standardizing a new set of specifications for HD 7990, which could be priced competitively against NVIDIA's GTX Titan and GTX 690.
Enter the new Radeon HD 7990 "Malta," a new codename, redone specifications (clock speeds), same dual-GPU graphics card, with [hopefully] a competitive price. Its development checks out with AMD's recent statement in its teleconference last month, where it stated that we could see "more HD 7990 action" this year. According to a Technic3D report, AMD is looking to replace the generally accepted 925/950/1350 MHz (core/PowerTune Boost/memory) clock speed standard of the HD 7990 with something over 1000 MHz, probably even 1050 MHz for the core. There is no word on memory clock speed changes, although with its 384-bit wide memory interfaces, we don't imagine the "Tahiti" GPU to be facing a dearth of memory bandwidth. The HD 7990 "Malta" like the HD 7990 "New Zealand," will lack an AMD reference design, so one could expect more custom-design cards by partners. The new SKU could launch some time before July.
Source:
Technic3D
Enter the new Radeon HD 7990 "Malta," a new codename, redone specifications (clock speeds), same dual-GPU graphics card, with [hopefully] a competitive price. Its development checks out with AMD's recent statement in its teleconference last month, where it stated that we could see "more HD 7990 action" this year. According to a Technic3D report, AMD is looking to replace the generally accepted 925/950/1350 MHz (core/PowerTune Boost/memory) clock speed standard of the HD 7990 with something over 1000 MHz, probably even 1050 MHz for the core. There is no word on memory clock speed changes, although with its 384-bit wide memory interfaces, we don't imagine the "Tahiti" GPU to be facing a dearth of memory bandwidth. The HD 7990 "Malta" like the HD 7990 "New Zealand," will lack an AMD reference design, so one could expect more custom-design cards by partners. The new SKU could launch some time before July.
43 Comments on AMD Redoing Radeon HD 7990 Under New Codename - "Malta"
The existing 7990s either have an OC bios or are already clocked beyond 1Ghz anyways.
I don't see the point.
Will have to see what pops up and how different the fittings are.
Too damn late.
Even VideoCardz had this on Feb 21. :shadedshu
Extending the lifetime of the HD 7000 series should help drive AMD's manufacturing cost down and allow them to maintain a profit while lowering prices. The 7970 is a strong card and I wouldn't be surprised if AMD just rode it out, lowering the price as nVidia gains the lead, until they're mostly done fulfilling their contracts with Sony and Nintendo. Who knows. Maybe we'll even see a tri-GPU HD 7995 if AMD is lazy enough.
TPU's review shows the 7970 GHz edition to be about 80% performance of the Titan. For the price of, to make this easy, two Titan cards (200% the performance of one Titan), one could buy 5 7970s (400% the performance of one Titan). This is, of course, ignoring power and space requirements, but that's what a 7990 would address. 60% more performance for less money.
The only bad thing I see here is nVidia will have the high-end market all to themselves which, I suspect, will cause them to go mad with power and start charging an arm and a leg for their products. I expect AMD to happily play the waiting game here. It doesn't sound like nVidia has a new architecture ready anyways. If they did, they wouldn't dare make the Titan obsolete by releasing it now.
I'm not saying the Titan isn't an impressive card, and even though I personally prefer AMD, I still tip my hat to nVidia. It's just not as impressive as the price would imply and that leaves a lot of room for AMD to, just as this article says, slide in a very cost effective and sensible HD 7990.
If it performs faster than 690 they can charge as much as they want and if you disagree your not the targeted audiance and shouldnt complain about it.
:laugh:
I have owned a few dual GPU/VPU cards and will say, they are great on paper and have impressive specs.
However leave a lot to be desired when it comes to application and game compatibility as and when software devs do not always write code for these vga cards. When this happens you are left with the performance of a single GPU on occasions less than 40% GPU usage across both GPU's. [*then it's not great for the price tag]
atb
Law-II
I hope they charge the earth personally. ;)
Therefore AMD needs a flagship product with an actual name.
Impressive work though :P
This card however is as bad as all that. Late hot and dear, not a good combo.
a twin tahiti le chip based card would have been a great fit here.... much more powerful than a 7970, and much cheaper too, oh well