In a bid to step up competitiveness of its Radeon HD 7990 "Malta" dual-GPU graphics card against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN and GTX 690, AMD add-in-board (AIB) partners slashed prices of the card by almost a third. What was once retailing for $1,100-1,200, is now down to
$699.99. Prices of the card on American retailer Newegg.com, are ranging between $699.99 to
$789.99, with two AIBs capturing the
$729.99 and
$749.99 price points, along the way. With the right kind of CrossFire profiles, a Radeon HD 7990 can offer frame-rates rivaled only by GTX Titan and GTX 690. Then there are also AMD's recent
CrossFire micro-stuttering fix, and eight Never Settle games with realistic resale value of $100 to account for. These prices should also give GeForce GTX 780 buyers second thoughts.
94 Comments on Radeon HD 7990 "Malta" Prices Slashed to $699, Targets GTX 780
Thankfully my card didn't get damage, but I have seen reports at the Nvidia forums all over of people rolling back to other drivers, or doing clean windows installs with different drivers, and then they have lines all over the screen, and card isn't stable in games anymore. There's lots of videos on it too.
But there were also many people with no issues with the drivers. Looks like you were one of them.
Geforce R320.xx-R326.xx display driver stability feedback thread.
Well played AMD, well played :rockout: Unfortunately quad fire is crippled on these cards, due to a defect in the fans design, the first GPU on the frist PCIe slot overheats, causing all 4 GPUs to throttle, that's why no OEM offers these cards in quad fire unless you use water cooling, still, one of this cards would be a great choice for a small factor gaming PC!
2x GTX 670 outperform 2x 7970s, because lets face it the 7990 is just 2x 7970s.
The GTX 690 is a good 15% faster than the 7990(proof here), and that was with AMD cheating by rendering stub frames.
Now, 2x GTX 670 is within 3% of a GTX 690(proof here).
So 2x GTX 670 outperform 2x 7970.
You can probably pull a benchmark or two out of your ass that shows the 7970s winning, but overall they loose by a good margin.
And since 2x GTX 770 are even faster than 2x GTX 670 there is no way 2x 7970 even comes close to competing.
Is 4% difference overall worth the 13.5%/$100 price difference ($700 versus $800)?
But yeah, 770s are going to be faster unless you're talking about overclocked 7970s (with broken games excluded).
So since we know 2x GTX 670 is within 3% of a GTX 690, the review you picked confirms what I said, a 7990 only matches 2x GTX 670.
That means 2x GTX 770 would be faster than a 7990 or 2x 7970s.
The reason a 2x GTX 670 matches a 7990 is because SLI scales way better than Crossfire.
Plus those benchmarks were still using AMD's cheating. By why should be exclude games were CF doesn't work?
We shouldn't, that would give an unfair advantage to AMD.
Unless you let me exclude a few of the games were nVidia does poorly too.
... have a nice day...I'm taking the blue pill on this one. :)
EDIT: Just let me clarify before I bail on this potential shitstorm...
AMD, I don't believe, was cheating. Nobody knows for a fact. Until the FCAT stuff came out, we knew the problem existed for some people, and after AMD found out about it (ok, I will concede that is a tough pill to swallow), they worked on changes that were recently implemented and show tremendous promise. Now cheating? Those are some hard words, especially considering a title or two, didnt show a FPS loss. You(we) have no proof they knew there was a difference in FPS and the runt frames and that it would affect FPS.
As far as the SLI and CFx scaling. I find both scale well in most titles. Both camps have their bad and good with scaling. As you (should) know, scaling with vary by title, resolution, drivers, and in-game settings. So to make a blanket statement like that without being more granular leaves a lot to be desired to me.
.....and, IM OUT. :)
Our own Cadaveca had been complaining about the problem for months actually, and he's a reviewer for a top rated review site(HERE).
To say AMD didn't know about the problem and wasn't cheating is ignorant.
There was just no way to catch them cheating, until now, and they got caught, plain and simple.
Now, as for SLI scaling better, that is a given considering it turns out Crossfire doesn't scale at all!
Maybe these new drivers will fix the issue, but who knows what the framerates will actually be like with the fix in place.
Will we see framerates that are the same as they were before?
I highly doubt it.
They won't be able to sync the frames properly and keep the same framerates.
And some people like to use their 120Hz monitors to their fullest, so a 7990 or GTX 690 is not overkill for 1080p for some.
1. Internal inertia within AMD's managerial hierarchy. It is well documented that product divisions within AMD are unnecessarily compartmentalized (ATI especially). Getting anything done seems to a long slow painful process. Cases in point are the Evergreen PowerPlay issue (Grey Screen of Death). Reported in their own forums ad nauseum along with high return rates from the launch in September 2009, it took months (and a lot of adverse press coverage in Feb/March 2010) before AMD allocated resources to fix the issue. The Enduro mobile dual graphics issue has also taken some time to alleviate.
2. AMD don't seem to be particularly attuned to their user base (at least not to the same extent as their market rivals). AMD obviously don't monitor the consumer feedback ( sites, forums, support tickets) to any great extent. Citing complete surprise at Nvidia's implementation of frame metering seems like a colossal fuck up in market research.
All this seems to point to a divisive management structure, a lack of funds, and a lack of monitoring of the end user experience- which may be a product of the first two (management and funding), rather than an strategy of cheating
my $0.02
Just nice to see a legend card at fair price no mater what company made it.
Amd/Nvidia Who cares! Sure Nvidia can do this and that, but does it do what Amd does?
Some things yes and others not. I'm just glad the price dropped and If I had the cash Id pop one into my rig :cool:
You know tbh amd's latest driver is slick, and playes games so bloody smooth you Nvidia fans might get a bit jealous, jk but yeah nice news :rockout: