Radeon HD 7990 "Malta" To Be Discontinued in Q3-2013: Report

[btarunr]

Weak demand and stiff competition from NVIDIA's offerings could lead to AMD discontinuing its flagship graphics card, the Radeon HD 7990 "Malta," by the end of Q3 (end of September). The card was launched just this April, as a redux of last year's misfired Radeon HD 7990 "New Zealand," after getting power draw and performance-per-Watt right. Availability of Radeon HD 7990 has been greatly slimmed, so inventories dry out by the end of Q3. Radeon HD 7990 is commanding a steep four-figure price that's on-par with NVIDIA's offerings that it's trying to compete with, GeForce GTX TITAN, and GTX 690. Rather than lowering prices of the card to make it competitive, it looks like AMD decided to discontinue it, within a fixed time frame (Q3). Perhaps it's an indication of AMD's rumored Radeon HD 9000 series' October arrival not being a unicorn?



We just received following statement from AMD: "AMD has not EOL'd the world's fastest graphics card, the AMD Radeon HD 7990". So, all this says is that the card is not end-of-life (EOL) yet, but may be EOL'd in the future.. or not.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[megamanxtreme]

They take a full year to develop this card, or take their sweet time when they should have had it to compete with Nvidias GTX 690, and they are quickly discontinuing it?
More like discontinue the 7970 or anything that came out first.

Of course, I understand business and why they choose not to pick on the Single GPUs, but this also indicates that something is big is coming, but unfortunately not soon enough since GTX 700 has been out and taking profits from AMD.

 

[Fourstaff]

They take a full year to develop this card, or take their sweet time when they should have had it to compete with Nvidias GTX 690, and they are quickly discontinuing it?

No point continue making them if no one is buying. They should reduce the price instead, but given that this is a halo product its better to discontinue.

 

[Jorge]

Let's be honest... No typical PC user needs any of these $1000+ GPU cards. If you've got that kind of money to piss away on a GPU card then give half of it to charity and buy a really good $500 GPU card and feel good about yourself and your decision.

 

[cadaveca]

Perhaps they simply couldn't get Crossfire working right, and gave up. XD.

No use beating the dead horse when new hardware designs fix issues that software cannot.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

I feel sad for those who bought these a while ago, then read this article the first thing they boot up their shiny new card.

 

[erocker]

T-Minus 23 days 'till CrossFire fix drivers.

 

[d1nky]

Perhaps they simply couldn't get Crossfire working right, and gave up

LOL ya dont do a merger into another company, create some damn good gpus, fly out loads of cheap half decent cpus to 'give up'

TBH i think its probably sells that has caused this, and something in production which competes for less.......................................................................

 

[JDG1980]

The 7990 simply wasn't competitive. There is no good reason why anyone would choose it over a GTX 690 or Titan, both of which are sold at the same price point. AMD has lots of competitive offerings in the low and mid range, but their CrossFire isn't nearly on par with NVIDIA's SLI, and they currently have no single-chip offering which can stand up to the GK110 (Titan/780). Hopefully Sea Islands/Volcanic Islands will help to close the gap.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

what was the point of this card, exactly? it wasnt a whole lot faster than the 690, it ran much hotter, and it was dependent on crossfire working properly (and there is a greater chance of the moon turning into cheese).

at least, when the 690 came out, it was only 10-20 bucks more expensive than dual 680s, yet this thing came out well after 7970s were selling for 400 apiece.

and now it is being discontinued 6 months after it comes out, while the 690 is still selling more than a year after its introduction. AMD, what on earth are you thinking?

 

[Hayder_Master]

hmm better than nvidia, they steal people with gtx titan by release gtx780 with a bit lower performance, seems AMD 8000 series will be great so they did not want people buy 7990 anymore 8970 will a bit lower performance maybe.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Discontinued before it's officially working properly.

Impressive.

 

[BigMack70]

This card was such a ridiculous fail... same as the 6990. AMD needs to really re-think how it does dual-GPU cards in the future. The upcoming crossfire fix should at least help.

 

[d1nky]

could lead to AMD discontinuing its flagship graphics card

 

[HumanSmoke]

Perhaps they simply couldn't get Crossfire working right, and gave up. XD.

No use beating the dead horse when new hardware designs fix issues that software cannot.

Might be a case of not enough chips meeting the binning requirement, which would likely explain why the card never really turned up in any numbers in the retail channel to start with.
Keeping the price high would allow the card to stay in stock without the need for anything more than nominal production...and if it's in stock it stays on most sites benchmark ladder - and that was the object of the exercise to start with- a reference design that could continue to feature in benchmark suites where a vendor designed board ( TUL, HIS, Asus Ares II) could not.

 

[alwayssts]

It's likely exactly what is mentioned in the article.

2x 1792sp 256-bit at higher clocks would be a similar design (assuming crossfire works) and a hell of a lot cheaper than using Tahiti. Why on earth would they continue making the older version?

Similarly, 2560/384-bit at 11xx/7000 would be similar to Titan.

At least one, if not both of those designs is bound to happen...and likely are going to be forced to be cheaper while performing similarly, a luxury 7990 can't afford.

This seems like a foregone conclusion and obvious. 7990 makes no sense in an updated market. Too expensive for it's efficiency versus newer designs and competition.

 

[radrok]

Perhaps they simply couldn't get Crossfire working right, and gave up. XD.

No use beating the dead horse when new hardware designs fix issues that software cannot.

They'll probably delay that crossfire fix driver again, or they'll release it and it will probably only fix just some titles.

It's likely exactly what is mentioned in the article.

2x 1792sp 256-bit at higher clocks would be a similar design (assuming crossfire works) and a hell of a lot cheaper than using Tahiti. Why on earth would they continue making the older version?

Similarly, 2560/384-bit at 11xx/7000 would be similar to Titan.

At least one, if not both of those designs is bound to happen...and likely are going to be forced to be cheaper while performing similarly, a luxury 7990 can't afford.

This seems like a foregone conclusion and obvious. 7990 makes no sense in an updated market. Too expensive for it's efficiency versus newer designs and competition.

AMD needs a new flagship chip.

 

[Deadlyraver]

I think it makes perfect sense to discontinue it, the market behind these cards are too small to sustain for a couple years of time. I see professionals going after this thing for the sheer strength of the card, but there are not too many people willing to shed a thousand to get a graphics card for any practicality of gaming.

 

[15th Warlock]

Unfortunately the card never lived up to the expectations, what should've been a slam dunk in terms of hardware was never actually up to par due to poor driver support, the crossfire fix that was promised by AMD to be released along the card never materialized and now may be too little too late.

Farewell Malta, we hardly even knew ye...

 

[HumanSmoke]

Unfortunately the card never lived up to the expectations, what should've been a slam dunk in terms of hardware was never actually up to par due to poor driver support...

Judging by the system builders statements to TH, and the associated odd throttling behaviour (downclocking) shown in reviews, drivers might not be the only negative:

For single-card, the issue had to do with the cards warping after heating up, causing their cooling fans to rub on the shroud and creating an awful racket. We don’t know if that issue was limited to our samples, and that probably could’ve been fixed with a retention bracket we asked AMD for. That issue became moot, though, because four-way CrossFire is really the only configuration our clientele want a 7990 for...Kelt Reeves of Falcon Northwest

 

[15th Warlock]

Judging by the system builders statements to TH, and the associated odd throttling behaviour (downclocking) shown in reviews, drivers might not be the only negative:

Yes, I forgot that article, not only was scaling compromised by atrocious frame latency, but in quad x-crossfire setups the card has a design problem that makes the very first GPU on the upper PCIe slot to overheat and throttle all GPUs to prevent it from frying.

It seems other OEMs reportedly had the same issues and hence the card was never offered for quad xfire systems by boutique system builders.

This is a design defect having to do with the way the fans create a lot of turbulence between cards regardless of how many slots you leave between them, defeating the whole purpose of using more than one card...

 

[douglatins]

Such failure follows this card

 

[el etro]

Is the Cfx frame issues going less worse with 13.5b1/b2/13.6b1/b2 drivers?

 

[Slizzo]

Is the Cfx frame issues going less worse with 13.5b1/b2/13.6b1/b2 drivers?

They're making progress each driver revision, however they need to implement the fix for each game individually on the 7 series and older chips. When AMD launches their 9 series chips no doubt they'll have a hardware solution in place much like nVidia has been using for their past few generations of GPUs.