PowerColor Radeon HD 6990 CrossFire

[W1zzard]

AMD's new Radeon HD 6990 is the fastest graphics card in the world. We take TWO of those cards for a spin and check if this combination is worth $1,400 of your hard earned Dollars or if it only serves as a hot air blowing e-penis extension.

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[Yellow&Nerdy?]

Dang it, that is a lot of e-peen. Great review as always. Seems that the scaling is pretty whack, which is expected with 4 GPUs and relatively new drivers. How would two GTX 580's in SLI compare to these cards? They perform worse, but should scale better and be "cheaper"(don't really think using the word cheap is appropriate when it's a grand worth of GPUs we're talking about, but oh well.)

 

[DanishDevil]

I appreciated your input on the current state of the gaming and GPU industry. Great job again, W1zz, keep it up!

 

[Isenstaedt]

Just like with CPUs, the greatest leap is achieved when going from one core to two. From two to three there is less difference (and from three to four even lesser).

 

[wahdangun]

Damm, I almost cried reading wizz summary. What the hell happen to the pc gaming??

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

id really wish w1zzard would drop the 4xAA from the Metro review and use Depth of Field instead, depth of field actually improves SLI and Crossfire scaling and has a visual difference 4xAA is just a hog here and offers nearly no improvement over the basic AAA method.

i noticed it in my own review AAA or 4xAA xfire only scaled to 69% but with Depth of Field it scaled to 96%
id really suggest removing 4xAA from metro since it almost has no purpose as image quality difference is unnoticeable and DOF offers better scaling and better idea of future DX11 performance since it uses Directcompute

otherwise great review W1zz glad to see you got 2 bad boys to do the review with.

 

[HalfAHertz]

10,5 billion transistors. TEN AND A HALF BILLION TRANSISTORS OF MOTHER F^@&ING GPU POWER :O This setup is not for the faint-hearted.

 

[Chewers]

This is sick..

 

[Praetorian]

You need to start adding 8xAA in games like Call of Duty, F12010, HAWX, etc.

Also it seems that a CrossfireX is good for benchies only at this time...

 

[yogurt_21]

great review as always w1z. I can't say that I'm disapointed scaling for crossfirex isn't better. For me it's encouraging as it shows only one 6990 is relevant at this point. Being my solution is a little faster than a 6990 I'm glad as it means my rig will last longer.

 

[overclocking101]

i would love to see nvidia beat this!

 

[HalfAHertz]

i would love to see nvidia beat this!

As should everyone. Nvidia beating Ati = more competition = lower prices = happy campers

 

[newtekie1]

What a beast of a setup, why do I get the feeling that it was actually held back by the 3.8GHz i7?

As should everyone. Nvidia beating Ati = more competition = lower prices = happy campers

Saddly, recently that hasn't seemed to the case. If nVidia beats AMD, it just means nVidia's card will cost more than this card, and this card will stay at the same price.

 

[freaksavior]

I have one words to say. HOLY FREAKIN CRAP!

 

[nt300]

AMD really needs to iron out its Drivers so that the HD 6990 along with its siblings performs the way they were meant to. Very impressive seeing 2 x HD 6990’s in Quad-Crossfire, good job Wizzard and great review like always.

 

[OneCool]

What a beast of a setup, why do I get the feeling that it was actually held back by the 3.8GHz i7?

Because it was.

 

[Per Hansson]

Wow, very well written conclusion.
So true it kinda makes me sad

Now please get up the pitchforks and head over to Cryteks HQ!

 

[MoonPig]

No power consumption chart?

And should we expect a review with the 920 @ 4GHz+ to see bottlenecks?

 

[theubersmurf]

I loved the performance summary, AMD HD 6990 cf beating all comers, then a page later, performance per dollar, it is trounced by all comers...laughed a bit, typical situation really, but I loved seeing it, just for a little laugh.

 

[HammerON]

Would have liked to see a comparison with a GTX 580 in SLI...

I do appreciate what you stated in the "Value and conclusion" page. The "with the display industry holding up at 1080p for longer than required" comment is an eye opener

 

[The Von Matrices]

No power consumption chart?

That is exactly what I was thinking. How much do these use?