AMD's Radeon HD 6990: The New Single Card King

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• Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  Yes, using the LateGameView benchmark. Like any other benchmark it's not a perfect representation of all scenarios, but generally speaking it's a reasonable recreation of a game many turns in with a large number of units.

• jabber - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  All cards at this level are niche. Very few of us have that much to splash on one component.
  
  I find it amusing that most of the folks here going "oh wow thats too noisy/power hungry/slow etc. so I wont be buying!", will just then load up Crysis on their 5770/GTX460 equipped PCs.
  
  Note to 95% of you reading this article...this card isnt/wasnt designed for you.

• araczynski - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  nice, but it sounds like the 6950CF owns the bang/$ award, this thing is too little for too much $/headache.

• araczynski - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  then again my 4850CF/E8500 system just played dragon age 2 demo at 1920x1200 with absolutely no problems, so have no reason to upgrade just yet, still.

• Gainward - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  I also just wanted to touch on that comment. Whilst these cards seem excessive to some you have to remember that @ this moment in time they are as I dub it the veyron moment like others in the past the concorde moment. They might not be for most people practical but to its like me saying to my team, look lets see what we can do. Not only that but having the crown of fastest single card (agreed single card but multi gpu) goes a long way to brand loyalty and advertising.
  An example I like to use is the GTX 560. Its a fantastic card and in many ways better… hang with me a second. In terms of actual raw power you get for sub £200 is incredible also factor in its quiet and wont eat through your electricity like a moth through primark. But…. to not produce these high end cards would be criminal. We need people to keep pushing as hard and fast (that sounds so wrong) at the the boundaries(agreed quite crudely in the 6990 case but hey I dont sit in either camp just wait a few days for the 590 for brute but crude).
  with the reduction in nm to 28 the power consumption and heat will be brought down further (dont need pointing out here that a lot of factors at play here it was just a generalisation) but sure we could see just as big and hot cards within practical reason.
  I would not say out of hand I would say its progress and with progress we can lear

• Figaro56 - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  Roger that.

• JimmiG - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  "Water cooled 6990s will be worth their weight in gold."
  
  They'll probably cost about that too...

• smigs22 - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  The r6990 stands out as a massive single card leader. The 6950CF offers far better price/perfomance with potential for 6970CF performance through BIOS flashing.
  
  Maybe you should break up some of the charts to show only single cards configurations (for those with motherboards lacking full/partial SLI/CF support).
  
  It will be interesting to see how enabled & what clocks the gf590 will arrive at, in order to keep its power-draw & temps down to reasonable levels??
  
  I wonder if someone would place a carbon tax on these bad boys....lol

• Figaro56 - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  The would have done this, but there is a cryo cooled case interior on the market yet.

• IceDread - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link

  If the card would have come with water cooling option or something like that, then it would have been a great product.