AMD's Radeon HD 6990: The New Single Card King
by Ryan Smith on March 8, 2011 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- AMD
- Radeon HD 6990
- GPUs
The launch drivers for the 6990 will be a preview version of Catalyst 11.4, which have been made available today and the final version launching sometime in April. Compared to the earlier drivers we’ve been using performance in most of our games is up by at least a few percent, particularly in CrossFire. For launching a dual-GPU card like the 6990, the timing couldn’t be better.
Along with these performance improvements AMD is also throwing a few new features in to the Catalyst Control Center, making it the first time they’ve touched it since the introduction of the new design in January. Chief among these features – and also timed to launch with the 6990 today - is 5x1 portrait Eyefinity mode. Previously AMD has supported 3x1 and 3x2, but never anything wider than 3 monitors (even on the Eyefinity 6 series).
The 6990 is of course perfectly suited for the task as it's able to drive 4 + 1 monitors without any miniDP MST hubs, and indeed the rendering capabilities of this card are wasted a good deal of the time only driving one monitor. Other cards will also support 5x1P, but only E6 cards can work without a MST hub at the moment. Notably, in spite of requiring one fewer monitor than 3x2 Eyefinity this is easily the most expensive option for Eyefinty yet, as portrait modes require monitors with wide vertical viewing angles to avoid color washout – you’d be hard pressed to build a suitable setup with cheap TN monitors like you can the landscape modes.
The other big change for power users is that AMD is adding a software update feature to the Catalyst Control Center, which will allow users to check for driver updates from within the CCC. It will also have an automatic update feature, which will check for driver updates every 2 weeks. At this point there seems to be some confusion over at AMD over whether this will be enabled by default or not – our drivers have it enabled by default, while we were initially told it would be disabled. From AMD’s perspective having the auto update feature enabled improves the user experience by helping to get users on newer drivers that resolve bugs in similarly new games, but at the same time I could easily see this backfiring with users by being one more piece of software nagging for an update every month.
Finally, AMD is undergoing a rebranding (again), this time for the Catalyst Control Center. If you use an AMD CPU + AMD consumer GPU, the Catalyst Control Center is now the AMD VISION Engine Control Center. If you use an Intel CPU + AMD consumer GPU it’s still the Catalyst Control Center. If you use a professional GPU (regardless of CPU), it’s the Catalyst Pro Control Center.
The Test
Due to the timing of this launch we haven’t had an opportunity to do in-depth testing of Eyefinity configurations. We will be updating this article with Eyefinity performance data in the next day. In the meantime we have our usual collection of single monitor tests.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Asus Rampage II Extreme |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 6990 AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB AMD Radeon HD 6870 AMD Radeon HD 6850 AMD Radeon HD 5970 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 5850 AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 4870X2 AMD Radeon HD 4870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 262.99 NVIDIA ForceWare 266.56 Beta NVIDIA ForceWare 266.58 AMD Catalyst 10.10e AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix AMD Catalyst 11.4 Preview |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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EmmetBrown - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
Nice, but what about the Radeon HD 6450, 6570 and 6670?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_Gra...
Why they are available for OEM only? They looks interesting, especially the 6670, which with its 480 SP should be faster than the 5670 which has 400 SP and lower frequency. Do you plan to review them?
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
As you note, they're OEM only. AMD will release them to the retail market eventually, but clearly they're not in a hurry. It's unlikely we'll review them until then, as OEM cards are difficult to come by.misfit410 - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
I have to ask, if you bring up the price and say that you might as well do two 6950's in SLI when this thing doubles the performance of the GTX580, I mean would it also not be the better solution than a GTX580 which is $500 while two 6950's can apparently double it for $550 being they can be found for $225 after rebates these days.Figaro56 - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
You sound a little confused. You can't run ATI cards in SLI, they run in what is called crossfire (or crossfirex which is the same thing). Two 6950's don't equal GTX580 in SLI. You need two HD 6970 cards in crossfire to nearly equal two GTX580 in SLI.In my opinion, why limit your performance with 2 HD 6950 cards, why not just bye the 2 HD 6970 cards and never have to second guess if you should have or not? But... That's just me. I have a job.
silverblue - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
Totally unnecessary closing comment there, considering most people here do actually have jobs. Not everyone who has a job can afford such gear as there's more important things to spend money on.Thanny - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
You sound confused, too. He miswrote SLI, but you misunderstood his point entirely. He's saying that two 6950's are significantly faster than a single 580 for almost the same price.Loiosh - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
Hey guys, you forgot one other usage case that would necessitate this card: ATI+physx setup: http://www.shackpics.com/viewer.x?file=DumbVideoca...I'm currently running one and it requires a dual-GPU card. :/
In my case I'm waiting for a watercooled version. BTW, you didn't say the release date for this?
nanajuuyon - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
Funny after reading this review I went into town (Tokyo) to buy a new hard disk and saw this card for sale. So in Japan at least it is already on the market..... price was ridiculous though, 79,000YEN or $945 US..... I'm sure it will be available everywhere soon.Waterblocks on the other hand could be a couple month or so away I guess...
Vinas - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
If you buy this you better have it on water. 'nuff said about all this tri slot cooler talk.JPForums - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - link
First off, nice article Ryan.Good data, relevant commentaries on said data, and conclusions.
You mention in the article that you believe some of the shortcomings of the 6990 to be a lack of PCIe bandwidth. This got me thinking that perhaps it is a good time to revisit the effect of PCIe bandwidth on modern cards. Given the P67 only natively supports 16 lanes, I'm curious to see what effect it has on CF/SLI. It could make big difference in the recommended hardware for various levels of gaming systems.
Typically, someone looking for a CF/SLI setup will get a board that supports more lanes. However, I have seen a situation where a friend built a budget i5 system and about 4 months later was in a position to acquire an HD5970 on the cheap (relatively speaking). Clearly, two HD5850s/HD5870s would have been an option.
If newer cards are effectively PCIe bandwidth limited, then a 6990 may perform more closely to an HD6970 CF setup in such a system than it does in these graphs. This would be even more of a consideration at the high end if the rare boards with support for 4x8 lane (spaced) PCIe give you no real benefit over a more common 2x16 lane board (comparing 4 HD6970s to 2 HD6990s).