AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card Follow-Up Review @ [H]

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AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card Follow-Up Review - We further examine the performance of the AMD Radeon HD 6990 video card. This time comparing it to a GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 6970 and Radeon HD 6970 CrossFireX on a single display. We will also look at the performance advantages of the overclock BIOS option and examine overclocking in both modes.
 
DASHlT said:
Something you might want to add, for the price of 2 580 GTX's in SLI, you can buy a 6990 and a 6970 for Tri-fire.
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This. +1.

There is only a single site that was cool enough to do it on all the internet, and the 1000$ 6990+6970 is raping the 1000$ 580 SLI set-up in that review.

Where is that comparison Kyle?

1000$ against 1000$. Why is it so difficult to do? Why not a figth on even ground? Same price. 2 cards agianst 2 cards.
 
LEVESQUE said:
This. +1.

There is only a single site that was cool enough to do it on all the internet, and the 1000$ 6990+6970 is raping the 1000$ 580 SLI set-up in that review.

Where is that comparison Kyle?

1000$ against 1000$. Why is it so difficult to do? Why not a figth on even ground? Same price. 2 cards agianst 2 cards.
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might be something done later on down the road which is my guess. though i've yet to see them test tri-xfire. only time they ever tested quad-xfire was with the 4870x2 and maybe the 5970(can't remember though).

nice review Brent. btw any chance of maybe getting 1 or 2 comparisons of the 935/1400 overclock compared to bios #2 default/bios #1 default clocks? or did i just miss read something due to being half asleep and that the OC testing in the review was actually the 935/1400 clocks?
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
might be something done later on down the road which is my guess. though i've yet to see them test tri-xfire. only time they ever tested quad-xfire was with the 4870x2 and maybe the 5970(can't remember though).
Click to expand...

But alot of people are using Tri-Fire.

And AMD did put a BIOS switch on the 6990 to bring it to 6970 in 2 seconds for a reason...

It's annoying that no one is tlkling about it, while AMD put it there for a reason! 2+2=4!

6990+6970, OC switch, Tri-Fire set-up at the same speed in 2 seconds.

In the 1000$ price bracket, it's alot better then 580 SLI vanialla 1.5Gb.

Hope HardOCP would do it, since it's not logical NOT doing it, and NOT talking about it, since AMD did intentionnally put a BIOS switch on the card to do it.
 
LEVESQUE said:
But alot of people are using Tri-Fire.

And AMD put a BIOS switch on the 6990 to bring it to 6970 in 2 seconds for a reason.

It,s annoying that no one is tlaking about it. AMD put it there for a reason! 2+2=4.

6990+6970, OC switch, Tri-Fire set-up at the same speed in 2 seconds.

In the 1000$ price bracket, it's alot better then 580 SLI vanialla 1.5Gb.

Hope HardOCP would do it, since it's not logical NOT doing it, and NOT talking about it, since AMD did it intentionnally on the card with a BIOS switch for it.
Click to expand...

as much as you want to continue blindly glorifying AMD instead of actually looking at the real facts (before you say anything yes i'm an AMD fan and my next card will be a 6970). tri-fire is still a VERY small market and no a lot of people are not using it.

yeah i understand your argument, but if it was me doing the reviews(which I'm not) tri-fire would still be at the bottom of my list for things to test. there's far more important things coming out in the next 2-3 months that are higher on the priority list in my opinion.


btw if you really thing AMD put that bios switch there purely for tri-fire get over yourself. its not there just because of the tri-fire. its there to justify the reasoning of buying it over dual 6970's. they gave semi enthusiast and hard core enthusiasts an option. they filled both markets with a single card and also means we won't have to wait 8 months for a custom PCB using fully clocked 6970 GPU's like we had to with the 5970 ares and crap like that. though i'm sure the AIB's threw a fit about it since that means they won't be able to sell 1200 dollar limited edition 6990's at 6970 clocks.
 
Somehow, I knew levesque would be on this like a fat kid on a cup cake. The 6990 isn't all that impressive to me though. Less performance than 6970's in crossfire, more cost, and more noise and heat output than two 6970's. If you only have two pci-e slots, it might be worthwhile for tri-fire. Otherwise, I would get two 6970's for crossfire or three for tri-fire. Just makes more sense.
 
Good follow-up article.

I know wrote you were going to use 2560x1600 for this article, which is ok. I think also having a 5760x1200 reference would have been nice though.

Tri-fire & Sli $1,000 comparison would have been nice to confirm other benchmarks, but somewhat academic at this point I guess due to...

The system wattage comparison is GOLDEN here!

Weather you care or not about using more electicity doesn't matter, what does matter is the ceiling you will hit at one point, and the efficiency you can extract before hitting said ceiling.

Doesn't matter if you calculate Total TDP or average TDP, you still have the same ceiling.

ARM comes to mind...


Y.
 
Nice follow up! Typo on page 4

In F1 2010 we are running at 2560x1600 with 4X AA. By far this game shows the most performance differences. Simply raising each GPU by 50MHz nets us an 8% performance improvement in this game. By raising the memory frequency to 5.5GHz, which the Radeon HD 6970 CrossFireX brings, improves upon the HD 6990 OC by even more, 9% in this test. In total, the AMD Radeon HD 6870 CrossFireX is 17% faster than the Radeon HD 6990 thanks to the higher core and memory frequency, this is significant.

AMD definitely did a great job on this card. Being that they were strangled by the 375watt pcie spec they did the best card possible within their limitations.
 
LEVESQUE said:
But alot of people are using Tri-Fire.

And AMD did put a BIOS switch on the 6990 to bring it to 6970 in 2 seconds for a reason...

It's annoying that no one is tlkling about it, while AMD put it there for a reason! 2+2=4!

6990+6970, OC switch, Tri-Fire set-up at the same speed in 2 seconds.

In the 1000$ price bracket, it's alot better then 580 SLI vanialla 1.5Gb.

Hope HardOCP would do it, since it's not logical NOT doing it, and NOT talking about it, since AMD did intentionnally put a BIOS switch on the card to do it.
Click to expand...

The main utility of the 6990 is CrossFire-on-a-stick.
This allows limited motherboards a Crossfire solution and that is the main audience for the card. I think three card solutions are just impractical, regardless of vendor.

I can even buy Crossfired 6990, but not a three way...........that's why you don't see it done in most reviews, plain and simple.

The BIOS switch is there, like some one else said, to give you speeds that rival two 6970s, again if you can't fit them on your board......otherwise the smart move is two 6970s.:D
 
Thanks for another article offering an intelegent perspective on the latest graphics card offerings! Always good details and enough to stimulate great feedback from the readers. HardOCP is the best.
 
As I have said and say again it is better to have two 6970s then it is to have one 6990. Cheaper too.

Even better 2x 6950s2GB unlocked and overclocked.... if you guys are going for cheap. ATI fanbois seem to always be going for cheap.

There are very few reasons a 6990 rig would be nice but not many. 1 would be a compact LAN party rig in a MircoATX style setup.
 
Tri-Fire may be a small market, but so is multi-monitor and 30" users and those are the one's who are going to be interested in 6990 + 6970 tri-fire. Also the crowd [H] caters too.
 
magoo said:
Good article and very good results.

The one thing that stood out here over everything else was CrossFired 6970 cards!

To hell with the 6990, I could buy two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127554&cm_re=hd_6970-_-14-127-554-_-Product and have money left over......about 80 bucks.....and essentially the same performance, plus sadly, over 300 dollars savings over GTX 580 SLi.:p
Click to expand...

And also don't forget that there is the possibility of getting a pair of 6950's and taking your chances to see if they will reliably unlock into a full 6970 for even bigger savings. Of course not everyone is successful, but people here seem to be more willing to accept these types of games of chance when buying hardware.

Great reviews guys! While I still believe the 6990 is going to be a very niche product, it is nice to see just how efficient it is for the performance you get. It never occurred to me that you could pair one of these up with another 6970 for tri-fire, but that seems more attractive than ever before since CFX scales insanely well these days. I suppose so long as your case has its own fire supression device and you plan on using headphones(or water cooling), you could even go with a pair of 6990's for quadfire.
 
amdgamer said:
It never occurred to me that you could pair one of these up with another 6970 for tri-fire, but that seems more attractive than ever before since CFX scales insanely well these days. .
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That's EXACTLY the reason why I post this around. Because ALOT of people don't know you can do this, since you CAN'T do this with Nvidia card. AMD's only. So people are confused with Tri-Fire because of Nvidia inability to do Tri-SLi with only 2 cards.

I know some Nvidia's owners are not happy with that, and likes to point fingers at me for that, and are trying to make me stop posting really hard, because it's a really interesting combo at 1000$...so, to them, it's really annoying (particularly to 580 SLI owners who see their 1000$ cards set-up spanked by that AMD combo...)... but at least it was helpful to someone just here. So it was relevant to do it!

And I have received countless e-mails about Tri-Fire on different internet forums. ALOT of e-mails about Tri-Fire. People didn't knew at all they could do that! Even long time AMD owners! And they are curious, and want to know more. And are asking me questions about my Tri-Fire set-up. Annoying for Nvidia's owners, but a great option for AMD owners. :)

That's why it would be interesting if HardOCP would test it. 6990+6970 in Tri-Fire. And against 580 SLI, for the same price.

It's not because it's not relevant to YOU, that it's not for someone else. :) All the PM I'm receiving with questions about Tri-Fire is proving that.
 
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We will do TriFire in the future, now please back to what we write about instead of what we don't.
 
TheBlueChanell said:
Tri-Fire may be a small market, but so is multi-monitor and 30" users and those are the one's who are going to be interested in 6990 + 6970 tri-fire. Also the crowd [H] caters too.
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This.

For 1000$, and with a 30'' LCD, you can get 580 SLI with only 1.5GB VRAM and only 2 GPUs, or 6990+6970, giving you more VRAM, AND 3 GPUs.

So now you can play every demanding game out there with 4XAA or 8XAA, but can't with 580 SLI, since there is not enough VRAM, on les sprocessing power (2 GPUs against 3).

3X unlock 6950 to 6970 is also alot better then 580 SLI 1.5GB for around the same price.
 
As Kyle mentioned, we are going to be testing Tri-Fire in the future. Our order of reviews was to hit this follow-up first, covering what we couldn't in the launch evaluation, like the comparison to single gpu cards, and the bios switch and overclocking. Next, we will do Tri-Fire. Now back to discussion about THIS article please.
 
Thanks for the review guys, it gave me some good insights on the 6990s performance relative to the 580 and the soon-to-be-released 590. I think the 590 and 6990 will be neck and neck if the 590 gets clocked at the rumored speeds. Certainly too close for me to make a prediction.

Thank you specifically for overclocking at the lower voltage setting and then again at the higher setting, and making power consumption measurements for both. For only a 40MHz boost in core clock, which would likely not make any difference in real-world gameplay, the power consumption went up 60 watts. If I had a 6990, I would choose the lower voltage and clock speed for the sake of efficiency.
 
I like the idea of dual 6970s a lot more than a single 6990. That way you can separate the heat sinks, keep temps (and presumably, noise) down, and open up a higher OC ceiling. The percentage of users here without dual crossfire slots on their mobo has to be pretty low at this point. Plus, two 6970s are probably cheaper.

That said, for the rare chance somebody only has one slot and has room in the case for a card this huge, or wants the possibility of tri- or quad- Crossfire in the future, the 6990 is an impressive bit of engineering.
 
@ LEVESQUE

I think your idea of comparing 580 SLI to 6990+6970 Tri-Fire is logical because of the price points, and they both use up four slots. This review team is NOT the one to ask to review that scenario. [H] does real run-throughs, which are labor-intensive, and for them to test that, it would have to be at 5760 x 1200. As Kyle and Brent already explained, they have better things to do than review a configuration 0.01% of the enthusiast community runs or would run.

My suggestion: go make this suggestion to TechPowerUP or another review site that runs canned benchmarks. The performance difference between 580 SLI and Tri-Fire would be so great that it would be easily exposed, EG HardOCP doesn't have to spend precious man-hours finding it.
 
XacTactX said:
@ LEVESQUE

I think your idea of comparing 580 SLI to 6990+6970 Tri-Fire is logical because of the price points, and they both use up four slots. This review team is NOT the one to ask to review that scenario. [H] does real run-throughs, which are labor-intensive, and for them to test that, it would have to be at 5760 x 1200. As Kyle and Brent already explained, they have better things to do than review a configuration 0.01% of the enthusiast community runs or would run.

My suggestion: go make this suggestion to TechPowerUP or another review site that runs canned benchmarks. The performance difference between 580 SLI and Tri-Fire would be so great that it would be easily exposed, EG HardOCP doesn't have to spend precious man-hours finding it.
Click to expand...

I quite disagree with you, I never said we have better things to do. I said that our order here was to first cover what we couldn't in the launch evaluation, and then to do Tri-Fire. During the second day of testing 6990 near launch time, it hit me that Tri-Fire is really the competition for 580 SLI and that we need to test it. So it has always been on our minds, since before launch, to test Tri-Fire. We will get to it. Right now, there is something else on my test bench I must attend to first. Now back to discussion on "AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card Follow-Up Review @ [H]" please.
 
XacTactX said:
Thanks for the review guys, it gave me some good insights on the 6990s performance relative to the 580 and the soon-to-be-released 590. I think the 590 and 6990 will be neck and neck if the 590 gets clocked at the rumored speeds. Certainly too close for me to make a prediction.

Thank you specifically for overclocking at the lower voltage setting and then again at the higher setting, and making power consumption measurements for both. For only a 40MHz boost in core clock, which would likely not make any difference in real-world gameplay, the power consumption went up 60 watts. If I had a 6990, I would choose the lower voltage and clock speed for the sake of efficiency.
Click to expand...

And what is amazing to me is at the lower Voltage you can still match regular 6970 CFX performance by overclocking to 880MHz/5.5GHz without any modification at all. So the 6990 can indeed be two true 6970 GPUs/card like performance, with some minor overclocking at the stock BIOS switch setting. This is good.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I quite disagree with you, I never said we have better things to do. I said that our order here was to first cover what we couldn't in the launch evaluation, and then to do Tri-Fire. During the second day of testing 6990 near launch time, it hit me that Tri-Fire is really the competition for 580 SLI and that we need to test it. So it has always been on our minds, since before launch, to test Tri-Fire. We will get to it. Right now, there is something else on my test bench I must attend to first. Now back to discussion on "AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card Follow-Up Review @ [H]" please.
Click to expand...

I misinterpreted your initial response to LEVESQUE then. Sorry and thanks for the clarification.
 
jebo_4jc said:
I like the idea of dual 6970s a lot more than a single 6990. That way you can separate the heat sinks, keep temps (and presumably, noise) down, and open up a higher OC ceiling. The percentage of users here without dual crossfire slots on their mobo has to be pretty low at this point. Plus, two 6970s are probably cheaper.

That said, for the rare chance somebody only has one slot and has room in the case for a card this huge, or wants the possibility of tri- or quad- Crossfire in the future, the 6990 is an impressive bit of engineering.
Click to expand...

Indeed, two 6970's are still going to be cheaper, and that is the bane of the 6990 at this point, it is overpriced. But, it does allow you to scale up to Tri and Quad-CrossFireX. As an all-in-one dual-GPU package, I like it, the performance isn't that far off from 6970 CFX which is good.
 
I find it interesting that it doesn't seem that hard to overclock the 6990 to 6970 CFX speeds. However, what are the long term effects and stability of running like that all of the time? If it's more trouble and more risky to the hardware, wouldn't it be preferable to just get two 6970s, space permitting?
 
LEVESQUE said:
This.

For 1000$, and with a 30'' LCD, you can get 580 SLI with only 1.5GB VRAM and only 2 GPUs, or 6990+6970, giving you more VRAM, AND 3 GPUs.

So now you can play every demanding game out there with 4XAA or 8XAA, but can't with 580 SLI, since there is not enough VRAM, on les sprocessing power (2 GPUs against 3).

3X unlock 6950 to 6970 is also alot better then 580 SLI 1.5GB for around the same price.
Click to expand...

Apologies to the moderators since this is an response to an off topic post, but wanted to point something out.

If you mention a "figth on even ground" review of a triple card set up to highlight the consumer value over an SLI set up, it would be fair to factor in the cost of the power supply needed to run the setup.

If everyone already had a 1500W PSU, then it is a simple "what can I get for $1000" choice. But, since two GTX580s in SLI draw around 700W (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/11/09/nvidia_geforce_gtx_580_video_card_review/8) most entusiest PSUs can run them (Nvidia SLI zone lists a 900W and 950W PSU that can). The 6990 in this review max power draw was 667, plus a 6970 at full load would think it would require a PSU in the highest end of the enthusiast market, so only a value to a small amount of users.

from the egg:
Silverstone 1000W $149
Silverstone 1200W $229(after rebate)
Silverstone 1500W $379

:)

Back on subject, does a card like the 6990 reduce the chances of games in the future not working with the card due to not having a cross fire profile? I now that was the benifit of some of the early Nvidia 2x GPU cards. I mean, doesnt the card work out the splitting up the rendering without relying on the same dual card driver profiles?
 
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Good article. Only thing I felt was missing was to show results from an overclock of not just the 6990 but also the GTX 580 and the two 6970's in xfire. I see many review sites do this for whatever reasons. But IMHO if you are going to OC 1 card in a review you have to OC the others as well for a complete comparative analysis.

My2c and keep up the good work! ;)
 
Brent_Justice said:
And what is amazing to me is at the lower Voltage you can still match regular 6970 CFX performance by overclocking to 880MHz/5.5GHz without any modification at all. So the 6990 can indeed be two true 6970 GPUs/card like performance, with some minor overclocking at the stock BIOS switch setting. This is good.
Click to expand...

would have liked this oc plus the max one you had to compare to the 6970 crossfire. did not see that :p

only saw 880mhz plus 5ghz memory speeds, not the later speeds you had it at.

if hte 590gtx is good this will make this cheaper and maybe i will try trifire then ;)
 
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matrix563 said:
would have liked this oc plus the max one you had to compare to the 6970 crossfire. did not see that :p

only saw 880mhz plus 5ghz memory speeds, not the later speeds you had it at.
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true. the top OC of the dual 6970 setup is another factor to consider.
 
The only issue I have with this article was on the OC, how much additional heat if any was generated. Their is just no mention of this.. The rest of the article is superb as always. :)
 
Brent_Justice said:
And what is amazing to me is at the lower Voltage you can still match regular 6970 CFX performance by overclocking to 880MHz/5.5GHz without any modification at all. So the 6990 can indeed be two true 6970 GPUs/card like performance, with some minor overclocking at the stock BIOS switch setting. This is good.
Click to expand...

Im fairly positive this card is cheating with pixie dust or hooves of a unicorn to achieve such low power levels. Hats off to ATI for this, lets hope they can get the price down to just above CFX 6970's.

And its good ATI can get this out before being over shadowed by the GTX 590 (or possibly over shadowed).
 
PungeX said:
The only issue I have with this article was on the OC, how much additional heat if any was generated. Their is just no mention of this.. The rest of the article is superb as always. :)
Click to expand...

What I noticed was that the fan kept up with the added Wattage and heat, increasing in rotational speed as needed. Remember, this whole board and thermal design was designed for a 450W board.
 
hey Brent, was wondering about the OC numbers in the review(not sure if you missed my question in my original post). were the OC numbers in the apples to apples testing with the switch set to the #1 default clocks or were they using the 935/1400 clocks you guys were able to reach manually overclocking using the #1 bios switch? just figured i'd ask since i didn't see any comparisons with the manual overclock vs the #1/#2 default clocks.
 
Fanboy comment follows: Funny how ATI appears to have approached this entire series with common sense. Getting the power draws reasonable, adding the appropriate amount of Vram, etc. Well done this round. Nvidia has some catching up to do and I look forward to it.
 
more fair comparison. Even 3 gb GTX 580's wouldn't have hurt either. Just gives a clearer picture of advantages.
 
Brent_Justice said:
During the second day of testing 6990 near launch time, it hit me that Tri-Fire is really the competition for 580 SLI and that we need to test it. So it has always been on our minds, since before launch, to test Tri-Fire. We will get to it.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

I got so much mud slung at me for saying this since I started a thread 6990+6970 against 580 SLI in here. You just made my day. :)

Troll, fanboy, FAIL!, 3gpu agianst 2... blah blah blah. I got everything except the kitchen sink thrown at me for saying that.

But hey, not that it's someone from the staff at HardOCP, we will hear the cricket chirping. Sigh

No flaming Brent for saying the same I was saying in my thread 6990+6970 against 580 SLI? You all now who you are. Too funny. :)
 
What about the power draw of a SLI 580 setup over a CFX 6970 setup? How about the power draw of the previous SLI 480 setup over a CFX 5870 back then?

My belief is that if someone is expecting to spend over a $1000 on a video card setup, chances are that they will have a PSU that is able to compete.

I myself am wondering whether it is a GTX 590 that Brent currently has on his bench as I want to see what it can do!

semiconductorslave said:
Apologies to the moderators since this is an response to an off topic post, but wanted to point something out.

If you mention a "figth on even ground" review of a triple card set up to highlight the consumer value over an SLI set up, it would be fair to factor in the cost of the power supply needed to run the setup.

If everyone already had a 1500W PSU, then it is a simple "what can I get for $1000" choice. But, since two GTX580s in SLI draw around 700W (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/11/09/nvidia_geforce_gtx_580_video_card_review/8) most entusiest PSUs can run them (Nvidia SLI zone lists a 900W and 950W PSU that can). The 6990 in this review max power draw was 667, plus a 6970 at full load would think it would require a PSU in the highest end of the enthusiast market, so only a value to a small amount of users.

from the egg:
Silverstone 1000W $149
Silverstone 1200W $229(after rebate)
Silverstone 1500W $379

:)

Back on subject, does a card like the 6990 reduce the chances of games in the future not working with the card due to not having a cross fire profile? I now that was the benifit of some of the early Nvidia 2x GPU cards. I mean, doesnt the card work out the splitting up the rendering without relying on the same dual card driver profiles?
Click to expand...
 
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