AMD Radeon HD 7990 Video Card Review @ [H]

I also would have liked to see the 690, but the rationale I guess is it's performance difference from 680's in SLI is based purely on clock speed and not this odd performance drop the 7990 seems to experience (anyone else feel like it's more like 7950's xfired?). Anyway, from that standpoint I guess it's understandable.
 
Cruiza said:
I want your job. :p
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same here! ;)

not that i could fill the shoes by any means. im sure that there is a ton of work/time and expertise involved behind the scenes.
much appreciation by the way. keep up the good work
 
I feel like based on the performance this card really should be $799.
 
Thanks for the review. I'm disappointed but really not that much because this product is quite late to market. Let us hope that new drivers will really kick this puppy into gear and that prices will fall to reasonable levels ($850 or even $900, if performance improves over CrossFire 7970).

Yes, this is a niche market segment (especially in this economy!) but all AMD needs to really do to be competitive is to fix the Stuttering, improve performance, and have a positive future launches. On the topic of performance -- yes, this card is late to market but due to its design differences and not being traditional CrossFire, its really in its infancy in terms of driver-related improvements. Lets not forget that 7970s have been out and getting targeted improvements for over a year.

Ok maybe i'm hoping for too much. :p
 
g-money said:
but all AMD needs to really do to be competitive is to fix the Stuttering, improve performance
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So basically all they need to do is fix all of their problems? :p

I wouldn't hope for too many improvements from drivers aside from the stuttering fixes. This may not be "traditional" crossfire, but AMD has produced single PCB CrossFire solutions for the last 4 generations (6990, 5970, 4870x2, 3870x2) utilizing two GPUs with a bridge chip, so I expect they have that hammered out fairly well.
 
Cruiza said:
I want your job. :p
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I wouldn't. Got to have a trusting knowledgable staff, moderators, funding for best computer tech site out there, hours and hours of editing, testing, upkeep, people telling you how you should do your reviews when yours are "different" from all the clone sites, etc...

My hats off to Kyle/Brent and staff when you think of the load on their shoulders here and the millions, and MILLIONS of visitors/members that come through. They make it look easy, its not. ;) :)

7990 seems to be a day late and a dollar too long. Great review as usual and the truth.
 
HardUp4HardWare said:
Why does AMD do this to themselves?

Thanks, Kyle great review.
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I have often asked myself the very same question. I want AMD so desperately to succeed...not because I love AMD, but rather so Nvidia will have competition and that we, the consumers win through the RED and GREEN wars:)

I think it's time for me to sell off my 7970's and await something new, like the 8900 series.
 
SnowBeast said:
I wouldn't. Got to have a trusting knowledgable staff, moderators, funding for best computer tech site out there, hours and hours of editing, testing, upkeep, people telling you how you should do your reviews when yours are "different" from all the clone sites, etc...

My hats off to Kyle/Brent and staff when you think of the load on their shoulders here and the millions, and MILLIONS of visitors/members that come through. They make it look easy, its not. ;) :)
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I wouldn't assume it to be a walk-in-the-park, but it still seems better than my current job.
 
When your bottom line reads, "[bunch of negatives] but it's here!" you know something went wrong somewhere.I see the market for this card, but it's not huge, and is even more niche than the market for $1k cards already is.
 
Seems like NV made AMD realize there is actually a market for a $1k card and so they released this. But it's a year late, quite underwhelming. In the current market climate you can also get 2x7950s for around $550, which seem to give equivalent performance. Plus, weren't the custom 7990s going for less? This card makes no sense at all.
 
So does micro-stuttering STILL plague AMD Crossfire? I encountered it 2 years ago using 2 6970s in Crossfire. Been using 2 NVIDIA 680 GTX cards in SLI and haven't encountered any kind of stuttering.

Kind of surprised if 2 years later AMD still hasn't fixed microstuttering in Xfire, if so. Huge PITA from what I recall.
 
peppergomez said:
So does micro-stuttering STILL plague AMD Crossfire? I encountered it 2 years ago using 2 6970s in Crossfire. Been using 2 NVIDIA 680 GTX cards in SLI and haven't encountered any kind of stuttering.

Kind of surprised if 2 years later AMD still hasn't fixed microstuttering in Xfire, if so. Huge PITA from what I recall.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIFYyDV3DKs

The stuttering can be fixed by setting a frame cap in Radeon Pro, though it seems this won't be necessary anymore with the new drivers coming out - video is above.
 
Being a AMD user ( 3 7970s in Tri Fire ) I am very dissapointed with the benchmarks of this card and microstuttering, I was going to grab one and try Quadfire and sell off one of my cards but not now. I think ill just hold off until NVidia release their TITAN successor and go with that, Im sick and tired of stuttering and driver issues.
 
PSYKOMANTIS said:
I have a question about the test setup GTX cards.
Were they they 2GB or 4GB 680GTX cards?

I kinda wonder how the GTX680 with 4GB would fair against this 7990 by itself.

Also I wonder how this 7990 would do against that one-off (only 500 made) DEVIL card that MSI released a while back.
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2GB, and I never felt I was cramped by the 2GB of RAM while gaming except in Hitman, that was the only game where I ran into issues. This is simply because GTX 680 SLI isn't powerful or fast enough at 5760x1200 to require the need for more VRAM, except in Hitman, on the other games tested. If it was 3-way SLI, that would make a difference then. Also, who knows how future games will perform, Metro could demand more, but we don't know yet.
 
Sacrilego said:
Ok, I'm confused.
In the Tombraider run-through it says that you used the same settings for all 3 configurations, but the graph shows that you used normal shadows for the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition CrossFire table.
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I fixed that table, it was a typo, they were all at Ultra shadows, same maxed out settings on all cards.
 
This card is a huge disappointment. Oh well. While I think the review should have been a little different, I don't really disagree with the conclusion.
 
bloodypulp said:
maybe the PCIExpress bridge is bottlenecking
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Actually, the bandwidth provided by that 48 lane chip is rather good, possibly higher than the bridge chip across the top. It could actually help in some situations. However, I never noticed any difference in "stuttering" because of it yet.
 
Teenyman45 said:
A question for either Brent or Kyle: Was there significant coil whine while using the card? Tom's (which may as well start reviews with Sponsored by Nvidia) was really moaning about severe noise issues separate from the fans.

Separate question: Did you have access to the "prototype" drivers that some other 7990 reviewers were using and if so, was there any difference?
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I experienced no coil whine while gaming.

Yes I have the drivers, first they gave us Win8 drivers only, and I don't have Win8 nor do we test on it. Just really recent, like two day ago, they sent us the Win7 driver. I haven't had time or a chance to try it yet. They have said it does contain older crossfile profiles and performance tweaks. So 13.5 Beta2 is actually going to end up having faster framerates, then the prototype driver. So the proto driver shouldn't be used for performance comparisons. It's a little confusing, but the proto driver should only be used to look at framerate latencies, and with programs like FCAT to dive into frametime issues. Do we plan to test it, absolutely yes, once I figure out FCAT.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I experienced no coil whine while gaming.

Yes I have the drivers, first they gave us Win8 drivers only, and I don't have Win8 nor do we test on it. Just really recent, like two day ago, they sent us the Win7 driver. I haven't had time or a chance to try it yet. They have said it does contain older crossfile profiles and performance tweaks. So 13.5 Beta2 is actually going to end up having faster framerates, then the prototype driver. So the proto driver shouldn't be used for performance comparisons. It's a little confusing, but the proto driver should only be used to look at framerate latencies, and with programs like FCAT to dive into frametime issues. Do we plan to test it, absolutely yes, once I figure out FCAT.
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I was just about to ask if [H] was jumping on the FCAT bandwagon. I'm curious about the testing methodology.
 
Stoly said:
I was just about to ask if [H] was jumping on the FCAT bandwagon. I'm curious about the testing methodology.
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No we are not going to "jump on the band wagon" on FCAT for a couple of reasons. First I feel as though the data from it is incredibly labor intensive and not all that valuable. Yes, it will give us some objective data to back up what we have been concluding for years through real world gaming testing. I think I have our own spin on how the data should be used that will be valuable for you guys. But another page of graphs is not truly what I think we need to relate to our readers what kind of gaming experience the hardware in question will supply. Yes, I think it will be a good analysis tool when needed, but I do not think the raw data gives you guys much focus on how that data pertains to the gaming experience. We will get clearer on this in the future.
 
I do like the reference design....or is that the reference design? Anyways, it is tons better than the 6990 reference cooler. I was expecting impressive results after seeing what it looks like.....until I got further in the review. I left away disappoint @ AMD.
 
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The best 7990 review on the net and the most interesting one to read. I like [H] gaming exp. much more than raw graphs with FCAT data.

HardwareCanucks has little test with Frame Pacing Driver.
 
x3sphere said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIFYyDV3DKs

The stuttering can be fixed by setting a frame cap in Radeon Pro, though it seems this won't be necessary anymore with the new drivers coming out - video is above.
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You mean the video from pcper that has this in the video description?

If you already read our review (or any review that is using the FCAT / frame capture system) of the Radeon HD 7990, you likely came away somewhat unimpressed. The combination of a two AMD Tahiti GPUs on a single PCB with 6GB of frame buffer SHOULD have been an incredibly exciting release for us and would likely have become the single fastest graphics card son the planet. That didn't happen though and our results clearly state why that is the case: AMD CrossFire technology has some serious issues with animation smoothness, runt frames and giving users what they are promised.
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The PCPer preview looks great for AMD CF users. Shame the fix was not realized until some 15 months after the 7900 release. But, to those running CF, you'll definitely soon feel the "performance boost" and you'll never deny the existence of micro-stutter ever again. The fix may even feel like a "free performance upgrade". ;)
 
Devistater said:
You mean the video from pcper that has this in the video description?
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Yes, and that's an excerpt from the review which was done on the Beta 2 drivers, not the Prototype ones that the video is showcasing.

That driver isn't coming out till sometime in summer though. Shame AMD couldn't get it ready in time for the 7990 launch.
 
I read a different story at Tomshardware about the HD7990 as it was put up with the 690GTX and it didn't lose very many benchmarks to the 690GTX but won alot more then it lost and in some cases kicked the frame in so to speak. but i been following [H] for afew years now and it"s almost like i'm at EVGA's website and forums as of late.
 
fanboy said:
I read a different story at Tomshardware about the HD7990 as it was put up with the 690GTX and it didn't lose very many benchmarks to the 690GTX but won alot more then it lost and in some cases kicked the frame in so to speak. but i been following [H] for afew years now and it"s almost like i'm at EVGA's website and forums as of late.
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You might go back and READ ours as well. But if you are a framerate monkey instead of a person that wants the best gaming experience, our content is probably not worth your time.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I experienced no coil whine while gaming.

Yes I have the drivers, first they gave us Win8 drivers only, and I don't have Win8 nor do we test on it. Just really recent, like two day ago, they sent us the Win7 driver. I haven't had time or a chance to try it yet. They have said it does contain older crossfile profiles and performance tweaks. So 13.5 Beta2 is actually going to end up having faster framerates, then the prototype driver. So the proto driver shouldn't be used for performance comparisons. It's a little confusing, but the proto driver should only be used to look at framerate latencies, and with programs like FCAT to dive into frametime issues. Do we plan to test it, absolutely yes, once I figure out FCAT.
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The hard review did bring something new to the 7990s reviews highlighting the fact the 7990 seems power cap limited just like the 690 is. Kudos to them for mentioning that - most reviews i read had the 7990 up against the 690 and the titan but no direct comparison to CFX 7970.

Little dissapointed no mention i could see , was made to their been a driver to fix the microstutter coming when they had access to the prototype driver just not the right os or time to test it, or any other solution like running vsync with radeon pro DFC etc. Hard can put this omission right with an updated review if they still have the card. I say it again i know its not the intention of sites like this to tell people to run 3rd party apps but geez how hard is it ? Toms hardware mentioned radeon pro DFC in the devil13 review , pcper mentioned vsync helps whilst adding some latency in a recent review. Somethings broken yes , how do we fix it (band aid it) for now ? would be usefull for those that don't know.

Before i get flamed all over the place, i'm over this point now as i realise the more noise about this non vsync frame metering issue, the faster it will get fixed. Indeed from PCPER the prototype driver will make a huge difference to those that run without vsync in CFX. Its been a hell of a wait but soon one of nvidias biggest dual card selling points is going to be fairly mute point from what i can see early on at the pcper review.
 
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True review, :0 , the Asus card was prettier but costs over A$1800..really only $300 more than a 690 but with w/c..This card looks a monster and forgive my bias but after using a 690, which all will admit is a lovely piece of engineering, I can only see this card going into truly dedicated AMD fans..fans, get it?!! To those that do, best of luck - I had SLI back in 7800, 8800, then 280 and all stuttered and carried on...now, SLI is great....Crossfire????
 
I still have my 6990 and the performance is great ! I hate to see that AMD may have taken a back seat to performance now , even as expensive as the card is
 
Great review. Even better concise and well formed conclusion. Props to Kyle/Brent for their hard work and dedication to tech and [H] readers.
 
OK it is not THAT bad. Not a fan of AMD at all, always pick NVIDIA for work/gaming/everyday use, still... There is one field where AMD trounces NVIDIA by few galaxy lengths and that is: Bitcoin mining.

2x 7990 are simpler to manage than 4x 7970 and if somebody can afford 4x 7990 then he/she has true mining monster. End of story and NV is nowhere in sight on that front.
 
all that money spent on R&D for the 7990 card would be better used on proper drivers for other cards..
 
After dealing with a 4870x2 I am definitely not excited about the 7990. Too little, too late and not worth my time. Although, I still liked the review.
 
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