How soon should someone buy upcoming 7990?

[Xinmosni]

I'm looking to buy an Official 7990 since they release soon, but does anyone know if manufacturers plan to release revised "top end" Official 7990 models since they already sort of did so for the Unofficial 7990s? I was very interested in the ARES II when it came out, but for $1600 I could get quad 7970s so I had to pass.

This will be my first time buying a dual GPU card, so I don't know what previous generations' releases were like. I don't mind reference, but I also don't want to jump the gun and spend $1000 on April 22 if I could've waited a month for the better, "extreme" versions to release for $100-250 more.

Main reason I ask is I'm giving my 7970 to the wife soon, because I just got her a 2560x1600 30" panel and her 5870 2GB just isn't going to give her a great experience at that res.

Well, that and it finally gives me an excuse

 

[xBanzai89]

There wasn't any custom 4870X2, 5970, or 6990 besides reference from what I remember unless it was something ASUS came out with. Going with that I wouldn't expect anything special and if there is expect a nice premium...

 

[fanboy]

From what i heard it may use the GCN 2.0 like the HD 7790 does and is said to be much faster ( and hauling ass) compared to the other AIB HD7990 like the Devil 13 and maybe what put the fear in Nvidia to release the Titan. we will soon find out for sure.

 

[martinmsj]

It's GCN 1.1 not 1.2. The biggest performance improvements are on GPU Compute. Least according to Anandtech's write up on the new core.

 

[Final8ty]

There wasn't any custom 4870X2, 5970, or 6990 besides reference from what I remember unless it was something ASUS came out with. Going with that I wouldn't expect anything special and if there is expect a nice premium...

There was at least 3 custom 5970's

XFX 5970 BlackEdition 4GB

Asus 5970 Ares 4GB

Sapphire 5970 Toxic 4GB, which i have.

 

[Xinmosni]

Thanks for the response, guys. Seems like it'll be a pretty safe bet to get a 7990 early on, especially given the dual cards' limited nature.

 

[Elmy]

I sure hope it can do 5 monitors @ 144Hz.... if so I'm getting 2 of them