noob question regarding AMD Radeon 7990

J

jinny1

n00b
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Aug 29, 2011
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Hi, guys i'm contemplating whether to buy 7990 or 290X.

As i understand it, the 7990 is Crossfire.

I was wondering if it is true that new games don't get crossfire driver support straight away.

What i mean is that you have to wait for a few months after a game comes out for AMD to release new drivers.

So in the mean time, does that mean that 7990 will only be half functional??

Thanks
 
pretty much, also the 290x has True Audio which is not found on the 7 series
 
I don't think AMD drivers will be as much of a pest as they have been in the past. The 7990 will be faster than the R9-290x. But you won't have worries for crossfire issues, and the true audio is a bonus if you are into that kind of thing.

I've never ran a dual GPU card like the 7990, but I previously ran crossfired 6950s and I never really had any major issues with running crossfire on newer games when they came out. The performance may not have been optimized on launch for a few titles, but I wouldn't consider any of them to have been unplayable. Which I usually am not a day one gamer.

The 7990 wouldn't necessarily be half functional without proper crossfire support, performance may just not be optimal. If you are one of the people who buys games on release, you may have some more issues than I did. With AMD having control of the consoles this gen, I'd say their drivers should be up to par on most releases.
 
I just upgraded to a 7990 and love it. It's pushing Crysis 3, 100% maxed out at 60+ FPS on a 1440P display.

I had a few more issues with crossfire (was having issues with low power mode and artifacts with certain drivers) than I did with SLi on a stick (gtx295), but for the price, it's a monster single PCB GPU. Slaughters everything I've thrown at it without flinching... their drivers seem to finally be getting a lot of attention as well which is nice.

EDIT: it's up to you what you want... however, both are GCN GPU's and both will support mantle. So get whats best per dollar for your build.
 
TrueAudio isn't really a big factor for me.

I'm just worried because i read that Total War Rome 2 had a lot of issues with Crossfire :(
 
Your upgrade path is better with the 290X than with the 7990. Adding another 7990 or 7970 wouldn't increase your FPS very much, while adding another 290X would double your fps in some instances. Though I think the 7990 will be faster, the 290X will probably be close enough to make it a good buy.

At $600-650. If it debuts at $730 I'd probably just buy a couple 7950 for $380 and wait for the price to come down.
 
I think crossfire on the 7990 is done at hardware level and not software as it has a crossfire bridge built on to it.
 
Fooshnik said:
Your upgrade path is better with the 290X than with the 7990. Adding another 7990 or 7970 wouldn't increase your FPS very much, while adding another 290X would double your fps in some instances. Though I think the 7990 will be faster, the 290X will probably be close enough to make it a good buy.

At $600-650. If it debuts at $730 I'd probably just buy a couple 7950 for $380 and wait for the price to come down.
Click to expand...

I have a 1440p monitor,

And asumming 290X is similar to titan in terms of performance, wouldn't the 7990 be great??
 
dr.stevil said:
I just upgraded to a 7990 and love it. It's pushing Crysis 3, 100% maxed out at 60+ FPS on a 1440P display.

I had a few more issues with crossfire (was having issues with low power mode and artifacts with certain drivers) than I did with SLi on a stick (gtx295), but for the price, it's a monster single PCB GPU. Slaughters everything I've thrown at it without flinching... their drivers seem to finally be getting a lot of attention as well which is nice.

EDIT: it's up to you what you want... however, both are GCN GPU's and both will support mantle. So get whats best per dollar for your build.
Click to expand...

Don't lie to him. Maybe all maxed with fxaa but with maxed aa it'll be a slideshow even at 1080p.
 
I went with a 5970 that had two GPS and there are the normal crossfire issue and then there are a few extra quirks to having a dual GPU card. Like when the 7990 came out there were (are) issues it had that two 7970s in crossfire did not. There should not be but there are and not that many people have them so issues drag on or just don’t get fixed. If you have room there is no reason to get the dual GPU card at this point. If it’s a big hobby for you and you have tons of money, go for it. The games that you’ll get a real boost from dual GPUs is ok but getting a 7990 with the idea of adding a second 7990 or 7970 is just asking for disappointment. Some new games just don’t have crossfire support at all and AMD updates the drivers to just disable crossfire.

Stay a year or 2 behind on hardware and games and you can save a ton of cash and play the games as bug free as they ever got. If you’re like me and can’t do that. Then get the fastest single GPU card that is reasonable to you and then when you get that itch to upgrade hopefully you can get a second 290x or what have you for two thirds or maybe half what you paid from the first and be faster that the new 390x.
 
HOODedDutchman said:
Don't lie to him. Maybe all maxed with fxaa but with maxed aa it'll be a slideshow even at 1080p.
Click to expand...

I do admit that I never use any sort of AA since it has diminishing returns (for the performance hit) on higher resolution displays, but otherwise, everything else set to maximum, it runs fantastic.

The only time I really use AA is on older game where you can pretty much run it for free (source, UE3, etc)... so why not.
 
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