The current generation AMD GPU series collectivelly known as "Southern Islands" were released over a twelvemonth agone, with the offset of its rollout in January 2022. Sixteen months after, the Radeon HD 7000 series is even so very much relevant, equally AMD continues to release new models under the same GPU family unit.

The Radeon Hard disk 7790 released last calendar month it's a product most gamers have the potential to enjoy considering its $150 price tag. The HD 7790 took the bit count for the series to 10 distinct 28nm GPUs. Today AMD has a broad range of prices covered starting at $100 with the Radeon Hard disk 7750 upwardly to $450 with the 7970 GHz Edition.

Those able and wanting to spend in excess of $450 on a unmarried graphics card need to look in Nvidia'southward direction at either the GeForce GTX 690 or the mighty GTX Titan, both extravagant $1000 options. Alternatively, if you can support multiple graphics cards, which allow'due south be honest most gaming systems can, and then a pair of Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition graphics cards should piece of work nicely (well, kind of).

Still AMD feels they need to offer an ultra-expensive graphics card every bit well and therefore today they are releasing the Radeon HD 7990. Although it's been over a year since they launched the Radeon HD 7970, we are but getting an official dual-GPU version, in truth they have been around for some time.

Products such equally the PowerColor Devil 13 Hard disk 7990 6GB, HIS Radeon Hd 7970 6GB IceQ X2 and Asus ROG Ares Ii take been doing the rounds for quite a while at present. So while the release of an official Radeon HD 7990 might non be radically new, it does mean a few things. For one, pricing volition be unified, every bit will the specifications and features. Most importantly availability and actual commuter support, making it much easier for cashed up gamers to get their hands on 1.

The Radeon Hard disk drive 7990 is very similar to the 6990 and the 5970 earlier it (ohh, and the 4870 X2 before that) in the sense that it's basically a pair of flagship GPUs from its respective generation stuck to the same extra long PCB.

In the example of the Radeon HD 7990 it takes a pair of 7970 GPUs with overclocked cores (from 925MHz to 1000MHz), while boosting the GDDR5 memory from 1375MHz to 1500MHz. These clock speeds happen to lucifer the 7970 GHz Edition, though the 7990 doesn't feature a Boost clock, so we experience the GPUs are amend compared to the standard 7970.

Radeon Hard disk 7990 in Detail

Here are some figures that AMD is throwing around to describe the Radeon Hd 7990: viii.half-dozen billion transistors, 4096 stream processors, 8.2 TFLOPS computer power, 6GB GDDR5 and 576GB/s retention bandwidth.

Merely, of form, every bit a dual-GPU graphics menu those figures are non most as impressive as they might otherwise exist if we were talking about a single GPU solution. 8.2 TFLOPS of figurer power is zilch to be sneezed at either, and so nosotros will be corking to encounter how the 7990 handles itself shortly.

The Radeon Hd 7990 is a monstrous graphics card measuring 30cm long (12 in), making it 3cm longer than the 7970 GHz Edition.

The GPU core is clocked at 1000MHz, viii% higher than the Hd 7970, while the retentiveness is clocked 9% higher at 1500MHz (6.0GHz DDR). Pairing that frequency with a 384-bit memory charabanc gives the HD 7990 a theoretical bandwidth of 288GB/s per GPU, for a whopping 576GB/s total.

Like the Radeon HD 7970 which comes loaded with a generous 3GB retention buffer, the 7990 allocates 3GB to each GPU for a total carte du jour capacity of 6GB.

We've found that when using multi-monitor setups at extreme resolutions, the larger buffer of AMD cards provide a significant advantage over Nvidia's, which are limited to 2GB for the most part. That said, the new GeForce GTX Titan does boast a 6GB memory buffer for a single GPU.

The core configuration, or as we should say "cores", of the Radeon Hard disk 7990 are the aforementioned as the single GPU 7970 versions. It carries 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs on each GPU, then in a sense you tin can double those figures.

Connecting the ii graphics processors is the PEX bridge from PLX Technologies, which is the same method employed by all previous AMD dual-GPU graphics cards. Notwithstanding, the Hard disk drive 7990 gets the latest three.0 PEX8747 bridge which boasts 48 PCI Express 3.0 lanes for 96GB/southward of inter-GPU bandwidth.

Cooling the "Malta" GPU are two massive aluminum vapor chamber heatsinks, each with 62 fins and four heatpipes. The vapor bedchamber design was commencement implemented by the Radeon HD 5970 and has since been adopted by numerous high-finish AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. Rut is dispersed past a trio of 75x20mm axial fans that pull air in from inside the example and push information technology out the back.

The Hard disk drive 7990's fan operates quietly for the most part, simply despite the card'due south impressive idle consumption of just 15 watts, it still chugs upward to 375 watts under load, so the fan does kicking up a little during heavy gaming sessions.

The heatsink and fan are enclosed in a custom housing that conceals the entire graphics card, a common exercise for AMD flagship products and one we tend to like. Nvidia has also done this in the past, though this is a design method that is typically reserved for only the most high-terminate products.

To feed the carte enough power, AMD includes dual 8-pin PCI Express connectors -- the same setup you'll find on the Hard disk drive 6990.

Naturally, the HD 7990 supports QuadFire (Crossfire) and so there is a connector for bridging with some other menu. The simply other connectors are on the I/O panel. Our AMD reference sample has a dual DL-DVI connector and iv mini-DisplayPort 1.two sockets which allows back up for five simultaneous monitors correct out of the box.