AMD Radeon HD 6990 4 GB Review: Antilles Makes (Too Much) Noise

Features
By
published

Several months late and supposedly only a couple of weeks ahead of Nvidia's own dual-GPU flagship launch, AMD's Radeon HD 6990 has no trouble establishing performance superiority. But does speed at any cost sacrifice too much of the user experience?

Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11 (DX11)

3DMark 11 is good news for AMD’s flagship. Not only would Radeon HD 5970 have remained the fastest card in the world were it not for the 6990, but the Radeon HD 6990 adds an impressive burst of speed to what we were already seeing.

The performance BIOS demonstrates an appreciable benefit over the default shipping firmware. We’re not sure the gain is worth voiding your warranty over, but if you were planning to overclock anyway, AMD’s more aggressive settings help achieve better scores with the simple flip of a switch. Nice.

Clearly, Nvidia needs to answer back. Its flagship GeForce GTX 580 falls into a distant third place. And while we imagine the company has a thermal challenge in front of it, providing it's looking to cram two GF110s onto a single PCB, we’re looking forward to evaluating the result of its efforts.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
193 Comments Comment from the forums
  • hayest
    Killer Card!

    Out of spec for default seems kind of weird though.
    Reply
  • CrazeEAdrian
    Great job AMD. You need to expect noise and heat when dealing with a card that beasts out that kind of performance, it's part of the territory.
    Reply
  • jprahman
    This thing is a monster, 375W TDP, 4GB of VRAM! Some people don't even have 4GB of regular RAM in their systems, let alone on their video card.
    Reply
  • one-shot
    Did I miss the load power draw? I just noticed the idle and noise ratings. It would be informative to see the power draw of Crossfire 6990s and overclocked i7. I see the graph, but a chart with CPU only and GPU only followed by a combination of both would be nice to see.
    Reply
  • anacandor
    For the people that actually buy this card, i'm sure they'll be able to afford an aftermarket cooler for this thing once they come out...
    Reply
  • wino85
    OMG!!! It's finally here.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    one-shotDid I miss the load power draw? I just noticed the idle and noise ratings. It would be informative to see the power draw of Crossfire 6990s and overclocked i7. I see the graph, but a chart with CPU only and GPU only followed by a combination of both would be nice to see.
    We don't have two cards here to test, unfortunately. The logged load results for a single card are on the same page, though!
    Reply
  • bombat1994
    things we need to see are this thing water cooled.

    and tested at 7680 x 1600

    that will see just how well it does.

    That thing is an absolute monster of a card.

    They really should have made it 32nm. then the power draw would have fallen below 300w and the thing would be cooler.

    STILL NICE WORK AMD
    Reply
  • Bigmac80
    Pretty fast i wonder if this will be cheaper then 2 GTX 570's or 2 6950's?
    But omg this thing is freakin loud. What's the point of having a quite system now with Noctua fans :(
    Reply
  • tacoslave
    Its hot, sucks alot of power, and costs a ton. But i still want one.








    Badly
    Reply