Radeon HD 7990 And GeForce GTX 690: Bring Out The Big Guns

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EVGA recently lent our German lab one of the GeForce GTX 690s we've had in the U.S. for months. The purpose? To pit against HIS' upcoming 7970 X2 and PowerColor's Devil13 HD7990, both dual-Tahiti boards vying to become the world's fastest graphics card.

Noise Comparison Videos: Idle

Of course, it's all well and good to show you how each card performs acoustically. But it's even better to demonstrate through video, which you can actually hear.

We captured short clips of each card in the various workloads quantified on the previous page, and then mixed them with the audio recording from our freshly-calibrated high-end studio mic. The distance between the microphone and each graphics card was precisely 50 cm, positioned exactly perpendicular to the center of each board. Room temperature was held at a constant 22 degrees Celsius.

Noise at Idle

It’s particularly interesting to hear how loud each card is at idle, because that's what you're going to be listening to most often. PowerColor's Devil13 HD7990 exhibits some coil whine, even in this low-impact usage scenario. It would have fared much better without the squealing.

EVGA's GeForce GTX 690 is the clear winner. It’s barely audible in an open chassis, and you won't hear it at all in a closed case. This is how a well-built high-end graphics card should sound. HIS' 7970 X2 does alright, but PowerColor's Devil13 HD7990 irked us until we turned our case fans up loud enough to drown out the high-pitched tone.

143 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mayankleoboy1
    IMHO, the GTX690 looks best. There is something really alluring about shiny white metallic shine and the fine metal mesh. Along with the fluorescent green branding.
    Maybe i am too much of a retro SF buff :)
    Reply
  • Ironslice
    What's the most impressive is that the GTX 690 was made by nVidia themselves and not an OEM. Very nice and balanced card.
    Reply
  • tacoslave
    i wept
    Reply
  • hellfire24
    your test system is sexy!!!!!!!
    Reply
  • willyroc
    You can't really go wrong either way with these generally insane(so to speak) cards.
    Reply
  • amuffin
    Is it just me or do the 7970X2 and 7990 coolers look so fast and fugly? :heink:
    Reply
  • thanks for the in depth analysis with adaptive V-sync and radeon pro helping with micro stutter.

    not to take away anything for the hard work performed; i would have liked have seen nvidia's latest beta driver, 310.33, included also to see if nvidia is doing anything to improve the performance of their card instead of just adding 3d vision, AO, and sli profiles.
    Reply
  • esrever
    can we get some quadfire benchmarks too? :D
    Reply
  • RazorBurn
    AMD's Dual GPU at 500+ Watts of electricity is out for me.. Too Much Power and Noise..
    Reply
  • mohit9206
    2 670's in sli is better than spending on a 690 and 2 7950's in Xfire is better than spending on a 7990. this way you save nearly $300 both ways
    Reply