AMD Radeon HD 7990: Eight Games And A Beastly Card For $1,000

Results: BioShock Infinite

Alright, so you get what’s going on now, right? We have average frame rate, divided between what the hardware is cranking out and what you can actually see on-screen, we have both of those frame rates plotted over time, and we have our unique analysis of frame time variance.

Applying the same methodology to BioShock Infinite, the average frame rates once again land fairly close together, despite a frame rate-over-time chart (below) that demonstrates practical frame rates from under 40 to more than 90 FPS.

Fraps would have shown the Radeon HD 7990 in a narrow first-place finish. However, removing dropped and runt frames yields a practical result that falls under what two GeForce GTX 680s and the GTX 690 achieve. The prototype driver helps a little, but not much.

There’s so much going on with this chart that it’s difficult to analyze. Most stark are the dips encountered by Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards in CrossFire, which sharply contrast the two cards’ hardware FPS. When you chart out runts and drops over time, it becomes clear that the 7970s are hammered by the second component of BioShock’s built-in benchmark, which is dominated by runt frames.

The Radeon HD 7990 isn’t subject to nearly as much deviation in hardware and practical frame rate. Two roughly 10-second passages negatively affect the 7990. Otherwise, though, it’s fairly consistent.

Our last puzzle piece puts the Radeon HD 7970s’ behavior into context. Incurring almost twice as much average latency between successive frames, two cards in CrossFire range from about 4 ms up to 24 ms, with outlier spikes as high as 50 ms. Worst-case, the 7990 experiences a similar latency range. But better response to the second sequence in BioShock’s benchmark drives down the average and 75th percentile numbers.

Of course, in comparison, disciplined metering means the GeForce-based solutions offer very similar hardware and practical frame rates.

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.
  • blackmagnum
    If I had 1,000 dollars... I would buy a Titan. Its power efficiency, drivers and uber-chip goodness is unmatched.
    Reply
  • whyso
    Power usage?

    Thats some nice gains from the prototype driver.
    Reply
  • ilysaml
    Nice article!! Unbeatable performance out of the box.
    Reply
  • 17seconds
    Sort of seems like a mess to me. The game bundle is nice.
    Reply
  • timw03878
    Here's an idea. Take away the 8 games at 40 bucks a piece and deduct that from the insane 1000 price tag.
    Reply
  • donquad2001
    this test was 99% useless to the average gamer,Test the card at 1900x1080 like most of us use to get a real ideal of what its like,only your unigine benchmarks helped the average gamer,who cares what any card can do at a resolution we cant use anyway?
    Reply
  • cangelini
    whysoPower usage?Thats some nice gains from the prototype driver.Power is the one thing I didn't have time for. We already know the 7990 is a 375 W card, while GTX 690 is a 300 W card, though. We also know AMD has Zero Core, which is going to shave off power at idle with one GPU shut off. I'm not expecting any surprises on power that those specs and technologies don't already insinuate.
    Reply
  • ASHISH65
    nice article! here comes the Competitor of gtx 690!
    Reply
  • cangelini
    donquad2001this test was 99% useless to the average gamer,Test the card at 1900x1080 like most of us use to get a real ideal of what its like,only your unigine benchmarks helped the average gamer,who cares what any card can do at a resolution we cant use anyway?If you're looking to game at 1920x1080, I can save you a ton of money by recommending something less than half as expensive. This card is for folks playing at 2560 *at least.* Next time, I'm looking to get FCAT running on a 7680x1440 array ;)
    Reply
  • hero1
    Nice article. I was hopping that they would have addressed the whining but they haven't and that's a shame. Performance wise it can be matched by GTX 680 SLI and GTX 690 without the huge time variance and runt frames. Let's hope they fix their whining issue and FPS without forcing users to turn on V-sync. For now I know where my money is going consider that I have dealt with AMD before:XFX and Sapphire and didn't like the results (whining, artifacts, XF stops working etc). Sorry but I gave the red team a try and I will stick with Nvidia until AMD can prove that they have fixed their issues.
    Reply