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There are several ways to reconcile why PowerColor named its dual Radeon HD 7970 monstrosity the Devil 13. On the one hand, the card probably got its name from the fact that it’s an unholy abomination of GPU horsepower, combining two already-hot-running GPUs into one massive, inferno-producing card that gets as hot as Hades. On the other hand, perhaps its sinister moniker is due to the fact that this video card shouldn’t really exist, as AMD never produced one (even though we all expected it last summer.) PowerColor must have said, “Screw it, we’ll make it ourselves!” And thus the Card of Darkness was born; a rare, one-off, fire-breathing $1,000 concoction that flies in the face of power, heat, and cost concerns. And since this is Maximum PC, all we can say is, “Hell yes.”
The Devil 13 is so enormous it comes with its own vertical support stand.
PowerColor didn’t just give this card a devilish name and leave it at that; oh no, it went whole devil-hog. It comes in a black box with a simulated red-wax seal on the top that must be “broken” to get at the contents (even though it’s just a sticker, it looks cool). In addition to the video card, you also get a slew of adapter cables, a PowerJack stand to support the card in its PCIe slot, and—get this—a $100 set of adjustable Wiha tools (hex heads and screwdrivers). These are among the best best tools ever made for PC builders and their inclusion shows how far PowerColor has gone to make this card the ultimate investment for your rig.
The card itself is as decadent as you’d imagine it would be, boasting a triple-fan cooler that blows warm air away from the oversize heatsinks, each of which is fed by a copper base and five copper heat pipes. The card requires three 8t-pin PCIe power connectors and an 850W PSU minimum, but you wouldn’t buy this card if you didn’t already have a monstrous power supply. It features 6GB of GDDR5 memory connected via dual 384-bit memory buses, and includes single- and dual-link DVI, two Mini DisplayPort, and one HDMI output connector.
In testing, the Devil made quite an impression on us, both with its gaming performance and the amount of noise and heat it produced. DepEd Gordon Mah Ung put it best: “It’s a nice card to run in the wintertime,” as it gets extremely hot, but we experienced no heat-related instability during testing even though temps hovered around 78 C under full load. The card is loud, though. At one point, Gordon asked us to stop a benchmark as he was trying to talk on the phone—and his desk is roughly 20 feet away from the testing station. The card also has a red button on the I/O area that engages its Turbo mode (core clock boosts from 925MHz to 1,000MHz) and though we saw some impressive performance gains in some titles (up to 10fps gained) the extra noise created by the overclocked card was simply unbearable.
Noise aside, this is a very powerful video card, and its performance was extremely close to what you’d achieve with a HD 7970 CrossFireX configuration in almost every benchmark. In general though, we saw the HD 7990 run a little slower than a CrossFireX setup, and it was noticeably slower than its archnemesis, the GeForce GTX 690, which runs cooler, quieter, and is about half the size of the HD 7990. The only game that gave us issues was Batman: Arkham City, which does not support CrossFire. In every other game, performance was very good, but not as good as the Nvidia cards it competes against.
In the end this card kicks a lot of ass, and is by far the fastest single video card currently available for the AMD faithful. But since the Nvidia cards are not only faster but quieter and cooler, we’re at a loss as to who would actually spend money on this GPU.
Best GPU bundle ever; almost as fast as two cards in SLI; looks badass.
Loud; doubles as a space heater; expensive.
Opm2
January 17, 2013 at 9:44pm
Is this card endorsed by any electric companies? I bet the cost to run per month is hardcore.
Master__shake
January 17, 2013 at 1:24pm
i think it's time for Maximum PC to update their choice for games to benchmark...
AFDozerman
January 17, 2013 at 9:13am
I just noticed a glaring omission from the benchmarks. Where are the results for having the turbo buton pressed? Was the heat and noise really that intense?
kitsunekaji
January 17, 2013 at 8:17am
Man, you'd have to be crazy to run two of these in crossfire! The extra heat would cook you nice and slowly.
xXSINS OF WARXx
January 17, 2013 at 7:18am
Quote "All games are run at 25,600 x 1600 resolution".
MaxPC must have a killer panel setup their not telling us.
LOL @ the typo, otherwise good writing. I love the humor in the intro, great stuff.
Anyways, I aplaud Power Color's effort in making this beast! Too bad, The GTX690 still spanks it and the HD8000 is around the corner. Nonetheless, may Zeus be in thou favor...
RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!
Peanut Fox
January 17, 2013 at 3:39am
Hope you're fortunate enough to have a case with reverse ATX layout to and a window to show off the card.
PDX-1337
January 17, 2013 at 12:37am
Bad ass card indeed, although if you can get more performance out of 2 cards in SLI or CrossFire, and probably spend $800 instead of 1K, I think I would ultimately go with 2 cards. It is a sick card though and amazing that you get damn near SLI or CrossFire performance out of one card.
Warrior247
January 16, 2013 at 10:29pm
"$1,000 concoction that flies in the face of power, heat, and cost concerns." And also represents the other half of everything that is wrong with PC gaming. It's devilish twin brother is broken games.
"And since this is Maximum PC, all we can say is, “Hell yes.” Really? I bet this "monstrosity" won't show up in any Dream Machine. Poor AMD, and an even poorer PC gamer.
kiaghi7
January 21, 2013 at 8:21pm
Well, it won't be in any dream machine because it isn't all that great nor particularly useful when it's easier to get more capability, with better overall stability, power, and cooling with other options.
For a dream machine, one would automatically think, SLi/Crossfire, which this can't do. Granted it is technically 2 cards in one already, but not done all that well and the results show in the gargantuan design and sub-par performance to even a regular Crossfire pair, both in terms of actual capability and again power, heat, and stability.
For heaven's sake, a REFERENCE Nvidia GTX 680 takes it to task in several criteria... That's not a good omen for a card that costs twice as much (or more) and should theoretically push nearly twice the capability, to fall by the wayside to a single GPU card.
It was a valiant effort, and an interesting experiment, but sadly the fruits of it didn't really ripen completely and in the end it's not much more than a bitter aftertaste before a buffet of preferable and more enjoyable options.
AFDozerman
January 16, 2013 at 6:03pm
I would love to see some OpenCL and DirectCompute benchmarks on this thing
jason2393
January 16, 2013 at 3:43pm
Why do you have "doubles as a space heater" in the cons? My computer room is so cold that I overclock my machine to 5 GHz and run Prime95 just to try to warm up, but it's not enough. This could be exactly what I need.
captainjack
January 17, 2013 at 8:59am
My roommates like it cold, so I'm constantly looking for ways to spool up my gaming rig so I can be a little warmer
joshnorem
January 16, 2013 at 4:07pm
That is what Gordon said, 'It's a great card to run in the the winter."
