AMD Radeon HD 7990 Shipping in March 2012, Start Saving Your Pennies
AMD Radeon HD 7990 Shipping in March 2012, Start Saving Your Pennies
Posted 12/28/2011 at 9:32am
| by Paul Lilly
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On hindsight, one of the wisest decisions AMD ever made was acquiring ATI Technologies, a costly and controversial move at the time, but one in which the Santa Clara chip designer has been kicking ass with ever since. This point is underscored with AMD's Radeon HD 7000 series (see our Radeon HD 7970 preview here), a killer GPU family that will culminate with the Radeon HD 7990, a monster of a card with two 7970 GPUs and 6GB of total graphics memory.
Unless something terribly unexpected happens, like a manufacturing defect of epic proportions, we have every reason to expect this dual-GPU card will tear it up in benchmarks. We won't know for sure until we get our hands on one, of course, nor will you be able to see for yourself until it ships. According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, the HD 7990 is slated for retail in March 2012.
If plan to purchase this card, start saving now. Fudzilla says it will cost $849, not exactly chump change, but not egregious considering it's two Radeon 7970 cards, which sell for $549 each.
There's also power considerations to contend with, and towards that end, an intriguing feature in the 7990 is AMD's ZeroCore Power Technology, which powers down the GPU to virtually a zero state when the monitor is idle.
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biggiebob12345
December 28, 2011 at 4:38pm
I'll wait to see what nvidia comes out with. No reason to be on the cutting edge when there haven't been any cutting edge games for the past couple of years.
Number Six
December 28, 2011 at 12:02pm
Considering the size of the 7970, the 7990 will have a PCB that's longer than the Bitchin'fast! 3D 2000!
Cy-Kill
December 28, 2011 at 11:41am
So, the XDR & changeover from SIMD to MIMD rumour was just that, a rumour.
Had AMD done it, it would forced nVIDIA to do something similar, but neither company wants to make a real move and be at the forefront of a new GPU revolution.
To me, it seems like they are both sitting on their laurels, and that's something you're not supposed to do!
The Corrupted One
December 28, 2011 at 9:47am
Wow,
With those power savings, dual 7990s would be boss.
But my question is, does anything require that much power that isn't a benchmark? Running Metro 2033 on 4 50 inch screens?!(hell, 2 6990's could do that)
I smell inflation in the bitcoin market.
thechipper
January 01, 2012 at 2:03am
I honestly blame the Console gaming industry for the slowdown on computer game graphics. They tried to eliminate the difference between the games and at release they were equal. But 6 years later we have to deal with tailor made games for consoles that are just ported between systems that are hardly upgraded at all with the technology available. And for those that do update the graphics seldom upgrade gameplay leaving us with a lot of beautiful mediocre games or Frozen Synapse xD. Sadface :(
avenger48
December 28, 2011 at 1:34pm
6-way eyefinity at 2560x1600 each. That's 7680x3200, running anything at that res would be too much for even two of these behemoths, I dare say.
Don't forget, when speaking of gpu performance, size is irrelevant, resolution matters. 4 50" screens (assuming each is an HDTV) is only 3840x2160. Doing the math, that comes out to ariund 8.3 million pixels, while the other comes out to 24.6 million pixels.
That sound like a lot? Multiply it by 60. That's 1.475 BILLION pixels per second. If you divide it by four (2 7990's x 2 GPU's per 7990), you still have around 368 million pixels per second that each chip has to render. I strongly suspect that's far too much even for these.
I think someone needs to cater to this niche market, since it's clear that modern GPU's aren't fast enough.
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