AMD Radeon HD 7990 Pro Reviews

As effective as the cooling is, The AMD Radeon HD 7990 is never going to have the premium aesthetic of the GTX Titan. In graphics card terms, it looks like a super car - it's practically got alloys. And if we take straight-line performance out of the equation and go for that experience angle, a multi-GPU card is never going to be able to compete against a simple, single-GPU card - especially one that's a little cheaper and only a bit slower in most cases. Sadly, the HD 7990 is one of the flakiest cards we've tested in a long while. We were finally able to coax some impressive performance figures out of it, but only after a good long while of sometimes only having a single GPU turning up to the benchmarking party. This is no doubt down to the early drivers we've had to use for pre-release testing and not the hardware itself, but that's a plain reminder of the vagaries of multi-GPU gaming. When you fire up a new game on your CrossFireX or SLI rig, you'll always be wondering whether one or other of your GPUs has gotten confused and wandered off somewhere else. As impressive a feat of engineering as this beast is, there are faster, smoother and cheaper graphics arrays available, and much better enthusiast experiences to be had elsewhere.

The AMD Radeon HD 7990 offers convenience, in a cool and silent package. This in of itself can be appealing enough to justify the price premium to some gamers and enthusiasts. If so, you now have an option from AMD that packs it all in a single video card for you, with cool running and silent operation of CrossFire. It doesn't require an extra cooling slot like the ASUS ROG ARES II, and it doesn't take up as much room as the PowerColor Devil13. It is the most efficient 7970 dual-GPU video card out there. It is a compact, well made video card. You have to give it to AMD for the design and engineering that went into the development of the video card. It is top-notch. AMD has achieved a cool running, silent dual-GPU video card. The Radeon HD 7990 is a bit late to market, likely overpriced, and weak in comparison to 7970 CrossFire, at least it is finally here.

We were impressed that one single video card, the GeForce GTX TITAN could provide us an above average gameplay experience in NV Surround across three displays at 5760x1200. The $999 GeForce GTX TITAN was even able to match the $999 AMD Radeon HD 7990 in gameplay experience in a few games. However, the more demanding games leaned toward the dual-GPU video cards for the best performance and experience at this resolution. As we look forward to other more demanding games in the future, like Metro: Last Light, dual-GPU may still be the faster solution. In terms of price and nothing else, the $999 AMD Radeon HD 7990 video card is a better purchase than one single GeForce GTX TITAN. We know two TITAN's in 2-way SLI will blow HD 7990 out of the water, but it is also $1000 more expensive. However, the real show stopper is still two separate Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition video cards with CrossFire enabled. Those can be purchased at $100-200 less expensive than GeForce GTX TITAN or AMD Radeon HD 7990, and provide a lot more performance. 7970 GHz Edition CrossFire will win every time, and by a larger margin than Radeon HD 7990.

AMD's own Radeon HD 7990 6GB is the best interpretation yet of how to combine two premium Radeon GPUs onto a single PCB. A well-designed powerhouse of a card that gives as good as it gets from the very comparable NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690, the choice of which one to go for simply boils down to which brand you have more faith in: AMD or NVIDIA. If it was our money on the table we'd go with the slightly cheaper but performance-comparable GTX 690.

When it launched, a generous eight-game bundle had me on the fence about the 7990’s prospects. But after spending time evaluating its thermals and acoustics (to say nothing about its crashes and performance hiccups in CrossFire, which could become a story unto itself), I can’t think of one reason to recommend 7990 to a friend. And, at the end of the day, that’s what this job is all about.

It’s expensive but astoundingly fast and should keep you playing the latest games at high resolutions for years

I ended up having to sit on our Radeon HD 7990 results for a while before I could really decide what to make of them. The 7990 right now is a mixed bag for a few different reasons, and in the meantime without FCAT results we don’t have the complete picture. We’ll be rectifying the FCAT situation in the coming days, but even without FCAT there are clearly a few strengths and a few weaknesses for the 7990 that we can touch upon. As far as performance goes, it’s interesting to note that if we throw out the extremely lopsided DiRT: Showdown, the GTX 690 and the 7990 are statistically tied at 2560x1400: on average the 7990 delivers 100% of the performance of the GTX 690. Of course there aren’t any games where they’re tied, since NVIDIA and AMD exchange the lead on an almost per-game basis. We’re going to have to look at the FCAT results to make a final determination on performance, but realistically the best-case scenario is that AMD can match NVIDIA’s frame pacing; it probably won’t be in AMD’s favor.

Impressive though the 7990's specifications may look, it still only just defeats nVidia’s new top-dog GTX 690 in real-world testing. The latter consumes less power, and will cost around £100 less too, which means that it remains the more compelling deal overall. When it comes to the AMD Radeon HD 7990’s other potential rival, the nVidia Titan, the 7990 certainly seems a superior card on general gaming, but the Titan has more potential in terms of Compute speed. Neither is quite fast enough nor sufficiently technologically advanced to oust its two main rivals, leaving the 7990 as a good card in search of a compelling reason for being. A price cut may well provide it with that reason, but until then it'll likely remain a second choice to most users.

AMD reports that the Radeon HD 7990 will be available at e-tail in roughly two weeks for $999, and that price includes eight games as part of the “Never Settle Reloaded” bundle. The games include BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and Deus Ex Human Revolution. We’re told the games will be included directly in the Radeon HD 7990’s product box in any region that the bundle is available. That’s a lot of coin for a graphics card, but it is right in line with NVIDIA’s competing offerings, which don’t include nearly as many triple-AAA games. On some levels we think the Radeon HD 7990 is one of the most impressive products ever to come out of AMD. There are obviously some kinks that need to be worked out and the card will always be limited by its software support; the fact that we saw performance scaling issues with 3DMark Fire Strike and Batman proves that point. But that is the case with all multi-GPU solutions, though, AMD’s track record isn’t as good as NVIDIA’s in that regard. With that said, the Radeon HD 7990 is immensely powerful and it runs surprisingly cool and quiet, considering its performance. Here’s hoping AMD squashes the frame pacing issues currently affecting CrossFire configurations and keeps the driver updates flowing. It would be a shame for AMD not to exploit this card to its fullest potential. The AMD Radeon HD 7990 is a beast.

Blazing speed, but this dual-GPU card is too expensive for all but the most extreme of gamers

As is probably obvious, $1,000 gaming graphics cards like the Radeon HD 7990 aren’t going to fit into most gamers' budgets. But really, that’s fine, because for gaming on a single screen, they’re usually major overkill. Gamers with one 1080p screen, and on a budget, would be better off opting instead for a card like Nvidia’s GTX 650 Ti Boost or AMD’s Radeon HD 7790 (both available for under $200), paired with a reasonably fast solid-state drive (SSD) to speed up game-level load times.

Overall the AMD Radeon HD 7990 is an impressive graphics card, it's very well designed and engineered. The frames per second performance puts it right where it needs to be to reign the super exclusive $1,000 market and the bragging rights that come with it. If AMD can improve frame time performance as they claim to be in the process of doing, then the 7990 could certainly become a real problem for the GTX 690 and GTX Titan. In the meantime, the Titan presents the safest bet for extreme performance at this privileged price point.

The AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB video card is a monster and takes the dual-GPU performance crown away from NVIDIA and the GeForce GTX 690, but after waiting all this time is it enough?

I knew this review was going to turn out like this after publishing our faux-HD 7990 performance results last month. With its performance completely dependent on CrossFire technology, the HD 7990 as a $1000 graphics card has a very hard time justifying its price. With our early testing of the Catalyst prototype driver showing positive results though, there is yet hope for CrossFire to be fixed in this generation, at least for single monitor users! But until that driver is perfected, is bug free and is presented to buyers as a made-for-primetime solution, I just cannot recommend an investment this large on the Radeon HD 7990.

Finally! AMD's Radeon HD 7990 is here! We've been anticipating the release of this card since the HD 7900 Series was introduced, and since NVIDIA released their GeForce GTX 690 flagship almost a year ago. The company's new card is built on the foundation of two full-fledged Tahiti GPUs that come with all shaders unlocked. Both also run at up to 1000 MHz, which almost matches the clock speeds of the HD 7970 GHz Edition. Our performance testing reveals excellent performance results in those games where CrossFire is working as intended, making HD 7990 the fastest graphics card in the world in these cases. Recent titles like Crysis 3, Tomb Raider, and Bioshock Infinite show good scaling that easily surpasses the performance of competing cards, like the GTX 690 and GTX Titan. However, we've also seen many games that do not scale well, and they make up a significant portion of our tests. Out of eighteen titles, five did not scale, or worse, showed negative scaling. These are not small titles, but big AAA games: Assassin's Creed 3, Batman: Arkham City, F1 2012, StarCraft II, Skyrim, and World of Warcraft. What really surprises me is that this long list is the same as the one we had with our reviews of HD 7990 "New Zealand" implementations by board partners, like the ASUS ROG ARES II and PowerColor Devil 13. So either AMD does not care or can't fix CrossFire support with these games millions of people play.

The AMD Radeon HD 7990 is a worthy competitor in the high-end of the graphics card category.