PowerColor DEVIL13 HD7990 Pro Reviews

The PowerColor DEVIL13 HD7990 offers extremely convenient Radeon HD 7970 CrossFireX in a single package. PowerColor has simply delivered to market something even AMD hasn't been able to do yet, beating AMD to the punch (if it is ever to be throw), and giving hardware and gaming enthusiasts something awe inspiring to play with. The Devil13 is a well built piece of hardware, it is solid, functional, and nothing about it feels cheap or inexpensive. PowerColor did almost everything right with the DEVIL13. We only wish that the Turbo mode was more effective out-of-the-box. Adjustments to make sure PowerTune was set as need-be in the BIOS when Turbo mode is used should be fixed. Then also perhaps set the clock frequencies even higher, at least 1050MHz, the same as GHz Edition HD 7970s to make the performance advantage more effective. Still, it is nice that the dual-BIOS is being used for something positive, just remember to manually turn up PowerTune yourself if you are going to use Turbo mode. Otherwise, manual overclocking is the way to go. The Devil13 video card exceeded our expectations, and though it runs a bit hot, and is power hungry, you can't blame PowerColor for that. PowerColor has given this video card no less than 10 total heatpipes, two full copper plates atop each GPU, with aluminum fins, and 3 very large, and quiet fans. There is also a full backplate that aids in cooling. This video card is as cool as it is going to get for running Radeon HD 7970 GPUs at full specification.

Let's try and put the Devil 13 into context. With no sign of movement on AMD's fabled Radeon HD 7990, PowerColor has taken it upon itself to give the high-flying GeForce GTX 690 some much-needed competition. That's no small task and the Devil 13 does fulfil its ambition; it goes toe-to-toe with NVIDIA's best, and for those who wear red instead of green, it provides up-to-date dual-Radeon horsepower in a single convenient package. We got off on the wrong foot with two broken samples, but PowerColor has identified the issue with cooler mounting and tells us that adjustments have been made to the final product to eliminate any such problems. But getting this €1,000 graphics card to function as intended is tricky for software reasons, too. CrossFire performance in some of today's latest titles is hit-or-miss at best, and though the dual-GPU hardware is clearly capable, relying on driver support for an optimum experience remains an expensive gamble. PowerColor's presentation is grand and the bundle is a nice touch, but while performance is exceptional at times, there's no getting round the fact that the Devil 13 is bigger, louder, less efficient and more susceptible to driver inconsistencies than the well-engineered GeForce GTX 690.

Power Color HD 7990 Devil 13 is the first card to combine two Tahiti XT graphics processors onto a single PCB. We must say we expected AMD to come up with the card first, but it wasn’t the case and many partners are already preparing to launch their own HD 7990 cards. In fact, HIS’ HD 7970 X2 is almost done, so Power Color’s Devil 13 will soon get a worthy opponent from its own family. The Devil 13’s fiercest adversary though is the GTX 690, which turned out superior in quite a few fields. When it comes to performance, there are no clear cut winners, at least not as decisively as we used to see. The Devil 13 HD 7990 will wipe the floor with the GTX 690 in some games, but the GTX 690 repays the “favor” in others. Nvidia’s champ leads when it comes to silence, consumption and driver stability.

To many, PowerColor’s HD 7990 Devil 13 will be nothing more than a trophy product which has no place in today’s market. But dismissing it as a plaything and mere status symbol for rich gamers would be a mistake. Even though the Devil 13 does cost a small fortune and there are some glaring sacrifices to be made when owning one, PowerColor’s promises of extreme performance were anything but empty. This is actually one hell of a technological achievement on a great many fronts. Without talking about periphery items like power consumption and noise –we’ll get to those in a moment-, it is the Devil 13’s in-game performance which deserves the bulk of this conclusion’s space. Due to some additional latency caused by the Gen 3 PLX chip, it is typically a few percentage points behind a dual HD 7970 solution but it doesn’t feel any slower. In addition, pressing that little red button on the I/O panel kick things into high gear by loading an OC BIOS. Using this unique feature allows the HD 7990’s cores to operate at HD 7970 GHz Edition frequencies which results an across the board performance increase of between 5-10%. Even without an enabled OC BIOS, the Devil 13 is able to hang tenaciously onto the GTX 690’s coattails and can compete on an almost level footing at higher resolutions.

And here we are with the results of the card AMD chose not to build but let its partners take the best shot at delivering what is in any shape or form a niche card; much like the HD 6870X2 that PowerColor built. As the first out of the gate PowerColor has put together a card that performs well at the as delivered clock speeds of 925MHz on the pair of Tahiti XT cores and 1375MHz on the 3GB x 2 GDDR5 memory. Does the Devil 13 HD 7990 hit a home run in terms of performance? When compared to similar cards including AMD's HD 6990 and NVIDIA's GTX 690 and GTX 590 it delivers excellent performance characteristics with wins and losses usually following along with which manufacturer supported the game. The largest performance deltas are seen at the 5760x1080 resolution where the additional memory on board the Devil 13 HD 7990 pays off handsomely. However for those who look at 3DMark 11 as the ultimate benchmark, NVIDIA still has a strangle hold at the top of the charts with the GTX 690 by a significant margin.

This whole review was conducted under the assumption that PowerColor would fix the bad contact between cooler and GPU that was present on my sample (check page 1). Let's hope that the changes by PowerColor will provide similar cooling performance, otherwise large portions of this review will be obsolete. PowerColor's HD 7990 Devil 13 is the first dual-GPU HD 7990 card that we review. I have to praise PowerColor for making the bold move and engineering their card without any help from AMD. AMD's HD 7990 is still MIA and might never be released at all. The HD 7990 Devil 13 provides awesome performance in games that properly support CrossFire. But many games don't show ideal scaling, or no scaling at all. AMD's CrossFire technology requires profiles for each game to provide maximum performance, which is often a problem with newly released games as AMD is slower than NVIDIA in updating their profiles. Compared to NVIDIA's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690, the PowerColor Devil 13 is 11% behind in performance when averaged over all our testing.