| AMD Radeon HD 6990 Antilles Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Monday, 07 March 2011 | |
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AMD Radeon HD 6990 Antilles Review
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by AMD. Featuring dual 1536-Core Cayman GPUs, AMD's Radeon HD 6990 Antilles graphics card redefines the high-end.When it comes to computer hardware there's something for everyone, and this rings especially true for graphics cards. If you're on a tight budget, but still like to point and shoot your way through levels, there are plenty of affordable entry-level products that can satisfy your needs. But if you're an enthusiast gamer who demands only the highest level of performance that far surpasses mainstream standards, then it's your lucky day, because manufacturers are making great leaps with every new generation of computer components. Since both ends of the user spectrum clearly exist, then so must there also be products to support them - regardless of how extreme they appear. Enter the AMD Radeon HD 6990, code named Antilles. Hardware enthusiasts may recall that AMD's Cayman GPU, introduced with the Radeon HD 6970 video card, that features two graphics engines with an asynchronous dispatch and off-chip geometry buffering to 96 tessellation units using a new VLIW4 shader core architecture. Now multiply all of that times two, and you've got the Radeon HD 6990. Equipped with a 4GB GDDR5 256-bit video frame buffer, each of the Cayman GPUs offers 24 SIMD engines and 96 Texture Units for 192 total units and a combined stream processor count of 3072. Additionally, the AMD Radeon HD 6990 utilizes several new MSAA modes including Enhanced Quality Anti-Aliasing (EQAA). When only the very best will do, only the AMD Radeon HD 6990 video card will do it for you. Engineered as a 450W-capable dual-GPU graphics card with Volterra regulators, Antilles delivers 169.0 Gtex/s and 5.40 TFLOPs by using two Cayman GPUs clocked at up to 880MHz. For those keeping score, that's exactly twice the performance of two AMD Radeon HD 6970 video cards in a lossless CrossFire-X set, and all while maintaining a profile size identical to the Radeon HD 5970. Despite this level of output, AMD PowerTune technology manages consumption down to 350W on this flagship model.
The AMD Radeon HD 6990 takes advantage of improved anti-aliasing features to enhance DirectX 11 effects and deliver the most realistic gaming experience possible. When it comes down to producing top-end frame rates, the Radeon HD 6990 is unrivaled at helping gamers build a killstreak. AMD set out to design the fastest graphics card possible, and they accomplished this with the Radeon HD 6990, building a premium product only the most affluent enthusiast gamers will enjoy. While the Radeon HD 6990 accomplishes the extraordinary, AMD managed to also add accelerated multimedia playback and transcoding, AMD HD3D stereoscopic technology, and support for the 3D Blu-ray multi-view CODEC (MVC).
For those who have been patiently waiting for news on ATI Stream technology, it's been re-tasked as AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, or APP technology. AMD Eye-Definition represents their commitment to PC gamers, PC game developers, and the PC gaming industry. Through Eye-Definition AMD delivers their "Gamers Manifesto", which they assert will enable the best experience possible regardless of hardware manufacturer. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests graphical frame rate performance with the AMD Radeon HD 6990 by using the most demanding PC video game titles and benchmark software available. Some favorites using older DirectX technology such as Crysis Warhead, PCMark Vantage, and Mafia II are included, in addition to DX11 titles such as 3dMark11, Aliens vs Predator, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, BattleForge, Lost Planet 2, Metro 2033, and the Unigine Heaven 2.1 benchmark.
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Comments
The dual-bios switch is a pretty awesome idea even if the actual overclocking potential of the 6990 was a huge 'meh'.
I suppose these cards are never intended to be particularly sensible though and are aimed are that certain type of gamer (more money then sense, possibly).
I know it seems ironic to talk about budget when we're discussing a $700 video card, but if I take the money I would have spent on an X58/LGA1366 motherboard and a top-of-the-heap CPU and put it towards the video card, I think it's a better bang for the $$$$.
Another problem is, whilst high end cards are great fun and all that, they're currently redundant. Current PC games are becoming so heavily gimped by the console market that we're not seeing anything worth buying these parts for.
Having said that I've not played Crysis 2 yet, but it's a console port. Bleh.
RagingShadow, I suggest you wait until the game is released.
In this case I don't count the "What the lawyers make us say" setting at 830MHz 1.12V as the reference setting, but just a safe adaptation to get the card within the PCIe standards.
880MHz and 1.175V is the reference speed, and from there the card can be overclocked a bit. How much past 900MHz is still anybody's guess though...
And almost all my friends and I use controllers when we feel like it.