AMD Radeon HD 7990 Released: Dual GPUs and 6G of Memory for $1000 189
An anonymous reader writes "Today AMD has officially unveiled its long-awaited dual-GPU Tahiti-based card. Codenamed Malta, the $1,000 Radeon HD 7990 is positioned directly against Nvidia's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690. Tom's Hardware posted the performance data. Because Fraps measures data at a stage in the pipeline before what is actually seen on-screen, they employed Nvidia's FCAT (Frame Capture Analysis Tools). ... The 690 is beating AMD's new flagship in six out of eight titles. ... AMD is bundling eight titles with every 7990, including: BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution."
OpenGL performance doesn't seem too off from the competing Nvidia card, but the 7990 dominates when using OpenCL. Power management looks decent: ~375W at full load, but a nice 20W at idle (it can turn the second chip off entirely when unneeded). PC Perspective claims there are issues with Crossfire and an un-synchronized rendering pipeline that leads to a slight decrease in the actual frame rate, but that should be fixed by an updated Catalyst this summer.
Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? (Score:3, Informative)
I cannot believe people still complain about this. In the last five years I've built many a system, some with Nvidia cards and some with AMD cards and frankly I've never seen any serious graphics issues with either brand. The biggest issue I've seen has actually been overheating and that has far more to do with standard case design and default fan settings on the cards...
Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? (Score:5, Informative)
Since AMD drivers are total garbage, why bother? Might as well stick with a card I can actually use.
You know, I keep seeing people say this, yet the only manufacturer I've ever had driver trouble with was Nvidia, on both Linux and Windows. So, you know, YMMV.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Informative)
As they mentioned, it can run all top games in 4k+ resolutions (either a dedicated 4k display or eyefinity configuration), something that your $500 card can't do. But yes, you don't need it to run Crysis 3 at 1920x1080
Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? (Score:5, Informative)
nVidia's drivers have gone downhill of late and they're still better than AMD's.
Does anyone other than Intel actually have stable graphics card drivers? Is there a way to get drivers from AMD or nVidia which turn off the hackish "optimizations" and accept slightly lower FPS in exchange for more stability?
Sure!
Step 1. Choose the AMD or Nvidia card you want.
Step 2. Take the price of that card and add ~$1000.
Step 3. Consult list of 'FirePro'(AMD) or 'Quadro'(Nvidia) cards.
Step 4. Purchase the card whose price most closely matches the result you calculated in Step 2.
Congratulations, you now have access to drivers compiled without the -who-gives-a-fuck-about-artefacts-this-is-worth-150-3dmarks and -crashes-under-edge-cases-but-those-overclocker-kiddies-with-bargain-RAM-won't-know-the-difference flags enabled!
Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like your PSU is inadequate or you have some other kind of hardware issue.
If you are running Vista/7/8 then the graphics drivers crashing should not blue-screen your machine. They run in user space now for that very reason. Blue screens are an indicate that something else is wrong, most likely with your hardware.
In fact even before Vista in my experience most blue screens were due to hardware problems. Back in the 98 days drivers were terrible, but when Microsoft introduced their certification scheme things really did get a lot better.