6990 power consumption: Power, Temperature, and Noise: How Loud Can One Card Get?

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IndexMeet The 6990Meet The 6990, ContOnce Again The Card They Beg You To OverclockPCI-Express Compliance: Does It Even Matter?New Catalyst Control Center Features & The TestCrysis: WarheadBattleForgeMetro 2033HAWXCivilization VBattlefield: Bad Company 2STALKER: Call of PripyatDIRT 2Mass Effect 2WolfensteinCompute PerformancePower, Temperature, and Noise: How Loud Can One Card Get?Final Thoughts

Power, Temperature, and Noise: How Loud Can One Card Get?

Last but not least as always is our look at the power consumption, temperatures, and acoustics of the Radeon HD 6990 series. This is an area where AMD has traditionally had an advantage, as their small die strategy leads to less power hungry and cooler products compared to their direct NVIDIA counterparts. Dual-GPU cards like the 6990 tend to increase the benefits of lower power consumption, but heat and noise are always a wildcard.

AMD continues to use a single reference voltage for their cards, so the voltages we see here represent what we’ll see for all reference 6900 series cards. In this case voltage also plays a big part, as PowerTune’s TDP profile is calibrated around a specific voltage.

Radeon HD 6900 Series Voltage
6900 Series Idle	6970 Load	6990 Load
0.9v	1. 175v	1.12v

The 6990 idles at the same 0.9v as the rest of the 6900 series. At load under default clocks it runs at 1.12v thanks to AMD’s chip binning, and is a big part of why the card uses as little power as it does for its performance. Overclocked to 880MHz however and we see the core voltage go to 1.175v, the same as the 6970. Power consumption and heat generation will shoot up accordingly, exacerbated by the fact that PowerTune is not in use here.

The 6990’s idle power is consistent with the rest of the 6900 series. At 171W it’s at parity with the 6970CF, while we see the advantage of the 6990’s lower idle TDP versus the 5970 in the form of a 9W advantage over the 5970.

With the 6990, load power under Crysis gives us our first indication that TDP alone can’t be used to predict total power consumption. With a 375W TDP the 6990 should consume less power than 2x200W 6950CF, but in practice the 6950CF setup consumes 21W less. Part of this comes down to the greater CPU load the 6990 can create by allowing for higher framerates, but this doesn’t completely explain the disparity. Compared to the 5970 the 6990 is also much higher than the TDP alone would indicate; the gap of 113W exceeds the 75W TDP difference. Clearly the 6990 truly is a more power hungry card than the 5970.

Meanwhile overclocking does send the power consumption further up, this time to 544W. This is better than the 6970CF at the cost of some performance. Do keep in mind though that at this point we’re dissipating 400W+ off of a single card, which will have repercussions.

Under FurMark PowerTune limits become the defining factor for the 6900 series. Even with PT triggering on all three 6900 cards, the numbers have the 375W 6990 drawing more than the 2x200W 6950CF, this time by 41W, with the 6970CF in turn drawing 51W more. All things considered the 6990’s power consumption is in line with its performance relative to the other 6900 series cards.

As for our 6990OC, overclocked and without PowerTune we see what the 6990 is really capable of in terms of power consumption and heat. 684W is well above the 6970CF (which has PT intact), and is approaching the 570/580 in SLI. We don’t have the ability to measure the power consumption of solely the video card, but based on our data we’re confident the 6990 is pulling at least 500W – and this is one card with one fan dissipating all of that heat. Front and rear case ventilation starts looking really good at this point.

Along with the 6900 series’ improved idle TDP, AMD’s dual-exhaust cooler makes its mark on idle temperatures versus the 5970. At 46C the 6990 is warmer than our average card but not excessively so, and in the meantime it’s 7C cooler than the 5970 which has to contend with GPU2 being cooled with already heated air. A pair of 6900 cards in CF though is still going to beat the dual-exhaust cooler.

When the 5970 came out it was warmer than the 5870CF; the 6990 reverses this trend. At stock clocks the 6990 is a small but measurable 2C cooler than the 6970CF, which as a reminder we run in a “bad” CF configuration by having the cards directly next to each other. There is a noise tradeoff to discuss, but as far as temperatures are concerned these are perfectly reasonable. Even the 6990OC is only 2C warmer.

At stock clocks FurMark does not significantly change the picture. If anything it slightly improves things as PowerTune helps to keep the 6990 in the middle of the pack. Overclock however and the story changes. Without PowerTune to keep power consumption in check that 681W power consumption catches up to us in the form of 94C core temperatures. It’s only a 5C difference, but it’s as hot as we’re willing to let the 6990 get. Further overclocking on our test bed is out of the question.

Finally there’s the matter of noise to contend with. At idle nothing is particularly surprising; the 6990 is an iota louder than the average card, presumably due to the dual-exhaust cooler.

And here’s where it all catches up to us. The Radeon HD 5970 was a loud card, the GTX 580 SLI was even louder, but nothing tops the 6990. The laws of physics are a cruel master, and at some point all the smart engineering in the world won’t completely compensate for the fact that you need a lot of airflow to dissipate 375W of heat. There’s no way around the fact that the 6990 is an extremely loud card; and while games aren’t as bad as FurMark here, it’s still noticeably louder than everything else on a relative basis. Ideally the 6990 requires good airflow and good noise isolation, but the former makes the latter difficult to achieve. Water cooled 6990s will be worth their weight in gold.

Compute Performance
Final Thoughts
IndexMeet The 6990Meet The 6990, ContOnce Again The Card They Beg You To OverclockPCI-Express Compliance: Does It Even Matter?New Catalyst Control Center Features & The TestCrysis: WarheadBattleForgeMetro 2033HAWXCivilization VBattlefield: Bad Company 2STALKER: Call of PripyatDIRT 2Mass Effect 2WolfensteinCompute PerformancePower, Temperature, and Noise: How Loud Can One Card Get?Final Thoughts

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AMD Radeon HD 6990 Launch Day: a 450W and 0 Dual-GPU Graphics Card for The Fanatic!

2011/03/08 JeGX

Radeon HD 6990 Overview

Ecco fatto, AMD has launched the fastest graphics card on the market: the Radeon HD 6990. This power (processing power and above all power consumption) monster is made up of two Cayman GPUs (the GPU of the HD 6970) on a single PCB. AMD’s Radeon HD 6990 features dual-BIOS capabilities. This feature is controlled by the Unlocking Switch, which toggles between the factory-supported Performance BIOS of 375W (BIOS1), and an Extreme Performance BIOS (BIOS2) that can potentially unlock higher clock speeds and up to 450W of mind-blowing performance.

Radeon HD 6990 features:

• GPU: Antilles (two Cayman) @ 830MHz/1120mV or 880MHz/1.175mV, 40nm
• Shader processors: 3072 (2×1536), VLIW4 design
• Memory: 4GB (2x2GB) GDDR5 @ 1250MHz real speed or 5000MHz effective, 2×256-bit
• Texture units: 192 (2×96)
• Z/Stencil ROPs: 2×64
• Color ROPs: 2×32
• VRM: 2×4-phase for the GPUs and 2 phases for the memory
• Power connectors: two 8-pin
• TDP: 375W or 450W (OC mode)
• Idle power consumption: 37W
• 3D APIs: OpenGL 4. 1 and Direct3D 11
• GPU computing: OpenCL 1.1, DirectCompute 11
• Price: USD $700

source

HD 6990 performances

source

3DMark11 – source

HD 6990 power consumption and temperature

HD 6990 and FurMark 1.9.0 – source

According to AnandTech tests, HD 6990 power consumption (card alone) with Crysis is aournd 335W while under FurMark, the power draw reaches 461W
(I computed the power consumption with (P_load – P_idle) * 0.9). The max GPU temperature is 88°C under Crysis anf 94°C under FurMark.

Radeon HD 6990 GPU GPU VRM – source

source

The HD 6990 has a dual-BIOS switch. And according to AnandTech, the nice news for overclockers is there is no PowerTune limit on position 1. Then you can reach 500W under FurMark.

source

Radeon HD 6990 Tests and Reviews

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Radeon HD 6990:

Specifications

October 21, 2018 admin hd-technics

How did 6990 come about?

With the Radeon HD 5970, the manufacturer is in an interesting position. By releasing the 5000 series about 6 months ahead of NVIDIA’s 400 series, AMD has demonstrated its leadership in new product launches. NVIDIA never responded to the 5970 despite the fact that the dual processor variant is fully compatible with its 400 series. The 5970 model was the undisputed queen of video cards — there was nothing more powerful then. Thus, given the lack of direct competition, the question of what AMD would replace its flagship with was of great interest. 9The 0009 Radeon HD 6990, AMD’s new highest performing card, featured two Cayman (VLIW4) GPUs on a single PCB. The CPU clock speed has been lowered to 830 MHz and the GDDR5 frequency to 1250 MHz (corresponding to a data rate of 5 GHz). The card came with 4 GB of RAM, which, due to internal CrossFire tuning, was reduced to an effective capacity of 2 GB, in line with other 6900-series models.
From 59Model 70’s power ratings and the laws of physics began to limit what AMD could do with a dual-GPU card. Unlike the 4870X2, the clock speed was not high enough to match a pair of HD 5870s. The 5970 had a 125 MHz slower processor, and the 800 MHz data rate was 200 MHz behind. In practice, this reduced the performance of the 5970 to the level of the 5850CF.
AMD Radeon HD 6990 performance was also lagging behind, but not so much. The 830 MHz was only 50 MHz (5.5%) slower than the 6970, and 5-GHz memory — at 500 MHz (9%). As a result, at base settings, the 6990 was closer to a dual 6970 than the 5970 was to the 5870.
The 6990 processors are fully functional. They use all 1536 shaders and 32 ROPs, so the only difference from the 6970 is the clock speed.
Compared to the 5970, the official standby power rating has been reduced to 37W thanks to the Cayman’s better power management. But under load, the power consumption of the board is 375 W, and, as in the case of 5970 is not the limit. If at base frequencies the 5970 stayed within the default PCI-Express specifications, the 6990 doesn’t even try to do so.
The release of the Radeon HD 6990 completes the refresh of AMD’s high-performance product line, which included the 6970, 6950 2GB, and 6950 1GB cards. At the same time, the average price for the 6970 was less than half the cost of the 6990, and the installation of the 6970 CrossFire was cheaper.

Design

Looking back at the 5970, there were several areas where AMD cards needed improvement. If the cooler system was enough to overclock the processor to the frequencies and voltages of the 5870 model, then the VRM cooling was insufficient, which led to the launch of the thermal protection mechanism. And although everything was within the framework of safety rules, it was inconvenient during long-term operation.
The design of the HD 6990 is very similar to the engineering solution to this problem. In addition, AMD not only eliminated the shortcomings of the 5970, but also had to cope with an even greater load. The result was significantly different from its predecessor.
If we compare HD 6990 vs 5970, the first card is a bit shorter. This is because the 6000 series case has a more angular shape than the beveled design of the 5000 series. As a result, the card has the same PCB dimensions (292mm) and a 305mm case (309mm for the 5970). This means that 6990, despite the increased cooling requirements, occupies almost the same space.

Cooler

The cooling system attracts the most attention in a video card. The traditional 5970 cooler had its strengths and weaknesses. He was tolerant of the case’s ability to expel hot air, but the processor, which was located closer to the fan, cooled better. The problem was the cooling of the voltage regulation modules, as they overheated long before the fan began to increase speed.
To fix this and provide even more heat dissipation, the rear fan had to be abandoned. It has been replaced by a design already used in third-party cards such as the Asus ARES 5870X2: a central cooler with processors on either side of it. The difference turned out to be significant. If the rear fan removed most of the hot air outside the PC case, then the central one divides the card in half: the heat of one set of GPUs and supporting chips is removed outside, and the second — inside the computer. Since the design remains closed, hot air exits front and rear, while cold air is drawn in in the middle of the map.
A change in the design of the cooler led to the replacement of a single radiator of the 5970 model with a segmented one. The 6990 is more like 2 separate graphics cards using one board than one with two GPUs. Each heatsink is connected to the processor through its own evaporator, as a result of which the cooling systems of the chips are completely isolated from each other.
Thermal paste between GPUs and evaporators has been replaced. Instead of a traditional formulation, AMD has used a phase change material that melts and solidifies based on temperature. It was not something revolutionary, but it was not applied everywhere either. As a result, thermal conductivity improved by 8%.
The voltage regulation modules have been moved to correct the limited cooling capabilities of the 5970 model. They were placed in the center of the board so that they cool before the GPUs or RAM modules. This not only reduced their heating, but also corresponded to higher power consumption. Cooling the VRMs has become even more important. As with the 6970, voltage regulation is provided by Volterra MOSFETs and controllers.
The 5970 was designed to dissipate 400W of heat, while the HD 6990 — at 450 watts. In practice, the possibilities of the latter approach 500 watts. The removal and dissipation of this amount of energy in 1180 cm3 of space is admirable.

Power

The Radeon HD 6990 graphics card is powered either directly through the standard PCIe bus or through 2 x 8-pin PCIe connectors. Thus, the power consumption limit is 150+150+75 = 375W. As with the 5970, any increase in power will exceed the PCIe’s external power capability. The power of 375W by itself is out of this specification. Meanwhile, as in the case of 5970, at base clock, the GPUs are undervolted to match the target power. Cayman chips use 1.12V to run at 830MHz.
Power has a big impact on GPU performance, as the 6990’s performance improvement over the 5970’s required AMD to both change the card’s power consumption and implement the PowerTune power management system. The latter was first introduced with the 6900 series in December 2010. By limiting power consumption to a set value and holding back performance above it, AMD was able to increase clock speed without having to worry about safety when running applications like FurMark. Finding a balance is complicated by the fact that setting too high a frequency for a certain power, along with limiting performance, is counterproductive and leads to inconsistent performance, and too low a frequency leaves the potential of the card unrealized.
The increase in power consumption and the simultaneous introduction of PowerTune allowed AMD to increase the GPU clock speed in the same way as in the case of the 5970. The Cayman architecture is faster than the Cypress, but the 105 MHz advantage makes the difference really noticeable. At default settings, PowerTune seems to be tuned on the 6990 much the same as on the 6970: FurMark lags a lot and Metro experiences slight lag. The usual PowerTune tuning range of +/- 20% is available, which allows you to set a power consumption limit of 300-450 watts.
According to user feedback, PowerTune lacks a dynamic limit based on the use of CrossFire. Perhaps the biggest downside of dual GPU cards is that they can’t match single-chip cards, as their clock speeds are kept low to limit overall power consumption. If a single GPU could use the standard 880 MHz when the second processor is idle, then it would be able to reach the level of high-end single-chip cards in tasks that do not benefit from CrossFire, such as windowed games, emulators, GPGPU applications and games without CF profile.
As with the 5970 and 2GB 5870, the HD 6990 has 16 RAM chips, 8 per GPU. One half of them is on the front of the PCB, and the other half is on the back. The rear panel provides protection and heat dissipation from the RAM placed there. One of the few differences from the 6970 is the use of 5GHz instead of 6GHz. This means that the base clock speed of the card’s RAM is already up to par. The HD 6990 datasheet notes that 6GHz RAM is rated at 1.6V, while 5GHz is rated at 1. 5V. So the difference comes down to a few factors: lower RAM power consumption, reduced costs, and reduced performance issues. at frequencies above 5 GHz.

Connectivity

Changes have also taken place in this area. Because Cayman GPUs can only drive one dual-link DVI monitor, AMD has ditched the 2nd SL-DVI port and HDMI port in favor of additional mini-DisplayPorts. If all Cayman GPUs (and Cypress/5800 before that) can serve up to 6 monitors, the only way to do it within 1 slot is to place either 6 mini-DP ports (similar to Eyefinity-6) or using an MST hub. 6990 is an example of a compromise between these approaches. The Eyefinity-6 requires an expensive DP to DLI-DVI adapter to connect a single DL-DVI monitor, and the 5970-like 2 x DVI + mini-DP design doesn’t allow 6 monitors even with MST hubs. The end result is 1 DL-DVI port for legacy 2560×1600/2560×1440 monitors and 4 more mini-DP for newer displays. This allows you to control 5 monitors directly and 6 if you have an MST hub.
As with the 5870E6 cards, adapters are required to minimize the use of DisplayPort. All 6990s were equipped with passive SL-DVI and HDMI adapters and active SL-DVI. Built-in connectivity and adapters let you create virtually any combination, including the popular 3-monitor 1080p Eyefinity setup.

Heat Dissipation

Changes in cooling design, power consumption and heat dissipation required not only a different card length and power concept, but also additional attention to system performance. A number of high-end models have struggled with hot air handling before, but nothing like the HD 6990 was not. In particular, no 12-inch card drew more than 185 watts of heat directly from its back. Most of the designs were much more open and directed air currents in all directions.
The critical point of the HD 6990 is the removal of a large volume of hot air into the PC case. If the 5970th model forgave a lot in this regard, then the 6990th one was not. A graphics card needs a case with a lot of airflow, especially if you plan to overclock it, and nothing of value should be directly behind it.

Users have measured the temperature of a hard drive placed directly behind the 6990. It was 37°C at base frequency and reached 40°C when overclocked. For the 5970 card, the temperature drops to 31°C, and for a pair of 6970s in CrossFire with a 120mm fan, it will reach 27°C. So the penalty for having dual vents is 6°C compared to the 5970 and 10°C compared to a pair of shorter 6970s. This suggests that placing a hard drive (or any other component) behind the video card is undesirable. Since in most cases you can find free hard drive bays elsewhere, it’s best to move your HDD as far away from 6990.
You can go even further and turn the nearest front air intake into an outlet. In some cases, the inlet is located on the front of the case and roughly corresponds to the PEG 1 socket. If used for heat dissipation, this will dissipate heat much more efficiently. Perhaps this is what the manufacturer was counting on when creating such a design.
Ultimately, the performance of the AMD Radeon HD 6990 is incomparable to what it was before. Its high power draw and dual exhaust cooler require more careful cooling than any other dual GPU card.

Processing power

Due to the architectural changes that AMD made with the transition to the 6000 series, especially in terms of processing performance, the performance of the Radeon HD 6990 could improve. However, the dual GPU design didn’t offer much of an advantage.
Users used Civilization V to evaluate the changes, which uses DirectCompute to quickly convert textures. The game includes a test that tests the speed of the texture unfolding algorithm required for one of the main scenes.
Civilization V DirectCompute doesn’t scale well with CrossFire. This puts the AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB ahead of the 6970, but the Cayman architecture still looks unoptimized. The 5970 leads by 10% even at a lower clock speed. NVIDIA and its Fermi architecture are well ahead of the 6990 even without the benefit of SLI scaling.

Another GPU benchmark is the SmallLuxGPU. The LuxRender application implements the full ray tracing engine in OpenCL, which allowed the process to be completely transferred to the GPU. The SmallLuxGPU does not have CrossFire scaling, so this test is about the performance of the first processor and shader/computer. At standard clock speeds, this results in 69The 90 lags a bit behind the 6970, but when overclocked it is in perfect parity with it. Unfortunately for AMD, this is a test where NVIDIA’s focus on compute performance really paid off. Even without CF scaling, the 3x cheaper GTX 560 Ti outperforms the AMD HD 6990.
Ultimately, the advantage of multiple GPU cores remained unrealized in most PCs. As a result, the 6990 was the best gaming card, but not a card for intensive computing.

Overclocking options

The 6900 series introduced a BIOS select switch that allowed users to safely overwrite the BIOS of a card while having a backup to work with. The 6990 has kept this concept modified to meet its unique overclocking needs. The switch remains, but serves to control the performance of the video card. Position 2 uses a write-protected BIOS that sets a base clock of 830 MHz and a standard core voltage of 1.12 V. Position 1 allows you to change the BIOS and the card starts at the same basic speeds and voltages as the 6970th model: 880 MHz and 1.175 V. The frequency of the RAM remains unchanged and is equal to 5 GHz.

Test results

The HD 6990 vs GTX 1050 Ti performance comparison suggests that the overall performance of the AMD card should be better. The bandwidth of the first is 179% higher — 320,000 GB / s versus 114,688 GB / s. In addition, the 6990th model is 157% faster in anisotropic filtering — 159360 versus 61920 Mtexels/s. Also, the AMD graphics card is significantly (at 29%) is ahead of the competing model in terms of full-screen anti-aliasing speed — 53120 versus 41280 Mp / s. However, in the 3DMark Fire Strike test, the 6990 falls behind by 33%, scoring 5820 points versus 7750 for the GTX 1050 Ti.
In BattleForge with maximum quality and 2560p resolution, the card achieves a frame rate of 99.6 fps, behind the 6970CF 9 fps and the GeForce GTX 580SLI (125 fps).
With the release of 6990, for the first time ever, we were able to run Crysis at maximum settings with an acceptable frame rate on a single map. The model provides an acceptable 42.8 fps for a resolution of 2560 x 1600. Gaming settings allow you to play at a comfortable frequency of 64 fps.

Power and temperature

This is an area where AMD has traditionally had an edge, as the small die strategy has led to less power hungry and cooler processors compared to NVIDIA’s direct counterparts. Dual GPU cards like the 6990 have the advantage of lower power consumption, but heat and noise are always unpredictable.
AMD continued to use a single reference voltage in their cards. It plays a big role, since the PowerTune profile is calibrated to one specific value. Standby voltage is 0.9V, under load — 1. 12 V (for 6970 — 1.175 V).
In idle mode, the HD 6990 has the same specs as the rest of the 6900 series — the CPU runs at 0.9V. energy than its performance level requires. When overclocked to 880 MHz, the voltage rises to 1.17 V, like the 6970. Power consumption and heat dissipation increase accordingly, which is exacerbated by the fact that PowerTune is not used here.
Idle power 6990 is consistent with the rest of the series. 171W matches the 6970CF, but compared to the 5970, the card has a 9W lead.
Crysis game load provides the first indication that target power consumption alone cannot be used to predict total power consumption. At 375W of design power, the 6990 should draw less than the 2x200W of the 6950CF, but in practice the 6950CF draws 21W less. This is partly due to higher CPU utilization, which allows for higher frame rates, but this does not fully explain the discrepancy. Compared to 5970 power 6990 is much higher than the target. The 113W gap exceeds the 75W difference. Obviously, the 6990 needs more power than the 5970.

Overclocking significantly increases power consumption, this time to 544W. This is better than the 6970CF at the expense of some performance loss. It should be borne in mind that in this case more than 400 W are dissipated from one card, which is fraught with consequences.
FurMark test reveals PowerTune limitations that are a defining factor for the 69 series00. Even with the limit enabled for all three 6900 cards, the 375-watt 6990 consumes 41W more than the 2x200W 6950CF and 51W more than the 6970CF. The power consumption of the 6990 is proportional to the higher performance of the card compared to other models in the 6900 series.
As for the overclocked Radeon HD 6990 4GB without PowerTune, the card can withstand the stresses in terms of power and heat consumption. 684 watts is well above 6970 without PowerTune and approaches 570/580 in SLI. It is difficult to measure the power consumption of a graphics card alone, but based on user data, you can be sure that 69The 90 draws at least 500W, and it’s one card with one fan dissipating all the heat. The air outlet from the front and rear ends of the case looks really good.
Along with the improvement in power target in the 6900 series, AMD’s double-sided cooler, compared to the 5970, announces its idle temperature. At 46°C, the 6990 is warmer than the other cards, but not too much (the XFX HD 6990 modification gets up to 51°C in standby mode), and that temperature is 7°C warmer than the 5970, which has to contend with being second to none. The processor is cooled by already heated air. Couple 6900 in CF is more efficient than a dual outlet cooler.
The 5970 ran hotter than the 5870CF, but the 6990 changed that trend. At base clock, the processor is 2°C cooler than the 6970CF running in a «bad» configuration with the cards right next to each other. The heating temperature of 86°C is quite reasonable. Even an overclocked graphics card is only 2 degrees hotter. The heating temperatures of the XFX HD 6990, for example, under load at the base and boost frequencies are 78 and 88 °C, respectively.
The FurMark test does not significantly change the picture. If anything improves things a bit, it’s PowerTune, which keeps the 6990 in the middle positions. Overclocking, however, is another matter entirely. Without PowerTune to monitor power consumption, the card reaches 94°C at 681W of power consumption. The difference is only 5°C, but this is the limit of what users are willing to accept. Further acceleration is out of the question.

Noise

The card has a fan volume problem that needs to be addressed. In idle mode, there is nothing surprising. 44.9dB louder than the average card presumably due to the dual output cooler.
While the Radeon HD 5970 is loud under load and the GTX 580 SLI is very loud, they are quiet compared to the 6990. The laws of physics cannot be fooled, and at some point all smart engineering solutions are not able to compensate for the need for a large air flow dissipating 375 watts of heat. With 70.2dB and 77.3dB overclocked, the 6990 is an extremely loud card. And while games don’t turn up the fan volume as much as they do during the FurMark test, the cooler runs noticeably louder than all other models. Ideally 6990 requires good airflow and good noise isolation, but the former makes the latter difficult. Water cooling of the 6990 will cost its weight in gold.

In conclusion

The combination of 2 Cayman GPUs on the same board has without a doubt made the HD 6990 the title of the fastest graphics card on the market. At the same time, there has always been and will be a difference between cards with one and two GPUs. If the former pose a threat to the latter, then the reverse is unlikely.
In 2009, a similar question already arose: what is better — 5970 or two 5850s ​​in CrossFire considering they were nearly identical in performance? The answer was that CrossFire is the best solution if you have a power supply with 4 easily accessible PCIe slots. In the case of the 6990, the answer is even more direct. With some exceptions (for example, the lack of free space for 2 cards or in the HD 6990 x2 configuration), the 6990 is inferior to a pair in CrossFire.
There are many reasons for this. The specifications of the HD 6990 are so close to those of the 6950CF that they are identical on average at 2560 resolution. Only in the games Bad Company 2 and Stalker is the advantage of 69 noticeable90, which is lost in Civilization V or DIRT 2. Meanwhile, the 6950CF runs cooler, is much quieter, consumes less power, and doesn’t have the same driver issues as the HD 6990. one double. Similarly, a pair of 6970s cost less and at 2560 provide about 8% better performance and quieter operation.
At the time of its release, the HD 6990 x2 (Quad-CrossFire) specs put noise and high power consumption aside. This required installation on a motherboard with a gap of 3 slots, but the configuration was quite real.
The last justification for buying a video card was the need for a system of 5 Eyefinity monitors, which, along with 6990, was supported only by 5870.
Source: fb.ru

specs and benchmarks in 10 games and 2 benchmarks

AMD started selling the Radeon HD 6990 on March 8, 2011 for a suggested price of $699. This is a desktop video card based on the TeraScale 3 architecture with a 40 nm process technology. It has 2 GB of GDDR5 memory with a frequency of 1250 MHz, a 256-bit bus, which provides a bandwidth of 5 Gb / s.

Card occupies 2 slots, connected via PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. The reference version is 310mm long, 115mm wide and 40mm high. The card requires the connection of two 8-pin auxiliary power cables, the declared maximum power consumption is 375 watts.

Specifications

GPU

GPU option

Antilles XT (215-0807027)

Architecture

TeraScale 3

Manufacturer

TSMC

Process

40 nm

Number of transistors

2640 million

Crystal area

389mm²

Graphic card

Release date

March 8, 2011

Generation

Northern Islands (HD 6900)

Predecessor

Evergreen

Descendant

Southern Islands

Launch price

$699

Market price

$699

Data bus interface

PCIe 2. 0 x16

Clocks

GPU Clocks

830 MHz

Memory frequency

1250 MHz

Memory

Memory capacity

2 GB

Memory type

GDDR5

Memory bus

256 bit

Memory speed

5 Gb/s

Memory bandwidth

160 GB/s

Render configuration

Shader units

1536

Compute modules

24

Texture blocks

96

Raster blocks

32

L1 cache

8 KB

L2 cache

512 KB

Rated output

Pixel fill rate

26. 56 GP/s

Texture Fill Rate

79.68 GT/s

Performance FP32

2.550 Tflops

Performance FP64

637.4 GFlops

Graphics

DirectX

11.2 (11_0)

OpenGL

4.4

OpenCL

1.2

Shader model

5

Video card design

Occupied slots

2

Length

310 mm

Width

115 mm

Height

40 mm

Heat Sink Requirements

375 W

Recommended PSU power

750 W

Outputs

1x DVI 4x mini-DisplayPort

Power supply

2x 8-pin

Board number

C206-47

Maximum temperature

84 °C

Maximum noise

66 dB

Game FPS

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

(2020)

Better than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile, but worse than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile.

Valorant

(2020)

Better than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile, but worse than AMD Radeon R9 280X.

Death Stranding

(2020)

Better than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile, but worse than AMD Radeon R9280X.

Cyberpunk 2077

(2020)

Better than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile, but worse than AMD Radeon RX 480 Mobile.

Apex Legends

(2019)

Better than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, but worse than AMD Radeon R9 280X.

Metro Exodus

(2019)

Better than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile, but worse than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile.

Red Dead Redemption 2

(2019)

Better than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile, but worse than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

(2012)

Better than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770, but worse than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

(2011)

Better than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M, but worse than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660.

League of Legends

(2019)

Better than AMD Radeon RX 570 Mobile, but worse than AMD Radeon R9280X.

Benchmark tests

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics: 5830 Better than AMD Radeon RX 560 Mobile but worse than AMD Radeon R9 270.

Passmark: 2932 Better than AMD Radeon HD 6970, but worse than NVIDIA GeForce MX350.

Comparison with other graphics cards

Map 1:

Map 2:

Video reviews and tests

Radeon HD 6990 MONSTER VIDEO CARD in action! ?

MONSTER VIDEO CARD Radeon HD 6990 in action! ?

♦️AMD HD 6990 in 30 GAMES (in 2022-2023)

HD 6990 in 8 Games | A FORGOTTEN MONSTER of a GPU ? | 2022 — PART 1

AMD HD 6990 in 2022 — Testing the 1400 USD Quad Fire Itch

Radeon HD 6990 Acoustics & Temperatures Linus Tech Tips

HD 6990 in 15 Games | A FORGOTTEN MONSTER of a GPU ? | 2022 — PART 2

HD 6990 Test in 7 Games

AMD Radeon HD 6990 Far Cry 4 Performance

XFX AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips

Overclocked AMD Radeon HD 6990 Vs R9 290

Dual Chip Graphics Card hd 6990.