Official Radeon HD 6990 reviews

[Heinz68]

Originally Posted by Redeemed

But no- you're very right. It's not the size that matters...

That's not what she said........






when she looked at mine monitor. LOL

[Redeemed]

*shakes head*

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Ancient76

This man makes the best video tests, and he is honest.

From Tom's:



Simple, you can't put this cheap cooling solution on card like this.

This solves the problem of both heat and noise in one shot, and looks awsome to boot...The EK HD6990 water block, now off to production...Should hit retail in a few weeks..









Mind you,i find the fact that once the card is clocked at HD6970 speeds, it can consume 450 watts wich is completely rediculous and i'd rather wait for the 28nm generation of cards coming out late this year, wich will use less power and perform the same of better from a single GPU.

[Redeemed]

Originally Posted by shadow001

This solves the problem of both heat and noise in one shot, and looks awsome to boot...The EK HD6990 water block, now off to production...Should hit retail in a few weeks..









Mind you,i find the fact that once the card is clocked at HD6970 speeds, it can consume 450 watts wich is completely rediculous and i'd rather wait for the 28nm generation of cards coming out late this year, wich will use less power and perform the same of better from a single GPU.

Wow... that is AWESOME!

As to the card, why is it limited to what the PCI-e can provide power wise? Aren't the two PCI-e power connectors there for a reason?

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Redeemed

Wow... that is AWESOME!

As to the card, why is it limited to what the PCI-e can provide power wise? Aren't the two PCI-e power connectors there for a reason?

The PCI-e specification specifies that any given card shouldn't exceed 300 watts period....That means using a 6 pin + 8 pin PCI-e power plugs, not a pair of 8 pin plugs...


Now add the fact that even with a pair of 8 Pin power connectors, wich on principle supply at least 375 watts, that once that dual Bios feature built within the card itself is activated, making the card run at the same GPU clocks and voltage as the GPU's on the HD6970 cards, the HD6990 can hit 450 watts wich is seriously pushing the limits on that pair of 8 Pin PCI-e power connectors by an extra 75 watts....

[Redeemed]

Originally Posted by shadow001

The PCI-e specification specifies that any given card shouldn't exceed 300 watts period....That means using a 6 pin + 8 pin PCI-e power plugs, not a pair of 8 pin plugs...


Now add the fact that even with a pair of 8 Pin power connectors, wich on principle supply at least 375 watts, that once that dual Bios feature built within the card itself is activated, making the card run at the same GPU clocks and voltage as the GPU's on the HD6970 cards, the HD6990 can hit 450 watts wich is seriously pushing the limits on that pair of 8 Pin PCI-e power connectors by an extra 75 watts....

Okay, so why not add a third PCI-e power connector to provide more current to it? Most PSU's that would be used with one (or two) of these have at least four PCI-e power connectors.

Way I see it- big, powerful card needs big, powerful power supply.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Redeemed

Okay, so why not add a third PCI-e power connector to provide more current to it? Most PSU's that would be used with one (or two) of these have at least four PCI-e power connectors.

Way I see it- big, powerful card needs big, powerful power supply.

Yup,like Asus did with the Ares version of the HD5970 cards....It used 3 power connectors(8 + 8 + 6 pin = 450 watts total).....But it still doesn't change the fact that the cards can't be PCI-e certified since they exceed 300 watts anyhow.


Unless the PCI-e specification was updated of course...

[Heinz68]

PowerColor AX6990 4GBD5-M4D review at BenchmarkReviews.com
20 March 2011. Includes some overclocking and shows good temps.

[Heinz68]

Sapphire Radeon HD 6990 4GB Video Card in AUSUM Mode
review at TweakTown (March 17, 2011

The temperature test looks good compared to some other setups. Even the "Total Noise Output" is lower than some other setups. Here is the review "Final Thoughts".

AUSUM mode helps take the card to another level which is exactly what AMD wanted to do with the Dual BIOS switch. For the first time we're really seeing the switch used in a way we wanted it to be used.

Outside of the extra performance, though, the heat does indeed go up another level, as does the power draw. The heat might be a bit of a turn off for some users with it tipping almost 90c, but others won't mind so much. The good news is that the main reason we're seeing the extra heat is because the fan is spinning no faster.

What that means is if you want to jump into something like Afterburner you could add an extra couple of % to the fan speed to help bring the heat down while bumping noise levels up only slightly. It's not a bad tradeoff for the extra performance.

So should AMD have just released the card at 880MHz on the core and again made the switch do very little like the HD 6950 and HD 6970? I personally feel the answer to that is no. The slightly lower clock has helped keep the temperature at a really good level with one core coming in just over 80c and the other in the 70c mark.

In the end, though, I think the most important question is, do you make the switch to AUSUM mode when you buy the card? Like above, I would probably say no. Yeah, the extra performance is nice, but most are going to find it's unnecessary. You can see that even on our 4.2GHz 980x we hit a limitation in some areas.

The AUSUM switch comes in handier for overclockers. But why overclock when we say that you don't even need the extra performance that the AUSUM switch offers? Well, some people just have the need for speed and others are going to want to overclock even higher for some benchmarking fun.

If you're happy with the out of the box performance and you prefer not to deal with the extra heat, leave the card alone. If you want more performance, though, and you don't mind the heat, make the switch. Either way, I don't think you'll be disappointed with what the Sapphire HD 6990 4GB is able to offer you.

[Muppet]

Those EK water blokes look mean. I would love to see you put one on your setup Heinz68.

[Muppet]

Forget my last post. Who needs water cooling