AMD released the long-awaited Radeon HD 7990 Wednesday, finally providing an official dual-GPU product in this generation. While ASUS and PowerColor have had their own unofficial 7990 variants on sale for months, today’s release from AMD is the first in-house look at two Tahiti HD 7970-class GPUs on a single PCB.
The card features 8.6 billion transistors (4.3 billion per GPU), over 8 teraflops of raw computing power, 6GB of GDDR5 memory, two 8-pin power connectors, and a custom three-fan cooler. AMD also continues its dedication to EyeFinity with four Mini DisplayPorts and a single dual-link DVI connection, supporting five simultaneous monitors.
AMD claims in its marketing materials that the 7990 is over 3 decibels quieter than competing products from NVIDIA, including the well-received GTX Titan. Some independent testing reveals that the card is not quite as quiet as the marketing materials suggest, however, with a noise level just above the GTX 690.
Early benchmarks reveal that the 7990 performs just slightly slower than a pair of 7970 GHz Editions in CrossFire, although it still suffers from framerate issues that plague all multi-GPU AMD configurations. Fortunately, AMD is preparing a completely new driver package that looks like it will address most of the framrate problems.
Perhaps the biggest surprise with the 7990 is the price, which AMD set at $999. Both the unofficial ASUS and PowerColor products have street prices above $1,000 and many expected AMD’s official 7990 entry to top that mark as well. By pricing the card at $999, which is in line with the GTX 690 and GTX Titan, AMD must ensure that its ultra-high-end card can beat its competitors at the same price point, assuming that the company can solve the framerate issue this summer.
