AMD Radeon HD 7990 Review: 7990 Gets Official
by Ryan Smith on April 24, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon HD 7000
- Tahiti
Sleeping Dogs
Another Square Enix game, Sleeping Dogs is one of the few open world games to be released with any kind of benchmark, giving us a unique opportunity to benchmark an open world game. Like most console ports, Sleeping Dogs’ base assets are not extremely demanding, but it makes up for it with its interesting anti-aliasing implementation, a mix of FXAA and SSAA that at its highest settings does an impeccable job of removing jaggies. However by effectively rendering the game world multiple times over, it can also require a very powerful video card to drive these high AA modes.
Sleeping Dogs is one of the games targeted by NVIDIA’s latest driver update, and as a result the performance gap between AMD and NVIDIA setups has narrowed since when we first started using it. Ultimately this is still a game that AMD does better at, and the 7990 is always ahead of the GTX 690 by at least a few frames per second, never mind the much greater lead over Titan. We generally value single-GPU cards for their consistency, but in times like these Titan pays heavily for it compared to the likes of the 7990.
Meanwhile at 5760 we’re once again seeing the 7990 trail the 7970GE CF by quite a large degree; the gap is now 18%. So at the highest and most demanding settings there is still a clear performance advantage for two-card CrossFire setups, as we’re seeing here.
Something about Sleeping Dogs at lower resolutions holds back AMD CF setups, which means the 7990 gets impacted here too. 55fps is reasonable enough for playability purposes, but this is a good example of why multi-GPU scaling isn’t an infallible solution.
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Nfarce - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Most people can't afford to pay $2k in cash (or would not choose to do so if they could do so, as is the case of me). Plunking down that kind of money for GPU performance for gaming and not thinking twice about it (or missing it) is the exception, not the rule. That's all I'm saying. More power to you, so to speak, for bragging rights.Shark321 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Without FCAT numbers this review is a complete waste of time. 3 Weeks ago Ryan wrote that FCAT numbers for crossfire will be available "next monday", and nothing has happened since. EVERY other major hardware review website has FCAT results.brucek2 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Long time AnandTech fan here, but this review really drops the ball.Like many other commenters said, if you don't have the FCAT analysis or similar, you're not ready to publish a review. As other sites are showing the 7990's frate rate is in some cases largely fictitious and has gamer-perceptible stutter. Apparently the prototype drivers will fix or improve the issue, but the release date is only "second half 2013" ie potentially months away.
Also, did your sample not have the high pitch whine caused by vibrations of the capcitors / PCB that other reviews are reporting? Can't cover what didn't happen but this appears to be a material issue with this card.
In short had I bought this case based solely on this review, I would have ended up sorely dissappointed. I trust AnandTech more than that and don't want to see this trust erode.
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
You have to hand it to AMD. Looking at the benchmark games, six out of ten are already Gaming Evolved titles that were included in a bundle by AMD. Of the four that are not, Battlefield 3 will almost certainly be updated to BF4 this year when the Gaming Evolved version shows up.Control the way the benchmark games are developed, control the benchmarks, and look better by comparison. It's smart and I bet it costs a lot less money than actually releasing new cards every year.
7Enigma - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
Here's a thought Ryan; You didn't have enough time to get the FCAT results together, and you are releasing a review of a product that at best is 2 weeks away (can you say SUPER SOFT LAUNCH). So how's about you HOLD THE REVIEW until release or at least until you have a proper review ready.The last couple years has seen Anandtech flip/flop constantly on this point. And while I don't feel Anandtech is biased towards one or the other be it AMD/Intel or AMD/NVIDIA, it just looks bad when one time you hold a review and other times incomplete articles get thrown out to beat the NDA....
Chaser - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
When I decide I need three 30 inch monitors I'll consider a $1000.00 video card. Meh.Mr. Mephisto - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
i currently own the powercolor 7990 and i have to say the driver releases have changed the performance exponentially. the card was downright disappointing playing crysis 3 using driver 13.2 but after 13.5 there is a much smoother gaming experience. i really dont think that it matters if AMD has better architecture if they cant release good drivers.*i guess it should be said that this is my first AMD card in my 7-8 years of gaming. i used to be a nvidia fanboy XD
Parablooper - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
There's no way I can afford it, but that doesn't stop me from getting really fucking pumped.Biln3 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
looks like we need to buy 2 6970s instead of a 6990Shark321 - Friday, May 3, 2013 - link
There is a rumour floating around in forums that Anandtech did not post any FCAT results (like promised 4 weeks ago), because of a deal with AMD.