AMD’s Tahiti cores tend to run quite hot and require a significant amount of power. Careful binning, judicious application of voltage constraints and lower clock speeds could have allowed a dual HD 7970 card to come to fruition but the competition’s Kepler architecture prevented that. The quick release of NVIDIA’s GTX 690 delivered a crushing blow to AMD’s exclusive claim over the performance crown and shattered the performance per watt ratio for dual GPU products. Competing against it wasn’t impossible but even after numerous delays the effort would have required a massive investment for a limited return. We’re guessing the ROI ratio didn’t sit quite well since those resources could have been –and will likely be- put towards upcoming architectural developments instead.
Naturally, some still held hope for the mythical HD 7990 and everyone wanted to avoid a GPU generation without a halo Radeon product. From what we have heard, AMD finally dropped the project a few months ago and handed off the hot potato to board partners, basically giving out the baseline specs and naming rights while deferring the financial burden. Given the market conditions, there weren’t many takers but PowerColor did step up to the plate and the end result is their HD 7990 Devil 13.
Despite its odd “Devil 13” moniker, this card is exactly what many initially wanted the HD 7990 to be: a single PCB solution that combines a pair of fully endowed Tahiti XT cores However, PowerColor has gone above and beyond the call of duty by also including a secondary BIOS which turns the dial up to eleven. Pressing a single button grants this card core speed that matches that of AMD’s HD 7970 GHz Edition (without the Boost feature) and could allow it to capture the overall performance crown. Memory speeds do remain at 5.5Gbps but that shouldn’t hinder performance all that much.
The development of PowerColor’s HD 7990 has been plagued by issues; many of which haven’t been publicized. Initially, it was supposed to be shown at GamesCon but was pulled at the last minute due to a technical glitch. Then, the first batch of cards ended up arriving at PowerColor’s warehouse with improperly mounted heatsinks. Some of these glitch-prone units did end up in reviewers’ hands but PowerColor fixed the thermal problem and then re-validated every card before sending them out to retail channels. Hardware Canucks received a unit from the first retail shipment so we’re confident our results will be in line with reality.
Make no mistake about it; the HD 7990 Devil 13 will be a rare card. Just 200 of them will be making their way into the hands of gamers and with an astronomical, GTX 690-matching price of $1000 only a small segment of the population will be able to afford one. Nonetheless, PowerColor does seem to have something interesting here which could prove to be a direct competitor against NVIDIA’s flagship product. by harware canucks skymtl
Battlefield 3 (DX11)
For this benchmark, we used a sequence from the Rock and Hard Place mission. The results may seem lower than normal and this is due to the fact that after playing through the game multiple times, this one are was found to be the most demanding on the GPU. As with all of the tests, we try to find a worst case scenario in order to ensure a given card can properly play through the whole game instead of just a “typical” section.
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Crysis 2 (DX11)
Crysis 2 with the DX11 and Texture Package installed not only looks great but it is a strain on any GPU. For this benchmark, we used a classic runthrough which includes far views, explosions, combat and close-in knifing; basically every hallmark of gameplay.
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Metro 2033 (DX11)
For this test we use a walkthrough and combat scene from The Bridge level which starts at the beginning of the level and lasts for about 3 minutes of walking, running and combat. Famerates are measured with FRAPS and Advanced PhysX is turned off.
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Metro 2033 (DX11)
For this test we use a walkthrough and combat scene from The Bridge level which starts at the beginning of the level and lasts for about 3 minutes of walking, running and combat. Famerates are measured with FRAPS and Advanced PhysX is turned off.
1920 x 1200
2560 x 1600
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