If you're scoring at home, NVIDIA currently holds the lead in single-GPU graphics cards with its
GeForce GTX 580, but ATI's dual-chip
Radeon HD 5970 has been holding down the absolute speed crown for a good long while. Now, bearing the name of
AMD Radeon HD 6990, its successor sidles up to the throne and demands attention as the fastest single expansion board you can plug into your shiny new motherboard. The 6990 boasts a massive 4GB of GDDR5, 3,072 Stream Processors, 64 ROPs, and an 830MHz core clock speed. A dual-BIOS switch will let you crank that clock up to 880MHz with a corresponding increase in voltage, but don't expect to see much overclocking headroom above that.
Reviewers note, alongside their fawning assessment of the world's best performance, that the HD 6990 is a massively power-hungry card (375W TDP) and one that makes quite a bit of noise while going through its herculean tasks. That's in spite of a new
vapor chamber cooling system that allegedly supports up to 450W of thermal output. If all this strikes you as a somewhat flawed execution, maybe you'll join us in hoping NVIDIA's imminently upcoming response, dubbed the
GTX 590, will be able to offer a neater, more efficient assault on the extreme peaks of graphical performance.
Read - HardOCP
Read - AnandTech
Read - Tech Report
Read - Hot Hardware
Read - PC Perspective
Read - Hexus
AMD launches Radeon HD 6990 powerhouse for $699, maintains 'world's fastest' title originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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