WSGF Review of the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Family - 6790 Latest

[Paradigm Shifter]

Why do a lot of other review sites review hardware like this, then test at 1680x1050? I can't think of any game that a single GTX560/6950 can't cope with perfectly at that res. ;)

[Skid]

Personally, I'd go for the 6990. There is a performance improvement, and I found the cards noticeably quieter and cooler in my office. Looking at NewEgg, the 6990 would set you back about $150 more.

It is amazing to see the Black Edition cards from last year still out there for $1k...

You sure about it being quieter? I've seen a number of reviews that say its louder then a 480 once its gets spun up, you also have the fact it throws half its heat back into the case which if you don't have a case with a high air flow will heat the card up even more.

[skipclarke]

Maybe I need to rephrase. I found it quieter and cooler than a pair of 6970's. I also have an open case design, so all heat is thrown straight into my office. I am trying to figure out a good way to compare heat and noise. I just don't have a lot of the equipment some of the larger sites have.

[stangflyer]

Have a 5970 now. Was not going to get a 6990 because I use a 250gts for physx and that card only had a 3/8 inch gap in pcie slot space between the cards. The 5970 was ok because the fan was on the end and had full exposure to air as the 250gts is 8.5 inches long and did not cover the 5970 fan. With the 6990 the fan is in the middle and would be covered by the 250gts.

Have a very good workaround to that problem! Put my 250gts on top pcie and the 5970 under it to see if it work that way. Both slots are 16x. At first it was only booting and running on the 250gts as I use the 250 for physx and also as a 4th extended monitor. But windows would not see the 5970 at all.

What I did to fix this was to uninstall all nvidia drivers and remove the 250gts. Installed only the 5970 in second pcie slot and got the card up in running in extended and eyefinity. Then I installed the 250gts in top slot and installed nvidia drivers and the physx mod. Rebooted and it all worked great. :rockout The bios will load on the nvidia ran monitor but it will then do windows login on the eyefinity middle monitor. ( I use hydragrid so I am in sls most of the time).

Everything has been running perfect for 2days now. Just wanted to let everyone know that this setup would work or at least it does on my system. ( I7 920 at 4.0 and asus p6x58d premium) Win 7 64bit pro.

Now I COULD get a 6990 if I want and it would stay cool! Just not sure yet that it improves enough over a 5970 for the extra expense. I game at 5040x1050 and if I do not use much aa I do not run into a gpu ram issue except metro and avp.

[stangflyer]

Just ordered a sapphire 6990 today> Should have it Friday. Also ordered some mini dp to dp cables as my dells are all dp. Waiting on my monitors to go on sale to get 2 more for 5x1 portrait. Gonna be a long 3 days! :cheers

Gonna be unloading my 5970 also! It has been a very good card for me. :bowdown

[stangflyer]

Decided to cancel my 6990 order. Started looking at some more reviews and noticing that at load the 6990 is quite a bit louder than my 5970. I was hoping if Ibrin could give me a idea how much noise difference he heard in the cards in relative terms.

I use a haf932 case with all the fans installed. I saw and heard all the you tube videos testing the card but they all used single monitor setups.
I play at 5040x1050 and I know how much louder my 5970 gets in eyefinity mode on games like crysis and metro 2033 than in single screen.

Anyone else heard it for real?

It is real confusing with all the reviews as everyone says it loud but some say its not bad and some say it is rattle the brains loud.

Thanks for the help! :?

[rebelstar]

Can't believe, nobody asked for the stutter effect on 4 pages?
So I'll ask - have you noticed any stutter while gaming? Personal question - stutter in BFBC2

[Downtown1]

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/AMD_Radeon_6990_Featured_Review_-_STALKER_COP_Daylight

Is that supposed to be 1920x1280 or 1920x1080 in the table? Seems like a typo.

Anyway, I really love that table. % improvement vs.... No, seriously it's great. That's all that I care about anyway, and you saved me the time of having to do the math in my head by looking at the raw FPS Numbers.

[Amon Amarth]

Can't believe, nobody asked for the stutter effect on 4 pages?
So I'll ask - have you noticed any stutter while gaming? Personal question - stutter in BFBC2

I'm not sure about BFBC2, but I've ran Dragon Age 2, Crysis 1 & 2, and Oblivion. All my games seem to have some really bad Micro-stuttering on 5760x1200, while single monitor seems fine.

What gets me though, is my old 5870 got better FPS on 1920x1200 than this new 6990.

I know what you guys are thinking, CPU isn't good enough - not getting enough power - temperature too high - try reinstalling drivers/OS. Trust me, I've been through the entire ringer. Everything from disabling all power saving features, OC'ing my CPU to 4 GHz, to a completely fresh copy of Windows 7. I even went as far as RMA'ing the video card.

So I'm at a 100% loss, I don't know if there's anything else that can be done. I'd love to hear from people who have this card and also have an Eyefinity setup. I know I'm not the only one (other users from various forums have the exact same issue).

[rebelstar]

That's why I'm asking. And I can't understand why reviewer ignored this stuttering moment. Even on his Youtube videos with older ATI card there is clearly visible stutter. I'm better to play with 1 card and 40 fps instead of Crossfire+eyefinity and choppy 80+ fps
So, I don't see any good reason to buy 6990 for eyefinity.

[Amon Amarth]

That's why I'm asking. And I can't understand why reviewer ignored this stuttering moment. Even on his Youtube videos with older ATI card there is clearly visible stutter. I'm better to play with 1 card and 40 fps instead of Crossfire+eyefinity and choppy 80+ fps
So, I don't see any good reason to buy 6990 for eyefinity.

I'm thinking it's a driver issue. I just finished trying Crysis 2 out (with some minor tweaks through the Radeon Pro software) and it became fully playable with Extreme setting at 5040x1050

Strangely enough, 5760x1200 gives me pretty low frame rate. But none the less, the game is quite playable.

Now, let's take an older game like Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. At 5760x1200 with max graphics it runs like butter if you happen to start the game in a town. But once you step into the open world, slide show mode activates. Even though the FPS counter on fraps will tell me 50-60 FPS, it feels like 1-5 FPS! Complete ludicrous.

I believe Crysis 2 was probably heavily developed around the 6990 and the GTX 580/590. Which is why it is the best running game on my system. Really really strange. Not to mention that Oblivion and Dragon Age 2 have much older engines that take less power to run. And not only that, I don't think too many people have bought the 6990 for Eyefinity. Most forums will have threads about how they just purchased this card, and how "great!" it's running. Well, I don't know if they have compared the performance on a singe monitor with their old card, much less Eyefinity...

I'm really really hoping that AMD comes out with a nice driver fix, very very soon. A $700 12 inch brick in my system isn't what I had in mind when I dished the money out.

Anyway...2cents from an obscure end user...

EDIT: After doing some testing, it looks like all my games are fine on 5040x1050. Although Crysis 1, Warhead, and 2 will give off occasional seconds of Micro-stuttering. Although a very kind forum user just messaged me with some info to get Crysis 2 working better (will look into it later). None the less, the strange continues... :nudgenudge

EDIT 2: Sold the video card. Newegg does not honor a refund, so I have sold it and have two GTX 570's on the way. I should have went with Nvidia for dual GPU solutions long ago. :rockout

[tnewnham]

Hey Ibrin is it possible for you to do a Crysis Bench? Or just let me know if its possible.

That would be the main deal breaker for me doing 5x1, if its not supported or i need to invest a ton on GPU power to do it lol.

[skipclarke]

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/AMD_Radeon_6990_Featured_Review_-_STALKER_COP_Daylight

Is that supposed to be 1920x1280 or 1920x1080 in the table? Seems like a typo.

Anyway, I really love that table. % improvement vs.... No, seriously it's great. That's all that I care about anyway, and you saved me the time of having to do the math in my head by looking at the raw FPS Numbers.

Sorry for the delay. Glad you like the table. Fixed the typos.

That's why I'm asking. And I can't understand why reviewer ignored this stuttering moment. Even on his Youtube videos with older ATI card there is clearly visible stutter. I'm better to play with 1 card and 40 fps instead of Crossfire+eyefinity and choppy 80+ fps
So, I don't see any good reason to buy 6990 for eyefinity.

I have never had the "micro-stutter" that people reference in any of my 2-GPU CFX setups. I had it when I tried Tri-Fire with the Radeon HD 5970 + a Radeon HD 5850. So, I know what it looks like.

Which video do you see that shows the micro-stutter? Any game with a variation in fps will show some stuttering, but that is completely different that the micro-stutter.

All that being said, I don't get any micro-stuttering with the HD 6990.

Hey Ibrin is it possible for you to do a Crysis Bench? Or just let me know if its possible.

That would be the main deal breaker for me doing 5x1, if its not supported or i need to invest a ton on GPU power to do it lol.

Is there any sort of canned demo or benchmark for Crysis?

[skipclarke]

Just posted my review of the Radeon HD 6790

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/AMD_Radeon_6790_Featured_Review

[BK_NC]

Did you ever run the Nvidia GTX 460 2GB card against DX11 games like F1 2010 like you went back to do with the 69xx cards from AMD? The cards are priced about the same on Newegg right now.

I'm curious how GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon 6950 2GB rate against each other in 1080p Widescreen then in Surround vs Eyefinity. In particular F1 2010. I realized the GTX 460 2GB requires 2 cards to work in Surround but still curious how it rates in Surround vs 6950 single card Eyefinity and 6950 Crossfire Eyefinity.

[suiken_2mieu]

Did you ever run the Nvidia GTX 460 2GB card against DX11 games like F1 2010 like you went back to do with the 69xx cards from AMD? The cards are priced about the same on Newegg right now.

I'm curious how GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon 6950 2GB rate against each other in 1080p Widescreen then in Surround vs Eyefinity. In particular F1 2010. I realized the GTX 460 2GB requires 2 cards to work in Surround but still curious how it rates in Surround vs 6950 single card Eyefinity and 6950 Crossfire Eyefinity.

Well nVidia hasn't decided to send WSGF any samples... so... that would be a no.

[BK_NC]

There is this review on the Wiki so I would assume if the person still has the 2 - GTX 460 2GB cards they could run the DX11 suite to see how it compares to the 6950 #'s even though the 2 setups in the reviews were slightly different. But I think it would be interesting nonetheless.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/NVIDIA_GTX460_in_Surround:_1GB_vs._2GB_-_Featured_Review

[skipclarke]

There is this review on the Wiki so I would assume if the person still has the 2 - GTX 460 2GB cards they could run the DX11 suite to see how it compares to the 6950 #'s even though the 2 setups in the reviews were slightly different. But I think it would be interesting nonetheless.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/NVIDIA_GTX460_in_Surround:_1GB_vs._2GB_-_Featured_Review

The NVIDIA cards are owned by Paradigm Shifter. We are working for him to rebenchmark the cars with the same games at the same settings. He also has a Core i7-920 at stock speeds, so it will be comparable.

[Paradigm Shifter]

I'll get on it ASAP.