AMD HD6990

INTRODUCTION

For over a year, AMD has had the fastest dual-GPU graphics card in its arsenal: the HD5970. This dual-GPU beast is yet unbeaten, and while Nvidia's GTX580 is the fastest single-GPU card on the market, it has not yet toppled the HD5970 for the performance crown. Ever since AMD announced the HD6xxx-series, we all have been awaiting the successor to the HD5970, and we're presenting the AMD HD6990 in all its impressive glory.

We first heard about the HD6990, codename Antilles, back in October 2010 when the HD6850 and HD6870 were released. On one of the slides there was a mention that the Antilles would be released sometime in Q4 2010. However, production seemed to stall through fall 2010, and not much was heard about the card; when we attended CES in January 2011, one of the vendors even told us that they did not know what AMD was doing and that they were considering building their own dual-GPU card. That is now unnecessary, as AMD finally has unveiled this dual-GPU beast. The HD6990 is big, power-hungry, expensive and fast. Join us as we put it through a variety of benchmarks trying to find a game that can tax this card.