Radeon HD 7990 review

[Administrator]

Meet the graphics card that comprehensively out-scores Nvidia's GTX Titan on virtually every benchmark or gaming frame-rate test you care to throw at it. The Radeon HD 7990 - codenamed Malta - achieves its colossal performance levels by combining two top-end "Tahiti" graphics chips onto one board, running them at speeds exceeding 1GHz, and combining them with ultra-fast 6.5GHz GDDR5 memory. It's effectively two Radeon HD 7970 GHz Editions combined into one product, ensuring simply phenomenal compute performance. So why do the Nvidia competitors achieve so much popularity amongst enthusiasts while the HD 7990 has been largely overlooked by the community?
The answer is simple. Doubling up on silicon may well give you stratospheric benchmark scores - even in game engine tests - but the actual reality when you play games doesn't always match up to the experience suggested by those results. It's a state of affairs that has caused PC hardware sites to fundamentally reappraise the way that graphics cards are reviewed - a shakedown that is still in progress. Bar charts and context-free average frame-rate metrics aren't going away, but finally the hardcore PC enthusiast sites are beginning to acknowledge the overriding importance of the gameplay experience. In short, what comes out of the video output is getting priority over the numbers produced by benchmarks.
The crux of the issue is what is known as "micro stutter" - a situation where the graphics card powers through the work being given to it, but doesn't evenly pace the output of frames to the screen. Assuming v-sync is disabled, some frames get more time on-screen than others, some frames are barely represented, while - remarkably - others never make it to your display at all. Benchmarking tools like FRAPS can only measure the amount of frames generated internally; they have no way of tracking the latencies involved once they are pumped out to the screen. In our tests, single chip graphics cards are essentially unaffected, but in CrossFire/SLI set-ups - and dual chip products like the HD 7990 - there are issues, with AMD in particular getting some seriously bad press as a result.
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