 "Sapphire starts shipping AMD's dual-GPU HD 7990 graphics card")
It looks like Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 690 finally has some competition. Sapphire has announced that it will start shipping AMD’s attempt at a dual-GPU graphics card – the HD 7990 – from today onwards. The graphics card will be available in stores in the next couple of days.
AMD’s upcoming offering features an improvement on the Tahiti GPUs. It only needs two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors, and at the same time, the GPU promises high clock speeds. The main reference edition of the card will be using a dual-slot, triple-fan cooler.
Going by the description, the pictures posted by Benchmark.rs may just be the HD 7990, since it bears the Radeon branding as well as the two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors.
The HD 7990 Malta is a dual-GPU graphics card that seems to be gunning for Nvidia and its GTX 690. The GeForce GTX 690 graphics card debuted 28nm dual-GPU performance, which in turn made it the most powerful card of its generation. The only competition the GTX 690 had before the HD 7990 is Nvidia’s own GTX Titan, which brought along new architecture, dubbed Tesla.
AMD’s dual-GPU graphics card is hitting store shelves
Just recently, the HD 7990 Malta had been spotted on eBay. It started with an opening bid of $0.99, and at the time of writing, the value stands at $1,275. The GPU is expected to have clock speeds of 950 MHz and 6GB of memory. The two Tahiti GPUs in the HD 7990 are said to have 2048 stream processors each and a 384-bit memory interface, with each Tahiti holding 3GB of GDDR5 memory.
Back in May 2012, we heard rumours about board partners taking matters into their own hands and planning on launching dual-GPU solutions of their own that would bear the ‘X2’ moniker. However, it looks like it will now be dubbed HD 7990.
In order to take down the GTX 690, AMD will have to bring its A-Game, not only in hardware but software as well. Drivers have always been a weak point for AMD and although they’ve improved over the years, Nvidia has always had an upper hand in this department. The company does deliver really good hardware, but that’s only half the story as drivers can just as easily make or break any hardware.
AMD’s other project at the moment seems to be the chips for both Sony’s and Microsoft’s next-gen consoles. Both consoles are said to be using the same chips, codenamed Jaguar.
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