([H]ardOCP) Radeon 6990 vs 590 Quad GPU review

[Madcatatlas]

The 590 wins at idle power draw, loses the rest.

Edit: and the link ofcourse: http://hardocp.com/article/2011/05/19/quadgpu_performance_review_nvidia_vs_amd

What a BEAST the Radeon 6990 is.. a freakin machine of a card!




B E A S T

 

[Arkadrel]

Yeah looks like his System with the 590 used 1watt less in idle than the 6990.
The 590 used like 70+ watts more under load though.

Also the 590 was faster than the 6990 in 1 game he tested... F1 2010 (590 ~54fps vs 6990 ~52fps)

AMD Radeon HD 6990 CrossFireX does not vary much, with a framerate between 45 FPS - 57 FPS and averaging 51 FPS. However, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 SLI has a wide range between 37 FPS - 67 FPS and averaging 54 FPS.

However the 590 has bad minimum fps in that game.

 

[OCGuy]

"Still, expect issues when it comes to gaming as neither AMD nor NVIDIA have done the proper real world testing to support these configurations the way these should be supported. And the resonating fact of the matter is that 4-GPU SLI or CrossFireX scaling always seems to fall a bit flat. We would suggest that most of our readers would be best off with a 3-GPU configuration at the most and 2-GPU solutions show the best performance scaling"

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/05/19/quadgpu_performance_review_nvidia_vs_amd/8


Quad-GPU is basically irrelevant except for e-peen purposes and triple-monitor gaming due to all of the problems.

Personally I would go 6990+6970 or 3X GTX580 3GB before I would even consider 4 GPUs.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Yeah looks like his System with the 590 used 1watt less in idle than the 6990.
The 590 used like 60+ watts more under load though.

Also the 590 was faster than the 6990 in 1 game he tested... F1 2010 (590 ~54fps vs 6990 ~52fps)



However the 590 has bad minimum fps in that game.

The 590 was ALL over the place on the graphs for that game, id hate to have a stuttering experiance when i could have 2fps lower average and alot better minimums.
Remember when the 480 had this as its forte? So much for Fermis minimums i guess.

 

[Madcatatlas]

"
Personally I would go 6990+6970 or 3X GTX580 3GB before I would even consider 4 GPUs.

Couldnt agree more.

 

[Grooveriding]

Just no reason to buy a 590 if you're in the market for a card @ the $700 price point. Slower than the 6990 and a track record of being unreliable and prone to burning out if you attempt to overclock it.

6990 is beating the 590 at stock and you still have headroom to push the card even higher while the 590 is throttled by drivers to keep it from burning out and can't be pushed much at all.

6990 wins as usual.

 

[Keysplayr]

I'll stick to my single 590, thanks.

 

[Firestorm007]

I'll stick to my single 590, thanks.

That was funny! I have to admit. It's good to see a little humour.

 

[96Firebird]

That was funny! I have to admit. It's good to see a little humour.

We are all truly happy to see you can find joy in seeing other people enjoy their hardware...

:awe:

 

[Spikesoldier]

I'll stick to my single 590, thanks.

dont blame ya, free is the best price.

glad you like your open beta card.


Please stop with the baiting, this kind of rhetoric is inflammatory and does nothing to further the discussion.

Idontcare
Super Mod

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Yeah looks like his System with the 590 used 1watt less in idle than the 6990.
The 590 used like 70+ watts more under load though.

Also the 590 was faster than the 6990 in 1 game he tested... F1 2010 (590 ~54fps vs 6990 ~52fps)



However the 590 has bad minimum fps in that game.

The 590 could not even handle more than 4x MSAA in F1 2010:

We could not go any higher than 4X AA with GeForce GTX 590 SLI. At 8X MSAA we ran into immediate framebuffer bottlenecks. However, with Radeon HD 6990 CrossFireX we were able to go higher. We found 8X MSAA played wonderfully at 5760x1200 on Radeon HD 6990 CrossFireX. We didn't stop there though. We turned on Edge Detect in the drivers and found that the highest possible AA setting of 24X CFAA was very playable! The GPU horsepower is there to push that setting on these video cards. If you compare the average framerate with the apples-to-apples graph above, you will find that turning on 24X CFAA vs. 4X MSAA only caused a drop of 18% in performance, which is impressive.

 

[RussianSensation]

So basically it's a choice between using the faster setup, which entails using 2 of the second loudest videocards of all time, and the VRAM limited/minimum framerates erratic but quiet NV setup that blows up when overclocked....

Why didn't HardOCP evaluate 3D gaming on those setups? Oh right, because AMD's support for 3D gaming is laughable.

Sounds like HD7000 and Kepler can't get here fast enough for the few lucky individuals itching to drop $1500 on a videocard setup

 

[AnandThenMan]

I realize it's an unfortunate side effect of the 384bit memory but Nvidia decided to go with, but 1.5gigs of RAM is simply stupid for a high end card, it completely cripples the GPU in ultra high resolutions. Which is what the GTX590 especially is made for. 3gigs should be STANDARD on the 580 and 590.

 

[3DVagabond]

So basically it's a choice between using the faster setup, which entails using 2 of the the second loudest videocards of all time, and the VRAM limited/minimum framerates erratic but quiet NV setup that blows up when overclocked....

Why didn't HardOCP evaluate 3D gaming on those setups? Oh right, because AMD's support for 3D gaming is laughable.

Sounds like HD7000 and Kepler can't get here fast enough for the few lucky individuals itching to drop $1500 on a videocard setup

Either of those setups need to be water cooled. Trying to dissipate ~900W of heat with a couple of little fans (or blowers) is foolhardy.

I agree we need 28nm to be able to bring that much graphics power into the realistic realm of air cooling.

 

[Timmah!]

I'll stick to my single 590, thanks.

I concur, gtx590>6990 :biggrin:

It is quieter, and frankly, what you can do with 6990 bar gaming? With 590 you have physx, you can use CUDA to fold/do scientific calculations, to GPU render, to encode video, to use with adobe stuff, i heard Kaspersky is working on CUDA enabled antivir....

Admittedly, AMD does have better hardware, more efficient and powerful. But there is no reason to buy it, as AMD decided to completely ignore the GPGPU side of things, cause doing proprietary things like Nvidia is beyond evil. Not that i disagree, but i would rather have technology that works, that no tech at all. Unless AMD starts to actively support development of OpenCL and its implementation, they will become more and more irrelevant next to what Nvidia has to offer. And IMHO in the world where PC gaming market slowly moves from big AAA titles to multiplayer oriented BROWSER causal games, they really need to change their approach.

 

[nanaki333]

amd does support gpgpu...

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Irrelevant. Quad GPU is still very buggy and the scaling is not worth it. Crossfire and SLi still need maturing.

 

[SlowSpyder]

So basically it's a choice between using the faster setup, which entails using 2 of the second loudest videocards of all time, and the VRAM limited/minimum framerates erratic but quiet NV setup that blows up when overclocked....

Why didn't HardOCP evaluate 3D gaming on those setups? Oh right, because AMD's support for 3D gaming is laughable.

Sounds like HD7000 and Kepler can't get here fast enough for the few lucky individuals itching to drop $1500 on a videocard setup

I doubt the noise on that AMD system matters. With either of these systems you'll need an 18,000 BTU AC unit in the window to keep the room comfortable if you plan on gaming for any amount of time. I'm sure the AC unit will be louder than the 6990's. Then again, maybe not.

Man, 886-956 watts... the cost of the power use wouldn't bother me, but that amount of heat would. That's like gaming with a space heater on.

 

[Firestorm007]

We are all truly happy to see you can find joy in seeing other people enjoy their hardware...

:awe:

I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm glad he enjoys his card and he should.

 

[PingviN]

Where did the great Fermi minimums go? Seriously, what happened? Poor multi gpu drivers?

 

[Idontcare]

Either of those setups need to be water cooled. Trying to dissipate ~900W of heat with a couple of little fans (or blowers) is foolhardy.

I agree we need 28nm to be able to bring that much graphics power into the realistic realm of air cooling.

28nm and SOI!

ARM did a straight up empirical test between SOI vs Bulk-Si (I posted it a couple times here) and they observed a 40% reduction in power-consumption while keeping the same clockspeeds (same performance).

Getting GPU's to HKMG and 28nm is great, I just wish they'd go one step further and get them onto an SOI process at GloFo. It would cost a little more to manufacture them but AMD manages to sell SOI CPU's rather cheaply though.

 

[SirPauly]

The strength of AMD is their improvements with multi-monitor gaming and wonderful to see, specifically the EyeFinity resolution utilizing 1080p monitors to me.

 

[Jacky60]

"Still, expect issues when it comes to gaming as neither AMD nor NVIDIA have done the proper real world testing to support these configurations the way these should be supported. And the resonating fact of the matter is that 4-GPU SLI or CrossFireX scaling always seems to fall a bit flat. We would suggest that most of our readers would be best off with a 3-GPU configuration at the most and 2-GPU solutions show the best performance scaling"

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/05/19/quadgpu_performance_review_nvidia_vs_amd/8


Quad-GPU is basically irrelevant except for e-peen purposes and triple-monitor gaming due to all of the problems.

Personally I would go 6990+6970 or 3X GTX580 3GB before I would even consider 4 GPUs.

It's only irrelevant if you haven't the money or any games that need that much horsepower. My 6990 x 2 setup is very much relevant and has transformed my experience of Arma 2 from fun to utterly beautiful and outstanding.
The top card gets up to 82c gaming but the fan noise is no more intrusive than my previous 5970/5870 trifire setup. I've been amazed at how much better the image quality is at 1920/1200 with a solid 60fps frame rate. And before anyone says its overkill that is simply untrue. Arma 2 needs more juice than metro 2033 or Crysis and I still can't get near maximum settings.
I can play with super sampling AA and I'm going to try edge detect on adaptive multisampling right now.

 

[Jacky60]

Don't knock it until you've tried it-I have been up the mountain and seen the promised land and it looks really pretty.

 

[toyota]

so you have 2 6990 gpus for gaming at 1920?