News AMD Radeon HD 6990 Pictured

The first detailed pictures of AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 6990 dual-GPU design have appeared.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/01/26/amd-radeon-hd-6990-pictured/1

 

2011: The year when single Graphics Cards are the same size as popular games consoles from a decade earlier.

 

Gargantuan one might say.

 

I think I might have a spot of bother getting this into my Shuttle XPC case....

 

As it's been pointed out in the forums, a site stated that 'it's the same lengths as a piece of A4 paper' meaning it's 300mm, or about the same length as the 5970.

Going be the length of the PCI-E connector I'd guess at 13"

 

Pricing information for the card was not discussed at the event, Well it will be expensive that's for sure

 

But didn't the article at 4chan say that the power would be through two 8pins or another configuration with an added six pin for oc'ed cards? Instead of having just one six pin and one eight pin?

But that would also mean that the power draw of this card would be quite big with a size just over 300 km...

 

Interesting that they moved the GPUs to the edges. I guess the vrm circuitry is all in the middle, versus the prior designs that had a GPU near the back, a GPU in the middle, and the vrms for both at the front end.

 

As the article says, it is not clear yet what power connection configuration it will be.

Also, a 300km card is rather a large card...

 

4GB of RAM on a graphics card.. I can't help but wonder what 32-bit XP would make of that.
I don't think I want to know.

 

What kind of resolution do you have to be running to notice a difference from 4GB of vRAM?

 

Based on the way this card vents, we may need to change the way we have airflow in cases. Maybe intake on the sides, and exhaust at the front, rear, and top?

 

I really fail to see the point in this card tbh.

I'm probably just being an ignorant twonk but where is the advantage of this compared to sli / xfire which would be considerably cheaper?

By advantage i mean an area where it will outperform a multi-card setup so drastically that it will be worth the undoubtedly astronomical pricetag

 

i think point of this card is so that low end P55/P67 motherboard owners can use crossfire without limited by their motherboard.

 

4GB of RAM = pricey

 

I really don't know why but I really do like these larger GPU cards. I don't own one myself and never have as my 3 previous cards have been pretty normal and probably half the size of this one. Even from personal experience or lack of and not knowing whether it would fit. Regardless of the whether it was AMD or Nvidia, I do think they are more aesthetically pleasing to look at. They may be impracticle but they do look cool to me.

 

Why on Earth would you have a low end board and then spend the serious amount of cash for the GPU? Surely people who would buy this card are rocking high-end setups anyway, and just want to have the ability to CrossFire a pair of pre-Crossfired cards for 4 GPUs...

 

i5 2500k + a £100 motherboard + this card = some very good gaming performance.

lower end motherboard doesn't mean less performance, just means more features that you usually don't need. so why spend more on features you don't ever need?

 

For bragging rights? You underestimate the power of e-peen.

 

I dunno. The 1GB 6950 is only ~$20 cheaper than the 2GB version (and that is based on RRP, you can actually get 2GB versions that are only $10 more expensive). I think the two GPUs and the sheer amount of stuff (the amount of copper, components etc) on the PCB is going to be the real cost.