New AMD RADEON HD 6990
And the first graphics card (but certainly, not the last) we’ll talk about today is the top-range, dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 (also known under the codename Antilles), whose technical specifications have been leaked via a presentation slide.
By taking a look at the leaked pictures, you’ll be able to notice that the Radeon HD 6990 will be equipped with no less than 3970 Stream Processors (1980 processors for each of the Cayman GPUs found on the card), accompanied by no less than 4GB of GDDR5 memory.
Furthermore, the card will also pack a bandwidth of 422.2 GB/s, up to 7.0 TFLOPS of single precision and 1.9 TFLOPS of double precision, as well as TDP of 450W.
We’ll also have to mention that AMD apparently made a rather strange choice in terms of video outputs, integrating 2 x DVI ports and 4 x mini DisplayPort connectors, and 2 x HDMI.
Plus, while no definite details are available on the leaked pictures, we’re quite sure that CrossFireX support is also included, meaning that extreme gamers will be able to set themselves up with some nice “little” quad-GPU machines.
Of course, it remains to be seen just how soon the Radeon HD 6990 will make it onto the market (in other words, just exactly when in Q1, 2011, this monster will be unleashed), but, as far as we’re concerned, its delay already is quite a serious setback, since AMD will miss the very important Christmas shopping spree, when people do tend to spend a lot more on hardware than they normally do.
We’re also curious to see what will be NVIDIA’s response to this monster of a graphics card, that will certainly snag the “world’s fastest direct11 GPU” title away from the GTX 580, because we’re pretty sure that the green team won’t let the “reds” stay in the lead for too long.
