# First look on Antilles or 6990. Its humongous



## vickybat (Jan 28, 2011)

Guys take a look at amd's upcoming dual gpu flagship. Its bigger than amd vp's head.

*i53.tinypic.com/2ppn52b.jpg

Check *HERE* for more details.


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## insaneYLN (Jan 29, 2011)

I take it that its price tag will be HUGE as well.


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## vickybat (Jan 29, 2011)

^^ you got that right. somewhere around $630.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Jan 29, 2011)

its HUUUGGGGEEEEEE!  and its price is tooooo HUUUGGGEEE!!

BTW something good from wiki. 595 is set to release in Q1 and so does 550.
GeForce 500 Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

some more 595 -

CES 2011: EVGA reveals Nvidia's GeForce GTX 595, dual-GPU Fermi-based graphics card | ZDNet
HEXUS.net - News :: NVIDIA's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 595 poses for the camera : Page - 1/1

this is going to be interesting


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## topgear (Jan 30, 2011)

So GTX 595 will compete with HD6990

@ vicky and Jaskanwar - TFS


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## mohiuddin (Feb 1, 2011)

That evga one is of their own design, most probably dual 560gtx,to give more performance than single 580gtx ,in almost same price and  allow to use 3monitor surround 3d with a single card.we can't tell it gtx 595 or gtx 590


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## desiibond (Feb 1, 2011)

haha. Foot-long burger might took tiny next to this one


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## vickybat (Feb 1, 2011)

mohiuddin said:


> That evga one is of their own design, most probably dual 560gtx,to give more performance than single 580gtx ,in almost same price and  allow to use 3monitor surround 3d with a single card.we can't tell it gtx 595 or gtx 590



That evga card is most probably a *gtx 595* board based on two gf 110 die with a custom cooler. Evga doesn't make custom cards like asus ares so must be an nvidia reference.

There is no gtx 590 in the cards , atleast not for now. But 595 will see release in Q1 2011 , most probably at the same time as antilles.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Feb 10, 2011)

YouTube - AMD ATI HD 6990 8Go OC concept update

ultimate!!

YouTube - ASUS HD 6990

awesome things.


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## vickybat (Feb 10, 2011)

^^ This is why i am a big fan of ASUS.

You can call me an asus fanboy.


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## funkysourav (Feb 10, 2011)

Hmmm
very good looking frying pan it is


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## topgear (Feb 11, 2011)

^^ even I'm wondering how much power it will consume - eagerly waiting for some review benchmark.



vickybat said:


> ^^ This is why i am a big fan of ASUS.
> *You can call me an asus fanboy*.



from now on I will call you this


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## vickybat (Feb 11, 2011)

^^ Hehe  sure topgear. I won't mind at all.


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## furious_gamer (Feb 11, 2011)

^^ Let the game begin, once again 

BTW What might be the price tag for 595? Any guess?


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## rchi84 (Feb 11, 2011)

Just imagine. for the price of one card, you can assemble a decent computer :O


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## vickybat (Feb 11, 2011)

^^ Well buddy, they are for a different breed of users. These guys will already have a more than decent system and enough disposable income. I don't see any other reason of not buying these beauties. If you can purchase a 6990 or gtx 595 without breaking the bank, then go for them eyes closed. Thats my opinion. These cards don't speak the value language.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Feb 11, 2011)

They just mean performance


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## rchi84 (Feb 11, 2011)

I used to think that way, till Nvidia released the 8800GT. Since then, we've always had the current mainstream card match up, if not outpace, the previous gen leader in performance. The 570 can easily go toe to toe with the 480. Amd just abandoned that approach and releases two of their fastest single cards on a die nowadays, as their fastest card. Something for which they get a lot of flak, but which makes sense, business wise.

Today, you can buy an 8800 Ultra for a tenth of the original price, just 3 years later.. I think the mid range and lower upper range cards are the better option always.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Feb 11, 2011)

^^well as time passes every card will be outdated. so i disagree.


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## funkysourav (Feb 11, 2011)

i for one agree with rchi84
its always the mid, lower-mid cards that are viable and VFM


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## rchi84 (Feb 11, 2011)

Let me take things a bit further. 

In the current gen of cards, i find it really hard to justify a purchase of a 6970 or 570. Anyone who owns a 6950 can unlock the additional shaders and OC it at stock voltages to match the GPU speed of the 6970 (880 MHZ) with a bit of tweaking. Memory speed depends on the chip you've chosen, but usually, a 6950 from Asus or Powercolor can be memory OCd to match the memory on the 6970.

Cards like the Gigabyte SOC, Zotac Amp or even the Direct CU II 560 can match the performance of the 570, a solid 5-6K Rupees cheaper, which is a substantial amount of saving. I know that an OCd 570 will outrace an OCd 560 and almost match the 580, but if it saves me 6000 Rupees, then that's a compromise i can easily live with. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why these cards aren't so easy to get on the market.

All this is valid at at gaming around the resolution of 1200. But if you go higher, then both the 6970 and 570 don't match the performance of a 580 or even a 470 SLI. They're caught in a weird position, as they're too costly for the 1200 res gaming market, and too weak for the higher resolution market. That's why I can't see how long both Nvidia and AMD can hope to move bigger numbers on these cards without a drastic price drop.

The 6990 and the 590 are more useful as proof of concept, to show the maximum performance limits of the current architecture, rather than actually become sales leaders.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Feb 11, 2011)

^what *i think *is its always best to get a stock card with a good cooler so that you can oc later when performance isnt up to the mark. oc reduces life of the components too along with other limits. 

moreover if we consider sli or crossfire then always 6850 in cf better then 570 or 6970 and 6870 in cf better than 580 at same price levels. but that level of pertformnce want be noticeable and single have their benefits a lot lot lot. (470 sli sucks IMO). 

and why shouldnt people with budget go for them.
eg as the games become more demanding higher cards benefit as in metro2033.


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## Cilus (Feb 11, 2011)

Your pic of info is not totally correct. only 1st released batch of HD 6950 cards can be unlocked to HD 6970, not all the cards. So if you want to buy now, I think you have to go for a HD 6970.

And you are very much true about GTX 560 factory Oced models, but their availability in Indian market is questionable and even if they are available, their price won't be 6K cheaper. There are lot of users, who, when purchasing a powerful nvidia card, want a little more in gaming... say PhysX.

now if you enable PhysX in a GTX 560, gaming performance will be a direct hit, which in case of 570 is not true. 
And the thing is if you purchase a powerful enough card of your current gen, then it can stay in the gaming zone for a longer time in future. May be they won't be able to run the future games in their highest settings, but can run them with decent settings.

For example, people having cards like GTX 285, HD 4890 can still play all the current generation games with decent setting although they are more than 2 Years old.
So buying a little performance cards will make it also a little future proof.


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## vickybat (Feb 11, 2011)

^^ absolutely correct cilus. you nailed it bro. Going for a faster card always means a bit more futureproofing.

If one can afford a fast card, then he/she should go for it.


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## rchi84 (Feb 11, 2011)

^^ I wasn't talking about flashing a 6970 Bios on a 6950 which was seriously dangerous and people didn't realise it. I am talking about using the Radeon bios Editor to extract the current 6950 Bios, do some tweaking to unlock the additional shaders, save the config in a new Bios which can then be flashed back onto the 6950.

This method has worked 100 % because it modifies the Bios the manufacturer bundled it with. Flashing the 6970 Bios is dangerous because the 6970 ships with much higher quality Memory which is also clocked and volted higher than the 6950.

What I tried to convey, is that the performance difference between a 560 and a 570 or a 6950 and 6970 is so less that it doesn't justify the price delta. The same as investing in a 580 wouldn't make sense when two cards from current gen or the mainstream card of the next gen will match its performance at the same price in the first case and much lower price in the latter.

now Bragging rights is something totally different and I agree there's a niche market of people who bought an i7 980 and felt like chumps when an i5 2500K outperforms it 

Gah! Vicky posted something when i was composing my reply to Cilus lol


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## Cilus (Feb 11, 2011)

rchi84, you got it wrong buddy.. for unlocking the Shades, you have to flash it with a HD 6970'sBIOS. And Using RBE or Radeon BIos Editor is a step for it. Without flashing it, you can just modify the Core clock speed and the memory speed, nothing else actually.
And now flashing the BIOS of any HD 69XX card is not at all dangerous. They have dual bios and a hardware switch to switch between them. So if anything goes wrong, just press the switch.... everything will be fine again.

2ndly the 100% success rate of HD6950->HD6970 Conversion is only with the 1st batch of cards... I've read the review too. Now a days the chance it very less.

RBE or radeon Bios Editor is not at all any authorized tool for editing Radeon cards' BIOS and its not at all easy. Once I have used it to flash my normal HD 5770's BIOS with an Oced one and I was successful, but the steps are very critical.
But in case of HD 6950 BIOS flashing the things are pretty much complex, you have to go for Command promt, once you finihed Bios flashing using RBE>


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## rchi84 (Feb 11, 2011)

@cilus This isn't relevant to the 6990, but still, just to clear up the doubts.

You can unlock any 6950 std reference model (2 GB) by using a combination of AtiWinflash to dump your existing Bios somewhere, then downloading the solution posted on Entry number 381 on the following page:
How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950 - Page 16 - techPowerUp! Forums

You extract the files, run the necessary scripts on the dumped BIOS which is then modified to enable the additional Shaders and you use Winflash to Flash your BIOS with the newly created modified Bios. This does not require you to flash a 6970 BIOS on your 6950. Since the 6970 Bios already has all the shaders unlocked, Running the RBE is redundant in those cases.

Yeah the dual BIOS is great but some people ran into problems as running on a 6970 BIOS fried their memory when they OCd it to beyond the limits of the 6950. Plus, people tried to run an XFX 6970 bios on a Sapphire card for eg, forgetting that specifications change between manufacturers, which is the main source of problems.

That's why this approach is safer. It uses the same vendor BIOS, unlocks the shader and then you just OC it like a normal card.

My apologies to Nvidia fans who have zero interest in the 6950 unlock problems 

I agree RBE isn't official, nor is it easy, but when has that ever stopped us from trying to get a better deal? lol


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## asingh (Feb 11, 2011)

^^
I like RBE is quite kewl.


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## Cilus (Feb 11, 2011)

rchi84, the problem is I don't have any doubt, so please stop mentioning clearing up doubts. I did not use a single word for HD 6990 and the card is not yet released.
And the process you've mentioned is just valid for the 1st batch of HD 6950. I have read the process too. Ya, mistakenly told about the HD 6970 BIos flashing, thanks for correcting me out.

The 1st batch of HD 6950s are actually HD 6970 with extra shader units disabled through BIOS. So by some BIOS hacking that can be unlocked. It is same like unlocking the Shader processors of GTX 465 to a GTX 470.

But after that the new batch of HD 6950 has the shader processors removed through laser cut, they are not disabled through BIOS. Since there are no extra shaders, you can't unlock them.


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## rchi84 (Feb 12, 2011)

^^ Hey sure. My bad.Sorry.

It makes sense. AMD can't afford to give too many freebies. I hope we can fall back on the pencil trick, if the worst comes to pass. 

Back to antilles then. 6 Tflops! 4 GB DDR5! (2 Gb effective). 300/30 power consumption! Almost too good to be true. What price range do you think it will occupy? 500-600 or 600+?

My mind goes numb when i think of the crossfire possibilities..


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

GTX595 is also in the same lines and can be a tad better.


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## topgear (Feb 12, 2011)

Let's just wait for some reviews of both GTX595 and HD6970 ( in Crysis 2 ) side by side - it will make everything clear.

BTW, can somebody post a little bit more details on HD6990 - like mem and clock speed and SP counts etc.


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## rchi84 (Feb 27, 2011)

Here's something to whet your appetites lol

Introduction - AMD Radeon HD 6990 "Antilles" Sneek Peek | [H]ard|OCP

Man, what a tease..


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Feb 27, 2011)

rchi thanks for posting that.  its toooooo gooood. cant wait.  they mention it in full form


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## damngoodman999 (Feb 27, 2011)

*Wat do AMD think ?? * 
They want to produce a stove instead of graphics card  - look @ the card 2  X caymen chip has awesome cooling fan , i think load temperature must be ^100deg.


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## topgear (Feb 28, 2011)

I also think the stock cooler may not be sufficient ( remember summer is coming ) though cards with custom cooler may deal with temps well.


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## rchi84 (Mar 1, 2011)

Another tease guys. Take a look at this :

fg - Imgur

Not sure if it's legit though. Could be a prank for all I know.


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## topgear (Mar 2, 2011)

when it's going to be released anyway ?


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## mohiuddin (Mar 2, 2011)

^8th march-techpowerup.


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## Gaurav Bhattacharjee (Mar 2, 2011)

*AMD Radeon HD 6990 Unboxing*


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## topgear (Mar 3, 2011)

mohiuddin said:


> ^8th march-techpowerup.



that's great - 5 more days to see some benchmarks !


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Mar 3, 2011)

AMD HD 6990 up and running at Cebit


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## mohiuddin (Mar 4, 2011)

It got 3000~points at 3dmark11 extreme preset, between 6950cfx (2700~) and 6970cfx(3300~)...rumor...clocked 800mhz(most probably) or 830mhz...
Pretty bold...huh?


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## topgear (Mar 5, 2011)

*lift the skirt and show off a little *

*www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Radeon-HD-6990-Pictures-Sapphire-6990-XFX-6990-Cables-KitGuru.jpg

For more


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Mar 5, 2011)

awesome choice for multimonitors.


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## tkin (Mar 5, 2011)

rchi84 said:


> ^^ Hey sure. My bad.Sorry.
> 
> It makes sense. AMD can't afford to give too many freebies. I hope we can fall back on the pencil trick, if the worst comes to pass.
> 
> ...


Depending on 590, the cost will range from 600-700$.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Mar 8, 2011)

AMD's Radeon HD 6990: The New Single Card King - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News
AMD Radeon HD 6990 4 GB Review: Antilles Makes (Too Much) Noise : AMDâ€™s Dual-Cayman Board Mashes The Gas
Radeon HD 6990 review

PowerColor Radeon HD 6990 CrossFire Review - Page 1/20 | techPowerUp


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## mohiuddin (Mar 8, 2011)

Just finished guru3d and hardwarecanucks review.
Man, in multi-display setup it competes with 580 sli, consuming ~80wat less power in 3dmark batch test.
And its #1 & #2 no. gpu, both r cooler than 6970 reference gpu with that single blower...what a win.
price a bit high, but expected with that huge performance with single card....


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## tkin (Mar 9, 2011)

Price is a bit high, we have a lot more options now, 700$ is too much.

PS: Since this card is breaking PCI spec, it should have 3 power connectors, all asus special models had them, it distributes the load evenly.


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## vickybat (Mar 9, 2011)

^^ Yup price is too high and its a big loser imo on this aspect. One is better of with a 6950 2gb cfx. Gives almost the same performance, is noisy and is much much cheaper.


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## ico (Mar 10, 2011)

vickybat said:


> ^^ Yup price is too high and its a big loser imo on this aspect. One is better of with a 6950 2gb cfx. Gives almost the same performance, *runs lot cooler, consumes lot lesser power* and is much much cheaper.


Power consumption and temperatures are almost/exactly same.  Read the reviews.

Dual GPU cards are always losers anyways. The drivers let them down.


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## vickybat (Mar 10, 2011)

^^ Oops my bad. You are right,power and temp levels are almost same in 6950cfx and 6990 but the latter is much noisier.

Thanks for correcting mate. Previous post edited.


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## asingh (Mar 10, 2011)

How is a dual GPU different from a physical multi-GPU. The driver realizes them one and the same..? Power wise they might vary, same with thermals.


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## topgear (Mar 11, 2011)

I can spot a great diff between them

2x gfx cards with single gpu gives you power of 2 gpus but a physical multigpu card can give you a quad gpu setup with only two cards


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Mar 11, 2011)

^^ya TP people with cases like HAF etc can get a 6990 and crossfire it later. killer for upcoming 4-5years

BTW - HAF - High Air Flow


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## tkin (Mar 11, 2011)

Today I again had the 100% GPU load at idle bug, happens when I use Internet explorers hardware accelerated demos and close it down, the problem is with the drivers as with ccc 10.10e the problem never happened, AMDs drivers are starting to bug me.

On a side note game performance is sweet, getting over 60 FPS in DiRT2 maxed out DX11/8xAA, but these small issues ruins the experience. Crossfire users run into this bug more often. ATI rectified this for the 69xx series with 11.2 drivers, no love for 5xxx users.


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## asingh (Mar 11, 2011)

topgear said:


> I can spot a great diff between them
> 
> 2x gfx cards with single gpu gives you power of 2 gpus but a physical multigpu card can give you a quad gpu setup with only two cards



Well actually I meant what would be the difference between a 4870x2 and 4870 Xfire subsystem..? The drivers understand them exactly the same. Not much scaling difference.



Jaskanwar Singh said:


> ^^ya TP people with cases like HAF etc can get a 6990 and crossfire it later. killer for upcoming 4-5years
> 
> BTW - HAF - High Air Flow



That gives you Quad Xfire. Which is bad. Games hardly scale that well. 



tkin said:


> Today I again had the 100% GPU load at idle bug, happens when I use Internet explorers hardware accelerated demos and close it down, the problem is with the drivers as with ccc 10.10e the problem never happened, AMDs drivers are starting to bug me.
> 
> On a side note game performance is sweet, getting over 60 FPS in DiRT2 maxed out DX11/8xAA, but these small issues ruins the experience. Crossfire users run into this bug more often. ATI rectified this for the 69xx series with 11.2 drivers, no love for 5xxx users.



AMD does not support legacy true. But the acceleration on IE sites, does it halt your system.


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## tkin (Mar 11, 2011)

asingh said:


> Well actually I meant what would be the difference between a 4870x2 and 4870 Xfire subsystem..? The drivers understand them exactly the same. Not much scaling difference.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


No, but it ramps up my system fan, and gpu-z shows 100% load at idle, its a bad bug, needs reboot to fix, it makes the gpu consume more power when its not needed. And ye 4870x2 and 4870 cf are same to the drivers and the system.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Mar 11, 2011)

asingh said:


> That gives you Quad Xfire. Which is bad. Games hardly scale that well.



you were right. i saw the techpowerup review on powercolor 6990 crossfire. it wasnt that good scaling at all.

but wont the future games develop more concrete support for high end gpu setups?

---------- Post added at 10:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:58 PM ----------

like scaling of quad cfx was good in metro2033.


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## asingh (Mar 11, 2011)

^^
More about drivers, honestly. ATI still has a long way to go.


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## sparx (Mar 11, 2011)

One can cross fire two 5970 to get more performance than 6990 with lesser price. But 6990will comes less power than the crossfire i suppose and lesser heat too.

XFX RADEON HD6990 priced at Rs.55k

Is there any installment scheme?


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## tkin (Mar 12, 2011)

sparx said:


> One can cross fire two 5970 to get more performance than 6990 with lesser price. But 6990will comes less power than the crossfire i suppose and lesser heat too.
> 
> XFX RADEON HD6990 priced at Rs.55k
> 
> Is there any installment scheme?


Absolutely wrong price, who ever is quoting that price is taking you for a ride.
HD6990 is 700$, roughly 33k, in india add 3-5k extra and max become 36-38k, my guess is 35k. You would be nuts to pay 55k(1200$)


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## sparx (Mar 12, 2011)

Nobody quoted that price to me, i will surely need Help from bank, err is there something called Graphic Card loan?(similar to car loan and bike loan).

I was surfing the net and came across that price, it very well may be wrong


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Mar 12, 2011)

asingh said:


> ^^
> More about drivers, honestly. ATI still has a long way to go.



i got your point. thanks.


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