ASUS Radeon HD 6990 4GB First Look
With the recent release of AMD’s Radeon HD 6970 2GB and the ASUS DirectCU II upgrade, it was only a matter of time before a dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 4GB was released, then taken to town by ASUS engineers.
ASUS Radeon HD 6990 4GB
The wait’s over, as ASUS wasn’t thinking clearly was gracious enough to let us borrow one of these bad boys. Based on the new ‘Antilles’ platform, the Radeon HD 6990 comes with a massive 4GB of GDDR5 video memory and standard clock speeds of 830MHz GPU and 1.25GHz (5GHz effective) GDDR5 memory frequency. Trying to slow down this speed king will be like turning on a fan against a hurricane! Maybe in the future we can snag another one and run these beasts in CrossfireX mode. That’s four GPUs and 6144 stream processors! Tasty!
The new card conforms to the latest DirectX 11 gaming spec, and also supports the latest DirectCompute, OpenGL and OpenCL code for accelerated computing with compatible programs. The latest UVD 3 is supported, which provides full decoding for all popular video codecs, including MPEG 2/4, h.264, DireX, WMVHD and VC-1 and the latest HDMI 1.4a/DisplayPort 1.2 standards for 120Hz/3D display support.
The AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB reference card runs at an already impressive 830MHz, with an additional BIOS switch that pushes this to 880MHz/5.5GHz memory. ASUS thinks this is still too limiting for extreme gamers though, and has given the Radeon HD 6990 4GB little more kick by adding on its exclusive Voltage Tweak technology in too, providing your cooling is up to it.
Video outputs include a DVI output and four DisplayPort connectors for a total of five displays for work and Eyefinity gaming. The EAH6990/3DI4S/4GD5 (product code so you can Google it easier!) is available now, and if you’ve already bought one or want one, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Rick