Introduction: Sapphire–> SAPPHIRE Technology was first formed as a manufacturer and global supplier of graphics cards when ATI (now a division of AMD) adopted the Add-in Board partner (AIB) model for delivering its technology to market. SAPPHIRE has consistently been the market leader with its graphics products. More recently the SAPPHIRE product range has been extended to include a broad range of mainboards and a number of solutions including the award-winning SAPPHIRE EDGE Series of Mini PCs.
Generation after generation, Sapphire was able to produce reference and customized editions for all of the AMD videocards, obtaining the scepter for being the #1 AIB Partner for AMD products. Many of us easily remember some of the most famous series from the brand, like the Atomic lineup, including heavily customized, overclock-oriented, high-end VGAs, or the silent and thermal-efficient series VaporX, with the world’s first cooling system based on the Vapor Chamber Technology. On 2012, January the 9th, AMD introduced the HD7000 GPU series, formerly composed by HD7970 and HD7950 video cards. About one year later, aiming to show to the world its engineeristic ability, AMD launched a dual GPU card, named HD7990, the fastest AMD videocard ever built.
Sapphire HD7990.
Sapphire, today, sent us a pair of HD7990, to let us analyze its performances, compared to similar price range “green” videocards. Of course, we’ll analyze both single and dual videocard systems.
Sapphire AMD Radeon HD7990: technical specs–> These are the technical specs for the HD7990 videocard:
Specs
HD7990
HD7970 GHz Edition
HD7950 w/ Boost
HD7870 GHz Edition
HD7850
Stream Processors
4096 (2×2048)
2048
1792
1280
1024
Productive Process
28nm
28nm
28nm
28nm
28nm
GPU
Tahiti XT2 (x2)
Tahiti XT2
Tahiti Pro2
Pitcairn XT
Pitcairn Pro
GPU Frequency (Boost)
950MHz (1000MHz)
1000MHz (1050MHz)
850MHz (925MHz)
1000MHz
860MHz
Memory Bandwidth
2×288 GB/s
288 GB/s
288 GB/s
154 GB/s
154 GB/s
Bus
2×384 Bit
384 Bit
384 Bit
256 Bit
256 Bit
VRAM
2x3GB GDDR5
3GB GDDR5
3GB GDDR5
2GB GDDR5
2GB GDDR5
VRAM Frequency
1500MHz (6000MHz)
1500MHz (6000MHz)
1500MHz (6000MHz)
1200MHz (4800MHz)
1200MHz (4800MHz)
PEG Connectors
2×8 Pin
1×6 + 1×8 Pin
2×6 Pin
2×6 Pin
1×6 Pin
TDP
375W Watt
300 Watt
200 Watt
175 Watt
130 Watt
Basically an HD7990 is a pair of HD7970 GPUs on the same PCB, sharing the same PCIe 16x socket but separated power phases. While a traditional HD7970 is clocked, in its GHz Edition, @ 1000 (1050 with Boost) MHz for GPU and 1500MHz for VRAM, the GPUs installed on a HD7990 are slightly downclocked, with a mere 50MHz downclock on the graphics core, while VRAM keeps its 1500MHz frequency. Differently from an HD7970, on the Outputs panel, there is a single Dual-Link DVI-I connector paired with 4 x Mini DP connectors, whom adapters are included in the videocards’ bundle.
The cooling system is a brand new triple-fan heatsink, with a cooling power higher than 400W, that basically is the power consumption for a single HD7990.
GPUs on the PCB are linked by a 48 lanes PLX bridge, whom aim is to link GPUs one with each other, linking them to the PCIe socket and, if paired with an identical card, with another HD7990 through the Golden Finger connector (aka CrossfireX Connector).
Together with the cards, an 8 games coupon is included, with which the customer can redeem Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. Based on the Tahiti XT core, and so built with GCN architecture, the HD7990 has a wide range of features, most of them shared with the HD79xx series videocards:
Sapphire AMD Radeon HD7990: the unboxing–> Here it goes our video-unboxing for the HD7990 cards:
Photo Gallery: the card–> Here it goes a quick gallery for the HD7990:
Once removed, here it is the copper/aluminium heatsink, with thermal pads for memory chips and VRMs all over the frontplate and the backplate.This is the “naked” PCB, with all of the components on it: you can clearly see the GPUs, VRMs and memory chips.GPU # 2, close to the videocard tail, near to the PEG connectors.This is the VRM area: mirrored phases so that each GPU has a Volterra multi-phase inductor that is responsible for power supplying the graphic processor.GPU #1, on the front of the videocard, it’s the one that never goes off, differently from the 2nd GPU, that will totally shutdown if your PC is in Idle state.The PLX Bridge chip, that can drive 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes in order to coordinate both of the GPUs with the PCIe socket and with another card through the CrossfireX connector.2×8 PEG connectors, capable of driving up to 300W, and combined with the PCIe socket, the card can draw up to 375W.In the upper part of the PCB, you can see the CrossfireX connector and the BIOS switch.The back of the card, with a really crowded PCB, you can see 3 of 6GB on this side of the card.Memory ICs used are Hynix H5GQ1H24AFR. rated for a 6.0GHz speed (1.5Gbps @ QDR).On the output panel, 1 x Dual Link DVI-I connector and 4x miniDP connectors, compatible with 1.2 version.
System specs and test methodology–> The rig used for our tests:
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to test both of the videocards when overclocked: our 1000W PSU wasn’t able to keep two of these cards with higher power drawings. We will update this review with overclocked results once we get a better PSU, stay clocked and tuned!
Synthetic Benchmarks: Unigine Heaven and Valley–>Heaven, created by Unigine, was the first DirectX11 benchmark. Its main aim is to show how Tessellation influences performance and visual quality. From the simplest models (no tessellation) to the most complex tessellated objects, the tessellation unit’s function is to deepen every single frame. Because of its functions, this benchmark is one of the best tools to analyze DX11 performances:
Valley, another Unigine product, is a extremely-optimized benchmark for high resolution, high quality contents, focusing on tessellated objects and high definition textures. The benchmark, that is based on both DX9 and DX11, was launched at maximum quality, in order to properly stress the GPU and weaking a possible CPU bottleneck:
Synthetic Benchmarks: 3DMark06, 3DMark 11 and 3DMark–>We’re now testing performances with Futuremarkbenchmarks, saying thanks to the company that kindly provided us with Professional licenses for all of the tested programs.
3DMark06 is totally based on its ancestors, though bringing support to Shader Model 3.0 and HDR rendering. This benchmark is a good way of measuring DX9 performances but easily suffers from a CPU limit situation:
3DMark11 is the last but one born from Futuremark. After a long wait, it is possible to test DX11 performances with one of the most celebrated softwares. This benchmark is made of 4 graphic tests (GT1, GT2, GT3, GT4) that intensively use tessellation (introduced with DX11 API), a Physics Test totally dedicated to Central Processing Unit benchmarking and a Combined test that stresses both Graphics and CPU systems:
Together with Windows 8, Futuremark launched the brand new 3DMark, without any number near to it, representing an unified design with every kind of system, from Android smartphones to Windows Desktop PCs. This new benchmark is composed by three benchmarks:
Ice Storm, based on DirectX9, designed for not-so-recent computers and mobyle systems. With one of the latest patches, it’s now possible to execute an “Extreme” version for FullHD smartphones and tablets.
Cloud Gate, based on DirecX10, designed for recent notebook and older VGAs.
Fire Strike, based on DirectX11.1, designed for high performance desktop systems. The benchmark is also available in Extreme Mode, in order to properly stress high-end, multiple card, graphic subsystems.
Games Benchmarks: Bioshock Infinite, Resident Evil 6, Metro Last Light, Tomb Raider–>Here on ReHWolution we would like to test every videocard in each of the most famous games available. Unfortunately, only few games have an integrated benchmark, so we will periodically change those “sample” games in order to represent a common gaming situation. At the moment, we use 4 games, 2 optimized for nVidia and 2 optimized for AMD cards:
Bioshock Infinite
Tomb Raider
Resident Evil 6
Metro: Last Light
Closing thoughts–>Design and build quality
A brand new cooler for a dual GPU from AMD, much different from the tunnel-based HD5970 and the central fan-based HD6990, with a triple fan heatsink that needs an high airflow chassis. When paired with a second card, temperature will rise up to 80-85°C for the upper card, while the lower card will run in the 70°C degrees, with an Ambient Temperature of about 30°C. Build quality is really high and no cheap components are installed on the card, and the cooler was silent in every situation, even in a Quad CrossfireX configuration, where 800W drained from both the Videocards could represent a pain in the bottom.
Performance
A single HD7990 is enough to beat the crap out of green videocards, paying the price of higher temperatures and higher power consumption compared to its competitor. The only game performing poorly was Metro Last Light, a nVidia – The way it’s meant to be played game, optimized for nVidia architectures, so it’s quite “ordinary” to see such behaviour in that game. Resident Evil 6, even if part of the nVidia – TWIMTBP program, scales perfectly with 2 or 4 GPUs, with a 105% scaling in performances. No problem at all with both Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite, that showed respectively a full scaling and a 30-40% scaling: differences between 13.8 Beta 1 and 13.8 Beta 2 were really remarkable, so we expect an even better scaling with future releases of Catalyst drivers.
A little side note: we used 13.8 Beta 2 Catalyst Drivers, that introduces (together with Beta 1) a feature called Frame Pacing: until now, AMD multiGPU systems suffered from heavy stuttering, microstuttering and tearing effects, that lowered general graphic quality and ruining all of the performance improvements brought by a Crossfire system. By enabling this feature, drivers are more capable to reduce this phenomenon, making games smoother, sacrificing though a little percentage of computing power. During all of our tests, exception made for Metro Last Light, we never noticed any kind of tearing of stuttering, while testing with 13.5 WHQL drivers or with Frame Pacing Disabled, the effects were really annoying and noticeable. The amazing fact is that even with a QuadCFX system (basically, 2xHD7990 = 4xHD7970), there was no tearing at all, meaning that AMD really worked hard to improve what it was lacking: driver optimization.
Bravo, AMD!
Requirement and compatibility
A single HD7990 requires a PCIe 16x socket available (better if 16x electrical, too), and a 750W PSU to run with no problems. The card itself will draw up to about 400W, when on full, and this value is gonna be much higher if you’re intentioned in overclocking it. If you want to pair two HD7990 into a QuadCFX system, you’re gonna need at least a 1000/1200W Power Supply Unit, the former if you don’t want to overclock them, the latter if you want to. You will, of course, two PCIe 16x sockets, 8x or 16x speed is not really relevant, you will however need a high end CPU in order to not bottleneck graphic performances.
Price
Recently, prices for the entire HD7000 dropped a lot, so now you can buy an HD7950 for 229€, an HD7970 for 339€ and, believe it or not, you’re gonna take home a HD7990 for just 650€. This could sound weird, since 650€ isn’t not what you would pay for a videocard everyday, but trust me: with a card like a HD7990, you won’t need a VGA upgrade for years, without the need to set anything lower than Ultra in the Video Options of your favourite game.
A QuadCFX is, maybe, exagerate for most of the users needing a powerful gaming subsystem, and maybe it should be addressed to those who intensively use OpenCL libraries for compiling and particular functions like bitcoins mining. Moreover, 2 HD7990 together draw less power than four separate HD7970, thanks to lower clocks and to less devices that must be powered. The crucial factor in testing a dual HD7990 configuration was to point out the great work involved in improving Catalyst Drivers, that are now more than ever close to perfection.
Closing thoughts
If you wanna spend about 650-700€ on your graphic system you have very few options: you can get a GTX780, or you can get 2xHD7970, or you can get an HD7990. The latter has few but very important factors that should let you pick it instead of the other options: less occupied space (even though the card is 31cm long, so be careful with your chassis), less power compared to a dual card Crossfire system (but higher power compared to a single GTX780) but, overall, higher performances compared to the green competitor. An HD7990 is the most powerful AMD card your money can buy, and faster systems (e.g. a GTX Titan) cost way too much compared to performance increase they really give. Again, if you can spend 1300€, then a QuadCFX made by 2xHD7990 is the weapon of choice, since it just takes 4 slots (instead of 8 occupied by 4xHD7970), it draws less power (still compared to a 4xHD7970 system) and performance/price ratio is way higher than competitor’s one. Of course, you will need a respectful system for not limiting these cards: High-End CPU, lots of RAM (16GB at least) and a High-End PSU are required. Cards are silent, they run quite “cool” considering the huge power delivered by both of them and drivers are now crash-proof, game-proof, and future-proof.
So, converting pages and pages of analysis into a single number, we give 9 out of 10 stars for both a single and dual HD7990, together with the LoHW Price Award (the cards itself are not cheap, but they’re cheaper than dual/quad HD7970 systems and, compared to same price nVidia cards, they are basically faster):
9 Stars out of 10.LoHW Price Award.
We’d like to thank, for the huge kindness, Sapphire Italy and AMD Italy for the samples supplied for our review.
This is our first English review, it’s not flawless, but as usual we give out our soul to bring you the best contents available, if you liked this, just let us know commenting this article, even if you just want to point a grammar error or a typo or anything you prefer. If the community feedback is positive, we’ll post even more bilingual reviews, in order to satisfy your knowledge hunger!
Greetings from your friendly neighborhood Hades, see you in the next review, stay clocked!
La recensione
Sapphire HD 7990 CrossFireX
The reference solution for the AMD dual GPU videocard, tested with Catalyst 13.8 Frame Pacing drivers.
Pro
Silent card even in QuadCFX
A single HD7990 beats the GTX780, that is in the same price range
2 slots for a dual GPU card, instead of 4
Power drawing lower than a dual HD7970 system
Frame Pacing feature allows to nullify tearing, stuttering and microstuttering
Excellent OpenCL performances, ideal for Bitcoining and GPGPU operations
Contro
High-End components are required to not limit performances
1000W+ PSU required for QuadCFX configuration, 1200W+ for overclocking
Direttore responsabile di ReHWolution, con la passione per qualsiasi cosa funzioni con un processore fin dal lontano 1995, anno in cui "misteriosamente" la sua CPU avviò un processo di fusione nucleare nel case. Da allora, con impegno e imparzialità analizza hardware e software di ogni tipo, con un occhio di riguardo per l'overclock.
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SAPPHIRE Technology was first formed as a manufacturer and global supplier of graphics cards when ATI (now a division of AMD) adopted the Add-in Board partner (AIB) model for delivering its technology to market. SAPPHIRE has consistently been the market leader with its graphics products. More recently the SAPPHIRE product range has been extended to include a broad range of mainboards and a number of solutions including the award-winning SAPPHIRE EDGE Series of Mini PCs.
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