AMD HD7990 Malta Review

AMD don't ship their reference designs in any retail packaging. By the time it is released to the public, partners such as Sapphire will have their own bundle deals, including video and power adapters, extras, and undoubtedly codes for the latest AAA games in the box.

Before publication AMD told us that partners will be bundling BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and Deus Ex Human Revolution with the card. If you don't already have any of those games, the AMD bundle is worth quite a lot of cash.

First impressions of this dual slot card are certainly positive, although it is gargantuan. You can see above just how long the card is – in the middle of the picture is the GTX690 and on the right, the GTX Titan. I measured it at 308mm long, which must be a new record.

Our sample did receive some damage in transit, so I had to spend a couple of hours straightening the backplate with specialised pliers and also repairing a fan header which was destroyed on what was clearly a hefty impact.

As we mentioned earlier in the review, the HD7990 Malta is formed around a black plastic shell with three large red RADEON branded fans taking up the full length of the PCB. The rear of the card has a backplate in place for protection and to help cool the memory.

The HD7990 Malta takes power from two 8 pin power connectors, as we would expect.

The card is Crossfire capable if you have enough money to pay for two of the cards. We didn't have a great experience in the past testing Quad Crossfire, but we might get around to it again in the coming months. There is also a dual BIOS switch close to the Crossfire connector.

The HD7990 has a single dual link DVI output, and 4 additional mini Displayport connectors. It can support all five output connectors simultaneously, if you want to power five monitors.

The rear backplate is used to cool some of the GDDR5 memory, additionally it offers protection against damage. The backplate has little thermal pads in place to transfer heat from the memory chips on the PCB.

Above, the main cooler, after disconnection from the PCB. There are two copper cores in place to cool each GPU core, placed on either side of the PCB. If you want to see close up pictures of the PCB, then make sure to visit the high resolution gallery on the next page.

As the images above show, the AMD HD7990 Malta cooler is designed in ‘two halves', with a dedicated heatsink for each core. Each heatsink has four thick copper heatpipes which run into the aluminum fins to dissapate the heat. The three fans are placed above the heatsinks and ensure adequate cool air circulates.

Two of the fans are doubled up into a single fan header, and the other fan is connected to a header on the other side of the PCB. Our fan cables received some damage, but we were able to repair them.

A GPUz screenshot of the hardware. We discussed this in detail on the last page.

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