VTX3D HD7990 Review (w/ GTX690 & 6GB HD7970 Toxic CF)

There is no doubt that the new VTX3D HD7990 is a heck of a performance solution targeting the high end audience. We tested today with a couple of older titles such as Crysis 2, Far Cry 2 and the latest Direct X 11 games such as Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3 and Dirt Showdown. While certain games will run better on the GTX690, there is no questioning that the VTX3D HD7990 can battle head to head against the Nvidia GTX690.

The Asus GTX690 is a fantastic card that delivers incredible frame rates with the most demanding games on the market today. The only problem has been the price point, which at one stage was close to £1,000. Pricing is dropping however and the bigger UK stores such as Overclockers have deals on specific brands for around the £770 inc vat mark.

The VTX3D HD7990 is very interesting however, primarily because of the very competitive price point. DABS are selling the card for £679.99 inc vat with a voucher code to get £40 off immediately. This drops the price to a very competitive £640 inc vat. These are strictly limited edition cards and there are only 5 left as we publish this review.

Today we included some results from two of the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition graphics cards running in Crossfire. When these cards were released they were selling for around £550 inc vat each. There is no doubt that this is the fastest solution on test today, but at well over £1,000 for a pair it is also clearly the most expensive. The power drain from two of these cards in Crossfire is also significantly higher than either VTX3D HD7990 or GTX690, demanding 530watts under gaming load. With two cards running at the faster 1,200mhz ‘Lethal Boost' setting, noise emissions are also irritating.

This is when the Nvidia GTX690 chalks up some points. The reference cooler is the quietest, and the design is also the most power efficient, demanding around 275 watts under gaming load.

The VTX3D HD7990 is louder than the GTX690, and it also requires around 30 watts more from the power supply when gaming. Nvidia's solution has many praiseworthy characteristics to warrant a recommendation to the wealthy gaming enthusiast. That said, The VTX3D HD7990 cooler has clearly been tweaked to deliver a high level of cooling proficiency, as it produced the best results from any of the high end solutions on test today.

Overclocking the VTX3D HD7990 can reap a noticeable reward, however you need to be sure you have the red switch configured with the correct BIOS setting and will then manually disable AMD's ULPS feature in the Windows registry. We explained how to do this on the overclocking page, but if you try to overclock with the secondary bios and ULPS enabled, the system will BSOD.

While every card will overclock to a different level, there is noticeable headroom with this card, as we managed to push both cores from 925mhz to 1,050mhz and the GDDR5 memory to 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective). This is obviously still not as quick as two Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Editions (1,200mhz) in Crossfire, but the savings of £400+ are certainly not to be ignored.

If you are in the market for an ultra high end graphics card, then the VTX3D HD7990 is priced the lowest of them all. When you factor in that PowerColor and Club3D HD7990 cards are all built around the same design, then it makes sense to get the cheapest option. Pick one up from DABS for only £640 inc vat (after the £40 voucher saving is factored into the price), while they are still in stock.

Pros:

• Fantastic frame rates.
• Great cooling proficiency.
• Plenty of Overclocking headroom.
• Decent power drain characteristics when compared to two high end HD7970's.
• ‘Bargain' Dual GPU HD7970 price.

Cons:

• Clearly audible under load.
• An overclocked bios setting at 1,000mhz would make sense, rather than both the same.
• Very heavy.
• Needs a good 850W+ power supply.

Kitguru says: This is an excellent card which is competitively priced, especially when considering the flagship dual GPU competition.

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