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Although we're not allowed to tell you the results of our in-depth testing, we have been told that ‘sneak peak' images and a little info are allowed to be revealed just prior to the launch of what is certain to be the fastest graphics card the world has ever seen. So, without further preamble, KitGuru can lift the skirt and show off a little leg. Cue the Burlesque tunes.
The graphics market has been very strange of late. While nVidia has released card after card into the high-end, capturing the plaudit of World's Fastest GPU in the process, it hasn't even begun to approach the title of World's Fastest Graphics Card.
From the time AMD's engineers unveiled the Radeon HD 5970 back in November 2009, it has remained the king of the hill.
Until now.
Within a matter of days, the global gaming community will resonate to the sound that the king is dead – long live the king.
So why do you need such an awesome amount of power for gaming? Well, key to this is the continuing advance of EyeFinity with its ability to deliver multi-screen gaming from a single graphics card.
Independent testing has shown time and again, that if you take 2 equally matched gamers and get them to play each other on identical systems, across a variety of games – then the system with 3 screens tends to win. You can swap the subjects back and forth between the two set-ups, but the additional peripheral vision gives enough of an advantage as to skew the results in favour of the person with the most screens.
While it's a fact that EyeFinity has proven benefits while increasing the immersiveness of games, there has been one challenge. In order to get additional space at the back of the graphics card, many EyeFinity products utilise a version of Displayport. Unfortunately, sales of these screens has not kept pace with the sale of EyeFinity.
So, the question for AMD scientists and marketing folks was ‘How to increase the monitor options available?'
Enter the partners. With the launch of the Radeon HD 6990, Sapphire, XFX and others will be offering simple adapters to help convert the various monitor options to the new cards. It looks a little like this.
To create the World's Fastest Graphics card, you need to take two burly GPUs, strap them down to a multi-layer PCB and then provide enough juice for them to truly get their rocks off.
.
Juice. For people who want the juice and need the juice, there has to be the juice.
.
Let's honest, in the final analysis for single screen gaming the GTX570/580 and Radeon HD 6950/6970 cards more than hold their own in most situations. But that's when you're dealing with regular resolutions from 1920×1080 to 2560×1600.
The AMD Radeon HD 6990, in single or CrossFire formation, looks to be the tool of choice for a new generation. One that thinks in terms of wrap-around-gaming, where resolutions begin at 5760 x 1080.
In a recent exclusive interview with KitGuru, AMD's John Byrne confirmed that the company has no intention of slowing down development work on the ultra-high-end graphics processors just because the market itself has moved much more into the mainstream.
KitGuru says: You can never have too much graphics grunt. Bring it on!
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