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AMD unveils $999 Radeon HD 7990 dual-GPU graphics card beast

Packing a pair of Radeon HD 7970 GPUs and 6GB of DDR5 memory, the new card competes against Nvidia's GeForce GTX 690 behemoth.
Written by Sean Portnoy, Contributor
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AMD has fired the latest salvo in its never-ending graphics card war with Nvidia, announcing the Radeon HD 7990, a dual-GPU monster with a monstrous price tag of $999.

The new card squeezes a pair of Radeon HD 7970 GPUs and 6GB of DDR5 memory onto a single board, matching Nvidia's own dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690, which is similarly priced. To cool all of that graphics power, the Radeon HD 7990 features three cooling fans and a heatsink for each GPU. To sweeten the deal, AMD is bundling a whopping eight games with the new card, including Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.

Unfortunately for AMD, early reviews (like from HotHardware) aren't showing the Radeon HD 7990 as a slam dunk across the board against the GeForce GTX 690. The biggest issue seems to be frame latency, which results in some stuttering that Tom's Hardware reports may get fixed with a new driver, but one that won't arrive for a few months. The good news is that the card appears to run much quieter and cooler than previous AMD monster boards, though reviewers found the GeForce GTX 690 still a touch quieter. 

As is often the case with new graphics card announcements, gaming PC companies are already updating their systems with options for the Radeon HD 7990. Maingear will offer it for its F131, Shift, and Vybe desktops, while Origin PC is adding it as an option to its Chronos, Genesis, and Millenium lineups. No doubt more boutique builders will be offering the card in the coming weeks.

If you already have a system and you want to drop a grand on the new AMD beast, you'll need to wait a couple of weeks for it to be available. That should give you a little more time to save up for it.

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