AMD’s dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 launched 15 years ago — power, heat, and noise monster was crowned the fastest graphics card in the world

15 years ago, AMD released its powerful Radeon HD 6990 graphics card (review link). This flagship dual-GPU hot rod, codenamed Antilles, was several months late in March 2011 and poked its head out only a couple of weeks before Nvidia’s reply. Nevertheless, the dual-Cayman XT GPU board, with a majestic-for-the-era 4GB of VRAM, became the world’s fastest graphics card (though that was an honor AMD already held with the Radeon HD 5970 2GB). To reach this PC performance pinnacle, AMD perhaps pushed the silicon a little too hard, though, with reviews of the time complaining about heat, noise, and power consumption.

The specs and performance of the Radeon HD 6990 were spectacular to behold at the time. Two fully-fledged Cayman XT GPUs were shoehorned onto a single PCB and connected via AMD’s CrossFireX. Essentially delivering two HD 6970 graphics cards on one board, albeit slightly downclocked, the HD 6990 thus delivered:

• Dual Cayman XT 40nm GPUs, packing 3072 stream processors and 5.28bn transistors combined
• Standard GPU clock of 830 MHz, OC up to 880 MHz
• 4GB GDDR5 (2GB per GPU)
• Five-display support
• Massive 375 W TDP, with OC modes pushing 450W (dual BIOS switch innovation)
• Dual-slot 12-inch PCB with two 8-pin connectors
• Flagship pricing at $699

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

If you want some in-depth analysis of what AMD’s Antilles represented at the time, please check out our 16-page review from March 2011.

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Our test suite would embrace a slew of DirectX 11 titles. Most readers will be familiar with the F1, Battlefield, and Metro franchises, which featured in our tests. If you still play any of these classics, compare the results from the HD 6990 with what you can achieve using your modern GPU. Bonus points: Can your iGPU beat the Quad-CrossFire configuration of the HD 6990 in Crysis?

Above, Tom's Hardware’s Editor Emeritus, Chris Angelini, performs an AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB noise test.

As we have already hinted, Tom’s Hardware wasn’t impressed by the heat, power consumption, and noise during the Radeon HD 6990 tests. Moreover, we thought, as an alternative, that a pair of Radeon HD 6970s sacrificed nothing except space in your case.

A couple of weeks later, Nvidia replied with its noticeably quieter dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590, but it couldn’t quite manage to usurp the Radeon HD 6990.

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