Is the graphics card codenamed "Malta" the most powerful in the world?
The diatribe between AMD e NVidia, the two major manufacturers of hardware peripherals for Personal Computers, is currently focusing on which is the most powerful graphics card.
On the one hand we have the Radeon HD 7990, codenamed "Malta", and on the other the GeForce GTX 690, model slightly superior to the recent TITAN.
Both competing boards in this test are equipped with dual GPU, while the fledgling TITAN is single-GPU.
Thanks to some tests carried out and published in preview by the Japanese site gdm.or.jp (embargo expires April 24, 2013), we are able to discover important information about the peculiar characteristics of the new born in AMD and discover that it is more powerful than its direct rival designed by NVidia.
Before proceeding with the performance comparison, it is good to remember the technical specifications:
|
GeForce GTX 690
|
HD 7990
|
|
|---|---|---|
| But by the full GPU acceleration tech | 2x GK104 | 2x Tahiti XT |
| Core GPU | 915 MHz | 1000 MHz |
| GPU Boost | 1020 MHz | / |
| Colors | 3072 | 4096 |
| Memory | 4 GB GDDR5 | 2x 3 GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Clock | 6008 MHz | 6000 MHz |
| Memory Bus | 2x 256-bit | 2x 384-bit |
| Power Connector | 2x 6 Pins | 2x 8pins |
| Display ports | Dual Link DVI, HDMI, Display Port | 4x mini-DisplayPort 1x DVI |
The difference is evident in the architecture that AMD has used compared to NVidia. The Radeon HD 7990 uses a Tahiti XT dual GPU clock at 1 Ghz while the GeForce GTX 690 can count on a dual GPU clock GK104 at 915 Mhz with a boost (internal overclock managed by the system) up to 1.20 Ghz, but where the the difference is more marked is in the dedicated memory where AMD has focused on 6 GB GDDR5 (2 banks of 3GB GDDR5) with 384bit of bus for single channel and NVidia on 4 GB GDDR5 with 256bit of bus for single channel.
The test carried out with Mark 3D confirmed the following result:
3DMark FireStrike Performance
- AMD Radeon HD 7990: 11479 Marks
- NVIDIA GeForce Titan: 9863 Marks
- NVIDIA GeForce 690: 8859 Marks
3DMark FireStrike Extreme
- AMD Radeon HD 7990: 5854Marks
- NVIDIA GeForce Titan: 5079 Marks
- NVIDIA GeForce 690: 4470 Marks
The AMD Radeon HD 7990 equipped with 6GB of GDDR5 RAM and higher bus per channel outperforms the NVidia GeForce GTX 690 by a substantial margin, a sign that the architectural gap that might have seemed less pronounced at first but that in the end had a big impact.
Before leaving you to your considerations, we publish the recent benchmark provided by the Dutch site nl.hardware.info relating to the execution of the Battlefield 3 video game with the prohibitive resolution 5760 × 1080 definition Ultra 4x AA.
We remember that AMD has made an agreement with DICE e Electronic Arts for making happy bundles Battlefield 4, new chapter of the series, and video cards (read article).
This last photo portrays the inside of the PC used for the Battlefield 4 demonstration at GDC 2013. Note the two AMD RADEON HD 7990 video cards in SLI, or rather CrossFireX being AMD, while the CPU is liquid cooled, for a total of 4 GPUs and 12 GB of GDDR5 RAM. All this to bring the game image to the mega cinema screen at a resolution of 3480 x 2400 at 60fps.
Obviously this is a prohibitive configuration. Don't you find?
