14 DAY TRIAL // As the user base is skimming through all the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti cards, AMD is, of course, not slacking, having apparently detailed its long-awaited dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 card, at least to some extent.
Dual-GPU graphics cards are not a new concept, as both NVIDIA and AMD created such devices at some point, but neither are these boards common, even among top-grade enthusiasts.
Currently, AMD has the Radeon HD 5970, but this board is over a year old now and the user base is eagerly waiting for the successor.
Said successor has been known to be in the making for months and bears the name of Radeon HD 6990.
It will utilize two Cayman graphics processing units (built on the 40nm manufacturing process technology) and a very solid amount of GDDR5 memory, 4 GB to be exact.
Some photos of the product made their way to the web not too long ago, but only now have the actual specifications been more thoroughly explained.
Apparently, the frequency at which the two graphics processing units work has not been mentioned, but other things were clarified.
For one, a total of 3,072 stream processors are present, along with the two obligatory 256-bit memory interfaces (one for each 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM).
There are also an 8-pin and a 6-pin PCI Express power connectors, plus a CrossFireX connector for dual-card configurations.
All this, along with four mini DisplayPort outputs and a DVI port, make up what is obviously a very long video controller.
As for the cooling module, it uses a single fan and a backplate (for extra heat dissipation), among other things.
No sort of pricing information was provided, but considering that NVIDIA's strongest single-GPU model (GeForce GTX 580) sells for roughly $500, the dual-Cayman (Antilles) will likely be more expensive than that.