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Here you go, one very expensive pyramid - ATI's Flagship Card!

I'm not that impressed with the reviews so far. The card is certainly powerful but the figures don't really blow me away since crossfired or sli'd cards will match or come close to that performance for similar or less money anyway. Two 570's in SLI will match the performance for the same price.

Everyone hammered nvidia for the 480 gtx because it was supposedly so hot and loud. Just take a look at the figures for the 6990! As stated in some of the reviews though it isn't so much a whine from the fan but just pure airfow that you can hear. 70 decibels of airflow isn't going to be as annoying as 70 decibels of whine!

Maybe when the price drops a bit and someone releases a custom cooler it may be worthwhile. Will be interesting to see what nvidia brings to the table now with the 590.
For now I'm still happy with my 580's performance.
 
Nvidia hit the sweet spot with the 500 cards cooling, AMD seem to have gone backwards with the 6000 cards. The 590 I'm betting will run quieter when compared to the 6990 going by Nvidias recent cooling improvements.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
Nvidia hit the sweet spot with the 500 cards cooling, AMD seem to have gone backwards with the 6000 cards. The 590 I'm betting will run quieter when compared to the 6990 going by Nvidias recent cooling improvements.
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You're talking about 275W or so in normal situations for a 580gtx, and talking about almost 400W or almost 460-470W for the OC bios version.

If Nvidia have a dual slot blower solution for theirs(assuming its coming) then it will be loud, maybe as loud, maybe worse, maybe just close, its not going to sound the same when a similar cooler has to cool twice as much.

If Nvidia release theres with a tripple slot cooler with proper fans much quieter, good on them.


Keep in mind though, I'm starting to realise that AMD/Nvidia half gimp their cards on purpose to allow their AIB's something to actually do.

Could Nvidia/AMD support the number of AIB's there are if the reference had great and silent cooling and the AIB's had nothing else worth releasing and they all sold reference cards, its a shame really, its one of the main reasons the stock cooler is so cack and it takes 3rd party guys a while to release a decent edition, yet value in a GPU is often from buying very near release and keeping till just before the next gen is out so waiting 3-4 months for a decent version with a proper cooler kills its value.
 
DM have you seen the 6990 fan design? it's naff IMO placing the fan in the middle is just asking for trouble. I'm betting it would have been quieter if they went with the standard design like on the reference 5970.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
DM have you seen the 6990 fan design? it's naff IMO placing the fan in the middle is just asking for trouble. I'm betting it would have been quieter if they went with the standard design like on the reference 5970.
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How on earth do you figure that? You realise the standard 5970 type design, the 4870x2, the 3870x2 the core furthest away from the fan would always be significantly hotter than the first. Why would a fan at the other end of the card perform better, roughly the same temp air, any decent case will exhaust the heat without issue and if you put that in a rubbish case well.......

It would almost certainly need a HIGHER speed fan to push air through fast enough to keep the second core at the same temp.

Not to mention but a huge amount of the noise from exhausting fans isn't actually mechanical fan noise, though they aren't quiet at those RPM's, its the noise of the air moving, imagine double the airflow coming out of that same small hole at the back, it would be louder again.

Why on earth they have such rubbish backplates I don't know, air moving over the metal in the grills is what makes the noise, they've got the most obtrusive air flow impeding, noise producing backplats possible, you could get rid of 60-70% of those bits of metal across the gap, still not have a kid able to fit their finger through it, more airflow, less noise less pressure, its utterly stupid.


It is a poor design, top to bottom, not least because theres absolutely no reason for it not to be triple slot cooling. Blower fans are rubbish, but middle fan placement is almost certainly the best situation when you have two gpu's that want equal cooling.

I've said it several times recently, if Nvidia/AMD make the "perfect" card with the perfect cooling, half their AIB's will go bust, though the question becomes, why aren't Nvidia/AMD just making the perfect card and keeping a huge extra chunk of the profits for themselves and cut out the middle man, no idea.
 
The core placement is different as you can by the below screen comparing a 5970 and a 6990, AMD had to go central to cool that core near where a traditional blower type fan would be, I take it the 6990 vents 50% of that hot air in the case? Reviews and users have shown the 5970 only to have a few Celsius difference, will be interesting to see what the individual cores run at on a 6990.

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