Introduction

Anyone remotely interested in cars has heard of the German “autobahn”. In terms of appearance, it is not unlike the freeways and highways you can find in the United States. The difference lies in how the speed limits are regulated. Although there are in fact rules, the speed limit for average cars is more of a recommendation than an opportunity to issue a ticket and milk money from drivers like it is in North America. Accidents due to speeding are treated in a case-by-case basis instead of a blanket, lowest common denominator rule. For the most part, the Germans appear to have it right, since modern cars are designed to be much safer and capable these days at higher speeds compared to cards from 15 or 20 years ago. There is also the remarkably low injury and fatality rate compared to the rest of the world’s freeways that justifies their implementation of this law.

Similarly, if you have a very powerful video card, why would you limit its capability by playing on low resolutions? Not that playing with an HD6970 on a 19” monitor will result in catastrophe (although I think it should be a crime) but most people don’t even realize that their video card can perform even better by playing at a higher resolution since there is less load on the CPU and more on the GPU. In fact the latest high-end GPUs are so powerful that their capabilities are not fully realized even in a 1920x1080 display. This is why AMD has developed and enabled Eyefinity multi-display technology across all their gaming video cards, but just how many pixels can be pushed by the AMD HD 6990, most powerful video card currently available?

The AMD HD6990 is a dual 2nd-generation DirectX 11 GPU armed with 4GB of GDDR5. The AMD HD6990 is also equipped with 3,072 Stream processors, 64 ROPs and a variable clock speed from 830MHz to 880MHz with the flick of a switch.  With two monstrous Cayman XT GPUs, the AMD HD 6990 requires an equally strong cooling solution so it is equipped with a pair of vapor chamber heatsinks with phase-change thermal compounds and a centrally mounted blower-style fan that drives the heat out the back and front of the AMD HD6990.  Equipped with four mini-display ports and a single dual-link DVI port at the rear, the AMD HD6990 4GB Dual-GPU video card is capable of driving up to 5 displays simultaneously whether it is for productivity or gaming.  Using AMD’s Catalyst 11.4 preview drivers, 5x1 portrait mode Eyefinity gaming is possible on the HD 6990, rendering more pixels on the screen and at ultra high resolutions than what were previously thought of as impossible.