AMD finally releases 6990M

Hi folks, just some news for today, AMD as just announced the release of the 6990M gpu which is (sadly) based in the Bart architecture (HD 6800 series). They say this new GPU will be the new king of the hill and will surpass the 580M for rougly 20% in performance. Here's the bench.



I wonder when will be the final day when asus listen to us and start to incorporate real top-performance vga cards in their units.


Note: as an ultimate performance card, I hoped AMD to base the 6990M card in the Cayman architecture (HD 6900 series) more than in Bart, which IS the real king of the hill.

 

Will Asus ever incorperate this GPU in one of their laptops? Never.

Will Tijo try and force one to work in a G73 JH. Probably.

Hopefully it wont have any issues like the 6970M has had because this is one hell of a fantastic GPU right there.

 

ASUS seems to be all over Nvidia's dirty parts as of late. I want a Sandy Bridge/AMD GPU ASUS Laptop. >:

 

..........XM............

 

Oh you and your XM. I'd like a 2720QM and 6970M/6990M combo, too bad ASUS seems to have their heads up their....places.

 

ATI 6990M

1120 Stream Processing Units
56 Texture Units
128 Z/Stencil ROP Units
32 Color ROP Units

Engine clock speed: 715 MHz
Processing power (single precision): 1.6 TeraFLOPS
Polygon throughput: 715M polygons/sec
Data fetch rate (32-bit): 160 billion fetches/sec
Texel fill rate (bilinear filtered): 40 Gigatexels/sec
Pixel fill rate: 22.88 Gigapixels/sec
Anti-aliased pixel fill rate: 91.52 Gigasamples/sec
Memory clock speed: 900 MHz
Memory data rate: 3.6 Gbps
Memory bandwidth: 115.2 GB/sec

With this much power can understand why.

Its going to be a 100watt TDP without doubt.

 

Well the G73 only has a 2 minute battery life anyway. XP Make it happen ASUS...the G74 right now is really underwhelming.

 

because of the specifications, seems to be a desktop 6870 underclocked

Desktop 6870
Core 900Mhz
Memory 1050 Mhz

6990M
Core 715 Mhz
Memory 900 Mhz

the rest is the same

 

they won't use it, they are likely waiting for 28nm gpu to come out, so they could stick a more powerfull than entry level one in g73/74 case without needing to re-invent the whole cooling sistem


my thoughts only though

 

G73/G74 are cool enough to house a 6970/6990M and it's matter to included a more powerful AC adapter which can handle the energy requirements. Gamers don't care about battery life, they care about performance.

 

It's not the cooling. It is already well capable of housing a 100W card. Asus just isn't producing high end gaming laptops. The last one was the G73JH, which had the then-best 5870m. Now they only care about the price of the GPU, so they could keep costs down and profit margins up.

 

i would love to asus to come up with a 6990m if asus doesnt update the gpu in the g74 im sold out on the msi gt 780 with the 570m at least till next year

 

anyone wants to sell their G73A2??? sorry for OT,cant find the right place for it on this forums(

 

???

you should look here

NBR Marketplace

 

You wanna go here fella:

NBR Marketplace

EDIT: The Frosty one strikes before Fire!

 

Oh,thank you guys.sorry again

 

Unfortunately, i won't be trying the 6990m, i can't keep disassembling the thing over and over again . I'm certain someone will though.

That and i'm participating in the ICD survey so i can't keep switching components in my G73 either...

 

Famous last words.

When the Thread with you as OP opens up '6990M in a JH' you owe me a custom made copper heatsink.

 

Lol, damn Dell is fast with those updates.

6990M released yesterday, and Dell's already updated their M17x R3 with the 6990M option. Asus needs to learn from Dell.

 

the moment asus learn from Dell, their price would get just as high =.=

 

Didn't ASUS suffered from a lot of problem back with G73jh's 5870M? Not to mention the fact that Nvidia seems to be doing better on the Optimus switchable graphics front.

I do agree though. I personally would like a SNB / AMD GPU combo. However AMD needs to boost their mobile technology to at least on par with Nvidia's.

 

They did but it was only because they reverse engineered a high end card and then put it with a fantastic cooling system but a poor heatsink, along with Thermal Compound made of a whiteish concrete substance which failed within a month of it being applied. If they had made a bit more effort with some copper and silver things would have been fine but also it had Vbios and driver issues.

Its runs like a dream now though but sadly it was enough to scare them away from high end and drop to mid range cards and sadly I dont think they will bother with the RMA crisis they had originally they will easily make a nice profit on selling mid range models at a med-high price range.

Asus and the g74 do not use switchable graphics even if the (560M) card can handle it Asus dont bother with the option of giving it, maybe because of the time and cost to implement something only a minority want to use.

I am confused about the comment re: AMD boosting their cards to meet Nvidia. Take a look at my benchmarks I beat the 460M GTX in Graphical tests and will be on par with the 560M and my model was released January 2010. The 6990M just released confirmed it is 25% more powerful than Nvidia's 580M which was supposed to the be the most powerful card so ATI aren't doing a bad job of competing.

 

Using optimus is just asking for RMA problems due to optimus. Makes more sense for asus to just have it always on, so people don't complain about driver issues and make asus resolve nvidia problems.

 

I see. Thanks for the clarification.

I agree. After all, ASUS attempted to get into the ultra-high end market with the original G70S. It was a disaster, to say the least. If you can spend $2000 on a laptop, why would you go for a newcomers (for enthusiasts at least) like ASUS when you can go Alienware / Falcon NW / Clevo / Sager?

I was replying as to why ASUS stuck with Nvidia than AMD in general. Generally speaking, Nvidia's switchable graphics technology is much more mature than AMD's.

I was also referring to the switchable graphic technology that is so pervasive in the current mobile market. In order for AMD to be successful in the mobile sector like they are in the desktop sector, they need to spend some time developing these technologies that's aimed at the mobile sector.

 

A G74 will never house any other GPU as a stinky 560m.^^
Show me were to put in. Lol

This was the plan of AMD. To release the 6990 together with Dell!
Because of the earlier leak of 6970m ES versions.

 

I owned a G70s cryyyy!

 

never heard about that, can you explain in deep please.

Thanks

 

I played with one of the prototypes before G70S was launched, and to be honest I wasn't really impressed with the dual 8700M GT SLI. ASUS should've gone with at least a 8800M GT SLI.

Sorry for the blunt words

 

You guys are funny. Wasn't the GSOD hell enough for you?

nVidia seem less problematic ,more feature (Physx) and around the same performance as AMD.

Just my preference... 6990m seem powerfull but im affraid of the problem bios / drivers that may come with it....

I don't want another mouse cursor lag for 6 months +

 

One card on one line of computers? Yeah. It was annoying. But not the end of the world. Maybe you're all about making massive generalizations based on a single data point, but that's not how I roll.

 

Its ok I respect your choice. It may sounded like I was anti-AMD. is not the case. Lets just say I wanted to change Flavor

Oh and some more info here about the speed of this new card :

AMD HD 6990M not much faster than GTX 580M

 

Really? You're not anti-AMD, just pro nvidia, eh? Considering that you're actually wrong on all those points (it's not less problematic, it doesn't have more features - just different ones, and *always* costs more for similar performance)... and considering the fact that there really are only two camps of GPU support, you are anti-AMD by being pro-Nvidia when your reasons are "Nvidia is better".

Even when your points are incorrect. But its ok, I respect your choice to have a poorly informed opinion. Oh wait, no I don't. That's why I'm correcting you. In any case, I respect your choice to have a poorly chosen opinion - just not a mis-informed one.

 

I used to be pro green team before the g73jh. But AMD has just been kicking the crap out of Nvidia in terms price v. performance. The 6990 is closer in price to the far lower performing 560m than it is to the 580m which costs about twice as much. When you take that into account then you how huge a winner the AMD part is. If money is no issue to you then yeah the two are about the same. But most people can't afford to think that way.

I for one never believed the hype about the 6990m being 25% faster than the 580m. Both companies have been using inflated benchmarks for years but the 580m still loses to all but diehard Nvidia fans because of the huge price difference.

 

In the end. I wont change my G73JH for a Laptop with a GTX 560M that has Slower performance on games (yes, the 5870M is still faster on most games I have tested it vs the GTX 560, Just have to use the latest drivers ^^). We can compare frame rates if you want

I will only buy a new laptop if it happens to come with either the 6990 or the GTX 580 and is still cheaper than 1800 USD.

Which card do you guys think have more chances to stay under that price cap?

 

I'd say neither .

 

You either hold on or take the plunge to be honest but you will be lucky to get that setup for under that price unless its a back of the lorry job or already been on the market a year or two. I will have paid off my credit card in 13 months so I plan to get my next laptop next August when the awesome 5870M will be struggling on its last legs.

The way mobile cards are getting better all the time I can see the 7 series ATI cards next year being worth the wait and I may even consider a big brash M19x (unofficial). Thing is you cannot hold on for ever upgrades happen all the time and as soon as you buy something they release something much better. Its good to see the mobile sector moving up in the world though and giving those desktop fanboys something to write home about!

 

OK im PRO nVIdia if this please you (even if I have more AMD card than nVidia card @ home lol ).... dont want to debate with a PRO AMD guy who think hes the only one with the right answer. I have my reason to prefer nVidia for now and you have yours to prefer AMD.

 

There's nothing wrong with preferring one thing over another but it's another thing throwing assumptions and misinformation. Just saiyan, also all the G73's problems were because of ASUS.

 

Nvidia vs ATI will always happen and people will always argue over it. Personally I love the ability to compare the two companies if there was just one company it would be a much less interesting place to be. Would be nice to see a 3rd company jump in the mix and spice things up a bit but its a very tough market to be involved with and of course people take reliability very seriously and enjoy things to function rather than just be better than the other.

Asus choose to modify and adapt cards so that in itself will always cause problems.

 

I think it'd be cool if Intel joined the fray with some high-end GPU's, it'd be cool to have a Blue team not just Green vs. Red. Intel could probably spank AMD and Nvidia up and down the floor if they put their mind to it. Too bad they only seem to be interested in CPU's and integrated graphics.

 

sincerely asus stopped doing high end gaming last year, if the G series is more successful its mainly because of the availability of it coupled with the lack of the information.

The deal is you can get a NP8150 with a little more dough and still be quite faster than the g74. But since sager/clevo is mainly an unknown company atm, people go and see at best buy what they can consider high end gaming, not to mention globally the distribution system of asus takes care of that.

the only other known option is aw, but its quite high priced, thus leading people back to asus if they are on a tighter budget. Not that new G series are good priced like last year, they are way over that, specially if you go for newer cards or newer models.

Asus strategy is to make it available in retail brick and mortar stores, give it visibility, send it in mass for reviewers, its a good marketing strategy and one thats proven to work. And it did work in this case

I dont even think that asus is going back to high end gaming, this year, next year maybe, they usually hop back and forth between high end and mid end gaming.

 

I would like to know what are the misinformation / assumptions I given please. SO i May correct my self.
As I reread my posts and all I can see is personal opinion... We still have the right to tell our opinion here I think?

Please Inform me correctly then I'm open to have the good information. What did I say was wrong? My mind is fully open to correct my information.
BTW no need to be sarcastic and aggressive we are not all 18yrs old kid.We can have adult conversation.

 

I totally agree the 8700M gt sli was very weak and it was such a shame because the craftmanship of the G70s is something I have never seen again, encased in alluminium and everything literally everything worked as it should even the mini display which showed you CPU/GPU usage on the keyboard while you game.

The 8800M GTX SLI in that model with those two fans blasting away and it would have destroyed, in fact I would probably still have it now come to think of it because paired with the C2D extreme I had it would still be owning, the 8700's were so very poor and the bandwidth was a disaster.

Edit: In regards to the Nvidia/ATI war going on above and as a proud owner of many threads that have either got me banned or been locked because of my opinon in these matters lets chill it out a bit people. ATI and Nvidia will bat back and forth between superiority and some cards will be better than others and people will go for one card or the other I have owned both and think they are both great and I wont hesitate switching between Nvidia and ATI again the only claim I disagree with is Physx I have seen it, I have used it! It is about as useful as a chocolate teapot to decrease performance to make a flag blow in the wind while I am running around killing things. ATI rocks my world with the 5870M problems or no problems i love it to pieces, before it the 8800M GTX was the same it had its problems but rocked the mobile gaming world of its time. The 6990 will do the same until Nvidia create a 599M or something silly and the same argument will commence.

 

+1

I dont understand why you disagree the claim of physx tho. Physx IS a feature of nVidia. Maybe a bad/useless one but it's still is a feature no?
And same for me : the 5870M is a really great card. One one issue with it are with some Unreal 3 Engine with ALT-TAB that make the game not responding. (unreal tournament 3 in particular) and I know this is not happening on nVIdia. This is my ONLY prob with ATI for the moment.

 

When I had my dual cards I was really curious about it (Physx) and I did so much testing to see if the benefit was worth the performance loss but in the end decided it was not. It really comes down to the same with Tessellation for me especially in newer games as the 5870M and 460M struggle to produce good frames with Tessellation at full blast and you have to say in our circumstance is a little something extra worth struggling to play a game fluently?. The answer is no.

However as mobile cards become much more mighty (6990M/580M) I hope the answer changes to yes! We all like a little something extra

 

hehe yeah I'm a guy that like to have my car Full equip even If I don't use the extra gadget. I just feel better to know that I have those just in case...
This cost me a lot with computer sadly....

 

Its a bit like SLI/Xfire as well if the game cant use its then it a waste of time.

Personally my Electronic Supercharger was not a waste of time at the lights

Until it blew the headgasket.

 

Damn, holy war started again.

 

The current Alienware M17x promo would get you that config(6990), just with 320gb hd, 4th ram and dvdrw. the 580 option is crazy expensive.

Cheers,