AMD Claims 'Fastest Graphics Card in the World'

AMD has released a monster graphics card with a monster $699 pricetag attached.

AMD is now claiming the "world's fastest graphics card" title with the release of its new dual-GPU, 3D-capable AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics card. It comes packed with support for DirectX 11 and includes AMD's PowerTune for performing real-time intelligent power management, enabling higher clock speeds.

"Packing more raw performance than any consumer graphics card ever created, the AMD Radeon HD 6990 provides the latest for the ultimate gaming advantage," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, GPU division, AMD.

Designed with the gamer in mind, AMD's new powerhouse graphics card arrives with native support for up to five displays by way of AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology, and an additional sixth display thanks to DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-Stream Transport components which will be available to purchase later this year. There's also a handy dual-BIOS toggle for switching between two different speed settings on the fly (default and overclocked).

Under the hood, there's definitely reason to salivate. The stock engine clock runs at 830 MHz but can be overclocked to a zestier 880 MHz. The card also sports a memory clock of 1.25 GHz, 4 GB of GDDR5 memory, a maximum 320 GB/s memory bandwidth, and a high-speed 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface. The card's TeraScale 3 architecture crams both cores together to spout 3072 stream processors, 192 texture units, 128 Z/Stencil raster operator units, 64 color raster operator units, and dual geometry and rendering engines. Yes, it's a beast.

The new Radeon HD 6990 also features other bells and whistles including improved image quality by way of Enhanced-Quality Anti-Aliasing (EQAA) and Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA), HD3D stereoscopic 3D support, EyeSpeed acceleration technology, a Unified Video Decoder 3 (UVD3) video playback accelerator for Blu-ray 3D and HD video, support for HDMI 1.4a, and support for IEEE 754 double precision floating point ops.

Check out our full review here and see if AMD's claim holds true.

“Coupled with AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology, AMD PowerTune power management and AMD HD3D, this card is so powerful it can take on even the most demanding ultra-enthusiast tasks," Skynner added.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics card is now available at a suggested retail price of $699-- that's currently $100 shy of the Motorola XOOM tablet's unsubsidized pricetag over at Verizon Wireless ($599 subsidized with a two-year contract). That's also roughly the same amount of money gamers would shell out for two brand-new Xbox 360 250 GB consoles ($299.99 each). Evidently the world's fastest graphics card requires one of the world's heftiest pricetags.

As for system requirements, the new AMD graphics card needs a PCI Express based PC with one x16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard and a minimum 1 GG of memory. AMD suggests using a 750W power supply at the very least with two 150W 8-pin PCI Express power connectors. A 1000W power supply and four 8-pin connectors is highly recommended for AMD CrossFireX technology in dual mode. A 1200W power supply is recommended for optimal performance.

For more system requirements, head here.