is the Radeon 7990 still a valid option?

matte99022 · April 6, 2015

I just found a used Radeon 7990 for 230 USD. but im not too familiar with AMD cards and all I know is that it's kind of old.

And also how does it compare to the 970 which I am currently saving up for (400 USD)

Unhelpful · April 6, 2015

I just found a used Radeon 7990 for 230 USD. but im not too familiar with AMD cards and all I know is that it's kind of old.

And also how does it compare to the 970 which I am currently saving up for (400 USD)

For reference a 7990 is a dual 7970 (kinda dual 7950 irrc) and the 280 is a rebadged 7950 while the 280x is a rebaged 7970. How it compares to a 970 will depend on the game. Some it will destroy it but some it wont.

I would be worried about that being a mining card.

KamiKatze · April 6, 2015

It never was a valid option.

But for that price, if you are willing to accept the noise and massive heatoutput.... But chances are if its used, it has been mining cryptocurrencies, so it's probably pretty sacked.

matte99022 · April 6, 2015

It never was a valid option.

But for that price, if you are willing to accept the noise and massive heatoutput.... But chances are if its used, it has been mining cryptocurrencies, so it's probably pretty sacked.

Noise is not really a problem but how loud does it get? and also I get to test the card before i buy it. so what do I look for to know if it is "sacked" or not

KamiKatze · April 7, 2015

Noise is not really a problem but how loud does it get? and also I get to test the card before i buy it. so what do I look for to know if it is "sacked" or not

Hm, it's kind of hard to tell tbh. If you can test it before buying, run some stress tests like Unigine Valley and FurMark.

You can look up the 7990s Benchmark scores for the Extreme HD Preset in Valley and see if the results match.

Or while you run Furmark, you can look at the clockspeeds and temperatures in MSI Aftrerburner and see if everything is boosting up niceley.

And then you can of course look at the cooler, do the fans run smooth or is there any rumble from a bearing or sth.

With that being said, the 7990 is a high performance card It is, as mentioned above a combination of two HD 7970s (which is the same as a R9 280X) on one card. As a result of that it should outperform a R9 290X or GTX 970 in most games, however at the cost of being power hungry, loud and hot.

I personally and many others recommend one strong single GPU over two smaller GPUs in Crossfire or SLI (Which the HD 7990 inevitably is).

So in other words: if you need a Graphics card now, and you're kind of on a tight budget, the 7990 is worth a thought. If you howevery still have an okay-graphics card and you can wait a little bit, i would recommend to either save up for a GTX 970 or look into what AMD is releasing at the end of Q2 this year.

I guess a used R9 290 or 290X would also be an option, as they are still good price/performance crackers! (however the same argument about cryptocurrencies applies here) The whole dual-GPU thing is what puts the HD 7990 a bit off.