AMD Radeon HD 6990M
The AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6990M (or sometimes called ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6990) is a high-end graphics card for large laptops (17" and up). It is based on the desktop HD 6870 graphics card and there supports UVD3 decoding and Eyefinity+, albeit with overall reduced clock rates.
The 1120 Stream processors are still based on the "old" 5D architecture similar to the 5000 series. Therefore, the number of shaders is not comparable to the 1D cores of current Nvidia GPUs. The Tessellation performance should be improved (like the desktop 6800 series) with the new cards. The Stream processors can be used with DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL. In particular, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL can both allow the cores to be used for general computations like video transcoding.
The 3D performance should be similar to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M in the high end class of notebook graphics cards. Therefore, as of 2011, most modern and demanding games should run in full HD with highest settings fluently. Only Metro 2033 and Crysis (DX11) may need reduced detail settings.
The new UVD3 video decoder supports the decoding of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, Flash and now also Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos on the graphics card.
Furthermore, the HD 6900M series integrates an HD audio controller to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g. für Blu-Ray videos).
The AMD HD3D Technology offers support for Blu-Ray 3D and 3D displays (integrated and external). However, the solution is not as mature as Nvidia's 3D Vision.
Thanks to Eyefinity, the graphics chip is able to theoretically drive up to 6 monitors simultaneously. However, this only works if the laptop features enough DisplayPort outputs.
The high power consumption of the chip limits its use only in large laptops with good cooling solutions (e.g. Alienware M18x or Clevo X7200).
Radeon HD 6900M Series
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| Codename | Blackcomb XTX | |||||||||||||||
| Architecture | Terascale 2 | |||||||||||||||
| Pipelines | 1120 - unified | |||||||||||||||
| Core Speed | 715 MHz | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Speed | 900 MHz | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Bus Width | 256 Bit | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | |||||||||||||||
| Max. Amount of Memory | 2048 MB | |||||||||||||||
| Shared Memory | no | |||||||||||||||
| API | DirectX 11, Shader 5.0 | |||||||||||||||
| Transistor Count | 1.7 Billion | |||||||||||||||
| technology | 40 nm | |||||||||||||||
| Notebook Size | large | |||||||||||||||
| Date of Announcement | 12.07.2011 | |||||||||||||||
| Link to Manufacturer Page | www.amd.com | |||||||||||||||
Benchmarks
3DM Vant. Perf. total +
specvp11 snx-01 +
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
Game Benchmarks
The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.
F1 2012
2012
Max Payne 3
2012
Dirt Showdown
2012
Diablo III
2012
Risen 2: Dark Waters
2012
Mass Effect 3
2012
Alan Wake
2012
Star Wars: The Old Republic
2011
Anno 2070
2011
Battlefield 3
2011
