Powerful Atomic HD7990 GPU design and cooler leaked

15 July 2013
sapphire HD7990 Atomic

Sapphire’s Radeon HD7990 Atomic is still in the works and has not had an official release despite some other AMD Radeon vendors releasing their own version for the HD7990, or working off the reference HD7990 released by AMD. The Atomic is a completely custom solution from Sapphire and is billed as the ultimate HD7990 to own.

The card is a dual-GPU product, featuring two Radeon HD7970 GPUs on the same circuit board joined by a PEX 8747 bridging chip, which creates an internal PCI-Express 3.0 link for the two cards to communicate with each other. The Atomic HD7990 requires three 8-pin PEG power connectors, giving the card a theoretical maximum power draw of close to 525W.

Everything from the VRM capacitor bank to the soldering and the selection of six Displayport outlets shows that this card is designed to be as extravagant and as powerful as possible. It may even give the ASUS Ares II reason to worry. There is a single Crossfire connector and next to it a BIOS switch to revert to a fail-safe state in the event that your overclocking does not work nicely.

The Atomic cooler covers the whole card and provides cooling for the dual graphics processors, the VRM bank and the memory chips. The cooler is connected to a large 240mm radiator and a water reservoir that fits into your 3.5-inch drive bay. The solution is sold bone dry, so that enthusiasts may fill it up with their preferred coolant.

Sapphire is currently still developing the Atomic HD7990 and has not mentioned pricing or detailed any release dates. Its rival, the ASUS Ares II HD7990 retailed for a whopping US$1,599 and was also a limited-run product. Both cards will be still subject to Crossfire issues including stuttering, runt and dropped frames and display tearing until AMD releases their next version of Catalyst, which launches into Beta at the end of July 2013.

Source: Expreview

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  1. BotanicusPopulus
    15.07.2013 at 12:51

    Ati is more than likely doing this already whilst still working on the HD8000 series. However it’s still viable for OEM companies to continue working on desktop versions of the HD7000 series since the HD8000 series hasn’t received an official desktop release as of yet. Well not on the consumer market in any case

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