AMD Radeon 6990 HD question [Need Feedback!]

[kerovi]

Alright, so I got AMD Radeon 6990 HD and everything set up, mine question is what would you guys do with it? Would you overclock it or get water cooling? Some guy told me I shouldn't have bought it if I won't run xfire.
And one more question, I heard its having 2 GPUs, are they both idle or one is working and other not if running crossifre?

[2dgreengiant]

No point in overclocking it you wont get far. Watercooling for it alone would be a waste as the stock fans usually are pretty good, if you already or are planning to use water cooling for your whole system then re-consider it. You can xfire them that guys a tard you will just need another 6990, and as far as im aware (dont quote me) they both run idle at same time if your doing e.g. no gaming and will both run as per usual when you are just not as intense as if you only had one card (depending on your setup).

[Freefall552]

They work together if needed too. If a game doesn't support crossfire the 6990 will only run on one gpu unfortunatly. If you have a 6970 laying around, you are able to run it in a crossfire setup with your 6990 because they both use the same gpu. The tests I've seen, the 6990+6970 CF setup performs better than a 6990+6990 CF setup. And watercooling just one is NOT a waste, the stock cooling sucks big time. It's very loud and it's not so effective. Overclocking won't help much because it's a really powerful card out of the box.

[whitekidney]

The 6990 is a combination of two 6950 GPUs, if you can you should return your 6990 and get two 6970s instead! :P
There isn't much point in crossfiring two 6990s because crossfire doesn't scale that well beyond 3 GPUS.

You can crossfire any GPU that is within the same serie (69**, 68** etc), that means, 6970 works with 6990 and 6950 vice versa, etc etc.
Overclocking the 6990 will give you some nice boosts in performance, but at the moment you won't really notice in any games, there are very few games as of today that will utilize two 6950 gpus to the max and you shouldn't OC on the reference (stock) cooler for the 6990 as it.. generates enough heat :P

[Ballwinkle]

You only really need to overclock one of theese babys is if your running a multiscreen setup.