AMD Radeon 6990 Review - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (Sun Shafts)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (Sun Shafts)

Prior to the game's release, the developer put out a benchmarking tool to test your system configuration. It offers a number of different options for utilizing DX9, 10 or 11 code paths. It also offers options for varying levels of HDAO and Shadow Quality. The demo itself isn't very pretty to look at (lots of dirt and dirt-colors), but it does put a beating on your system.

Like the Heaven demo, the demo basically will not run at 5760x1080 using 4xAA, with only 1GB of VRAM.

The new cards provide a noticeable performance jump over previous generations. Widescreen provides a steady performance curve for the current AMD product line. Mid-range cards can hit 30fps at max settings on a single widescreen, with the 2GB cards and CFX configurations passing 60fps.

Eyefinity provides to be a large challenge for any card. The fact that the 6900 series comes with 2GB of RAM standard opens ups Eyefinity performance - particularly at 5760x1080. High end configurations do cross 30fps, for the first time in our testing.

I ran into an issue with testing the Radeon HD 6990 at 5x1920x1080. The card appears to perform in line with a single GPU card. This doesn't show at 5x1600x900, and we see the expected performance gains. I've discussed this with AMD, and they haven't seen the issue. Until I can get it sorted on my system, I am leaving out the 5x1920x1080 numbers.

Below is a table that outlines the performance difference between the Radeon HD 6990 and the comparable SKUs. For example, the Radeon HD 6990 provides a 6fps improvement over an Eyefinity6 CFX configuration in 3x1600x900, and that represents a 23% increase over that Eyefinity6 CFX configuration.