AMD R900 Antilles Reference Board Obtained for 10 Euro!

  • Hey all :)

    On April 16, 2020, I met a guy on ebay, he was selling one for 119 Euros and the shipping was 10 Euros I was like well that's nice I mailed the owner of he would reserve it since 119 For an AMD R900 Antilles Reference Board is not expensive at all. it's stil quite capable for most of today's games like The Witcher 2 & 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition but games like Doom 2016 would also be able to run on it quite well, that too I will test :)

    So here that sale of that HD 6990 back in 2011 these went for 749 Eur on release they werethe top of the range back then

    https://www.ebay.ie/itm/AMD-RADEON-HD6990-4GB-PCI-EXPRESS-VIDEO-GRAPHICS-CARD-GDDR5-256BITx2/353016033310

    As you can see, this is a Dual GPU board, it has powered by Dual RV970 XT Cayman GPU's with each 2GB 256Bit GDDR5 on a single PCB, the ATi/XilinX PCI-E 2.0 x16 Bridge chip allows both GPU's to work together in Dual Chip CFX Mode.

    So basically this is like having two Radon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 cards on a single PCB and you could get a second for Quad CrossFire X Four GPU's of pure madness :topmodel:

    Here the specs of these R900 boards:

    AMD Radeon HD 6990 PCI-E 4GB 512Bit GDDR5 Rev 002 1136


    GPU's 2x RV970 XT Cayman VLIW4 GPU's

    2x 2GB 256Bit GDDR5

    2x 1536 VLIW4 Stream Processors

    Code Name: R900 Antilles

    TMU's: 2x 96

    ROPS: 2x 32

    FP64: 1/4

    TSMC 40nm

    Core Clock Bios Main: 830Mhz

    Core Clock Bios Secondary: 880Mhz

    VRAM Clock: 1250Mhz

    Transistor Count: 2x 2.64 Billion

    So I showed the seller my past collections from 3dfx ATI/AMD< NVIDIA S3 Matrox, all the Opteron Servers & Workstations, the 3dfx Retro System, the Star Wars & Dino Riders collections the B747's you name it and he was so amazed and he wanted to gift me the card instead as gift of honor and he hoped I would not say no all I had to pay of the 10 Eur shipping :spitze:

    So basically I got a card of 119 euro for 10 euro, just mind gobbelingly crazy

    vintage_treasures82:

    Give me your name and full address and I will send you the video card for free, you just pay me 10 euro for transport, that is all. And I am not joking :topmodel:

    I hope you agree,

    Dan.


    So yeah, I could not refuse that lmao :D

    Best day ever when it comes to collecting rare graphics cards like this one.

    Here some pics the seller made of the card I was getting:

    So after it arrived here the card before cleaning:

    After looking at it I saw dark gray dust in it and was like yeaps time to take a look under the hood, right 8)

    So after taking it a apart I cleaned it like I did with my previous R900 Antilles Reference Board from back in 2014.
    Took it apart washed and cleaned every part soap & water did the trick for the plastic parts and turpentine & Anti-Synthetic Alcohol or wtf it's called to clean off the terps, my old method as I have used for the 800+ Graphics cards I had in the past, let me put it that way lmao.
    I just improvise and used my brain and made the best of it.

    So here the card all cleaned up, there was tons of dried up clay residue around the chips, I had to clip it off with my finger nails after soaking it with turpentine and this was a slow process it took me four hours to get rid of that cheap crap.



    But yea, as you can see, hard work always pays off doesn't it, also the second picture shows the PCB Date of 1136 and Revision could (002) or this is batch number? I made my guess it's the Revision, I could be mistaken as usual :rolleyes: Oh well.

    Here all the parts in their cleaned stage, after this I also reapplied the two RV970 XT Cayman GPU's with Noctua NH-1 Thermal Compound, some say don't use this ,w ell I do use it and it has done considerably better than most over priced compounds, and since I was overstocked by it from all the Opterons & systems I built for my family I took good use of the stuff:

    And here the card in it's fully renovated new state, yes it's like new again <3

    Next thing was games that in the second post :)

    6 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (24. April 2020 um 16:39)

  • So here the card in the test system :topmodel:

    Blue-Leader SMP 2009

    2x 6 Core AMD OpteronDP 2435 D0 Istanbul CPU's, 12 Cores @ 2.6Ghz

    2x ASUS Triton 70's

    Supermicro H8DAE-2 NVIDIA NForce 3600 Pro, MCP 550 Pro & IO55

    32GB NUMA Dual Channel DDR2-800 HP/Kingston Server RamECC Reg

    Supermicro SIM LP-B IPMI 2.0 16MB Card Rev.3.01 0907

    AMD Radeon HD 6990 PCI-E 4GB 512Bit GDDR5 Rev 02. 1136 (2x 2GB 256Bit GDDR5 In practical)

    Realtek ALC883 7.1 OnBoard HD Audio

    1x Intel 320 SSD 120GB/64MB Cache Boot Disk [Upgrade on The Way]

    Plextor PX-820A Dual Layer DVD Re-Writer 12x/8x UATA-133

    4x Western Digital 500GB/32MB Cache Raid Edition3 24/7 Series in RAID 0 1.81TB Storage Disk

    2x Broadcom 1000 MBit Ethernet RJ45 Lan Jacks

    Antec True Power Quatto 1000 Watt EPS12V + 2.3V

    Lian Li PC-A7010 Black Server Case

    Lian Li W-75BP Side Window Panel

    Hewlett Packard ZR24w 24" 16:10 Aspect Ratio HS-IPS Panel

    Native Reso of 1920 x 1200 x32 @ 60 Hertz

    Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64 UK + Service Pack 01

    AMD Crimson Beta 16.2.1 for Win7x64

    Some nice icy blue hues and Driver installation success YES! The real fun can really start after this successful installation :D

    Here some General Hardware & Driver info :) Also note Mantle API being present, the predecessor of Vulkan API :)

    GPU Info table, Both GPU's are running at HD 6950 speeds which is 830Mhz GPU & 1250Mhz VRAM, there is a Bios Switch for HD 6970 Speeds which is 880Mhz GPU & 1250Mhz VRAM as well, but for now 830Mhz is fine, it uses less power thus less heat is also formed.

    GPU 01 left & GPU 02 Right:

    Here some shots I took from my Minecraft Server from 2009 with the Jarninia HD Pack for Minecraft 1.7.9, this maintains the original colors but makes them HD :)
    The R900 Antilles Reference Board which is a HD 6990 ran this very well, in MSI After burner I had my fan profile setup so it would not surpass the 60C and I also disabled ULPS aka Power Play, this avoids the card from setting the second GPU to an ultra low power level, hah not gonna allow that to happen right :topmodel:

    Here Primal Carnage: Extinction 1.14.0

    The HD 6990 got to around 60 a 62C and not higher this was after 1 hour of testing in max details with FSAA x8EQ & AF x16, nothing to short of at 1920x1200x32.


    So I had to test more games Subnautica was one I always wanted to test, see if Unity Supports CFX, even I knew SLI didn't work, but it seems to the the case that CFX also is not supported with Unity Engine.
    Each GPU has 2GB or say 2048MB of 256Bit GDDR5 @ 1250Mhz.
    Subnautica had moments where the VRAM usage was 2013MB of the 2048MB lmao, sooo close rofl! :topmodel::bonk:
    And only one GPU doing the workloads as well the card had a hard time but gameplay was stable., I think it did less than 20 ps, for me it ddn't matter it was just to see how the card would do in such situations, stress your hardware well comrades bring it down to it's knee's for science! :spitze:

    Main Menu the Card already used 649MB of VRAM, and we all know the main menu doesn't have much going on rofl.
    All 12 cores were used though, which was interesting to see. Second pic shows the difference rofl :topmodel:

    And when I went to my base, this is near a tree with Ghost Leviathan Eggo's in it, the final safe zone for that part.
    The card had a very hard time haha, max temp it reached with Subnautica was 64C, good case airflow helps a mother load.

    But there ya have it really, she works like Magic <3

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (24. April 2020 um 16:41)

  • Gold Leader 24. April 2020 um 16:36

    Hat den Titel des Themas von „AMD R900 Antilles Reference Board Obtained for 10 Euro! Whaaa Zaaaa“ zu „AMD R900 Antilles Reference Board Obtained for 10 Euro!“ geändert.