There has been the same undisputed leader in the graphics cards market for almost eighteen months now. As with many good things, they all must come to an end or at least step aside in order to give way to the new generation. Sticking to its ‘premium products are of dual chip design’ dogma, AMD has just released its latest dreadnought – Radeon HD 6990.

Back in the days, in November 2009 to be more precise, the world was taken aback by the performance level demonstrated by AMD Radeon HD 5970 graphics card. The top of the line offering featured a two-chip one-PCB concept and was warmly welcomed by the enthusiast community despite is high price. Although forum dispute regarding its “King of the Hill” status continues to rage on even today, we must underline that in majority of cases reviewed ATI Radeon HD 5970 was the fastest graphics card on the planet. It has always been the fastest single PCIe slot occupant in the graphics department and the point “yes, but it is made of essentially two graphics cards” is irrelevant.

The rumors regarding its successor started to circle the Internet in the mid 2010. At some point the information exchange concerning dual chip solutions from AMD and NVIDIA seemed like a behind the scenes PR battle. Who was going to blink first: NVIDIA with a pair of then outstanding GeForce GTX 460 chips or AMD with revised branding and newly released sixth generation Radeon HD? The cold war never took off and by the time Christmas season hit the shelves talks shifted towards NVIDIA’s mainstream dream-offering – GeForce 560 Ti. But, as always in a good blockbuster story, AMD was just about ready to launch a counter offense.

• READ MORE (Source): AMD Radeon HD 6990 Graphics Card Review: Monster Evolution on the Way – X-bit labs