AMD Radeon 6990 Review - H.A.W.X.

H.A.W.X.

H.A.W.X. is one last title that AMD has been showing off since the Radeon 5000 line launched. While the other titles are Hor+ and offer cutting-edge DX11 features, HAWX is quite the opposite. While it is a Hor+ title, it is only a DX10 title and runs quite well on a wide variety of hardware.

The well running and scalable title makes it a natural fit when showcasing both lower-end hardware pushing three panels, and high-end hardware pushing six panels. It also comes as no surprise that the additional VRAM largely goes unused, considering the title runs capably on lower hardware.

One note in the HAWX benchmark. Above 1920x1080 the game simply would not allow 4xAA. While the scores provide that the title could handle it, the option simply is not available. Though it isn't our norm, we chose to accept 2xAA so that we could get consistent readings across the spectrum of hardware.

Again, widescreen proves no challenge to any of these cards. We see a CPU wall for widescreen at about 115fps. Eyefinity does provide a scaled performance experience for both single and multi-GPU configurations. Single cards stay above 30fps, with the higher end cards hitting 60fps (at max settings). The CFX configurations are running between 75fps and 95 fps.

The Radeon HD 6990 is more than enough for HAWX in any configuration, even 5x1-Portrait at max resolution, max quality and 2xAA.

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 12fps improvement over an Eyefinity6 CFX configuration in 3x1600x900, and that represents a 18% increase over that Eyefinity6 CFX configuration.