Let's get ready to rumble

The fierce competition between AMD and NVIDIA is about to get spicier with the introduction of genuinely high-end graphics cards from both companies.

In the red corner, hailing from Toronto, Canada, and weighing in with a meaty punch is the AMD Radeon HD 6990 dual-GPU card, formerly known by the code-name Antilles.

Fending off the Canuck beast is the job of the also-dual-GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590, said to be primed for a mid-March launch. This means that both cards should be released to the press at roughly the same time.

While confirmed specifications and release dates for both cards are still close-kept secrets, AMD is the first to bring its heavyweight contender to the public's critical gaze.

Common sense dictates that the Radeon HD 6990 will take the form of two power-optimised HD 6970 GPUs on one PCB. Spitting out some conjectured numbers, this translates to a jaw-dropping 3,000-plus shaders, 4GB of onboard memory and 300GB/s of combined memory bandwidth: put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Such presumed power requires a card TDP in the region of 300W, though AMD's PowerTune technology will ensure that no application can force the GPUs to put the local electricity grid on red alert.

The following AMD-provided shots have been released to nurture and whet your appetite for a graphics card that should chew through benchmarks with fervent alacrity.