Quote Originally Posted by Macadamia View Post
Congrats on sinking that low to quote a card from 3 generations ago!

That was AMD's first time using digital VRM (Volterra I think), and the card did pop and die if you actually used Furmark with older drivers. And guess what? Since the 5 series every GPU they made quotes board power truthfully, has proper cooling on every component on the board and hasn't been deemed loud (exc 6990).

Now that I've retorted your digression, why don't we get back to both the insufficient power regulation (for OC) and insufficient cooling for the VRMs then?
All I see is one card unusable @stock (HD 6990, even louder than 2 GTX 480 in SLi) and another one (GTX 590, cool noise and approx. same temps than HD6990) that is usable @stock.
With proper drivers and soft voltage modding, the card oc quite well.
But, you're certainly right, power regulation seems insufficient for massive OC.

Anyway, Damien take another thermal shoot, more precise :