OK, so what the heck are they going to do with this crown?
Halo product role is to reaffirm the brand name; it's an evidence to public about company prowess in extreme engineering.
The problem here being that 7990 chose a really bad moment to be tested, because majority of reviewers are moving away from raw fps, and are actually paying attention to gameplay/fluidity in multi-GPU test.
So 7990 wins no mind-share back, not among enthusiasts, press, investors, it even leaves it's kookiest fanbase flatfooted.
What this card really does, it only reaffirms AMD's #2 position in GPU market.
In essence it's no biggie; AMD wasted few dollars, but more importantly missed opportunity.
I'm not saying that AMD didn't screw the pooch here,
again. If you read what they are saying though it's being marketed as the fastest card in the world. They must have felt that it was important to be able to say this. It also gives them a new product in a more visible market than the 7790 (which was also a fail because it was so easy for nVidia to counter). It's a halo product, 7 free games, yada, yada, yada. Not having the drivers ready? Fail! Releasing a product that doesn't really bring anything new to the table in price or performance? Fail again! Being so concerned with TDP that the card throttles at stock speeds? Double fail! Having the TDP throttle set in such a way that it can't even O/C? Epic fail! They've released a product that accentuates all of it's weaknesses and removed it's biggest possible strength.
The worse part is that all of these issues are fixable. 1, The new drivers appear to work. 2, An AWSUM switch could fix the TDP/overclocking. If it needs a more robust PCB then it should have been given it. AMD has never had an issue with their reference boards being fragile in the past. So, this shouldn't be a problem. 3, Lower the price. Since they couldn't break new ground performance wise they should have given better performance at a lower price.
All I can say about the timing is maybe the rumors of nVidia releasing the 700 series real soon are true. Or, AMD feels that they might be true and felt the need to strike now. This so reminds me of the 7970 launch that was so badly screwed that even today people think the 680 is faster than the 7970 and are willing to pay more for it.