AMD Radeon HD 7790 Review Feat. Sapphire: The First Desktop Sea Islands
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Sapphire
- GCN
- Radeon HD 7000
The Test
For today’s review we will be using the latest rendition of our game benchmark suite, first introduced in our review of the GeForce GTX Titan. We still expect to add another 1-2 games to this suite in April after the last of the major Spring game releases hit next week. As a reminder, our 2013 benchmark suite is much more 1080p centric on the low-end, as 1080p sales have eclipsed even cheaper, lower resolution monitors. As AMD is promoting the 7790 as an entry-level 1080p card anyhow, this ends up working well.
On the driver side of things we are using AMD’s 12.101.2 press drivers for the 7790, and their Catalyst 13.2 beta 7 drivers for the rest of our AMD cards. For our NVIDIA cards we are using 314.21.
Unfortunately we only had a very short period of time to spend with this card due to AMD’s launch schedule conflicting with NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference this week. As a result while we’ve been able to put together our usual analysis and data collections, we’ve only been able to compare it to around half a dozen other cards – the relevant AMD and NVIDIA cards above and below the 7790, and for a historical perspective we’ve thrown in the Radeon HD 6870.
Similarly, because of a short period of time to write this article our performnace commentary will be lighter than usual, so our apologies on that. But the fact of the matter is that the 7790 results will speak for themselves as we’ll see in our charts. Against AMD’s lineup the 7790 is comfortably in between the 7770 and 7850, offering 130% of the former and 84% of the latter on average. While against NVIDIA’s lineup the 7790 is 11% faster than the GTX 650 Ti, beating the 650 Ti – sometimes by quite a bit – in everything but Battlefield 3. The question, as is often the case, is not performance but price.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
| Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
| Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
| Monitor: | Samsung 305T |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 7850 AMD Radeon HD 7790 AMD Radeon HD 7770 AMD Radeon HD 6870 Sapphire HD 7790 Dual-X OC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 314.21 AMD 12.101.2 7790 Press Beta AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta 7 |
| OS: | Windows 8 Pro |
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Oxford Guy - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link
It's absolutely ridiculous to release a 1 GB card today when even games like Skyrim need 2 GB at 1080p.Arnulf - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Regarding noise measurement: weighing scale used for absolute measurements may be the "A" scale, but a card is not certain number of dB(A) louder than another card, it is certain number of dB louder (3 dB more would be twice as loud as far as sound pressure level is concerned, measured under same conditions and with same weighing), since your weighing scale used to take absolute measurements is the same.This refers to all your statements along the lines of "... but over 3 dB(A) louder ..." etc.
warezme - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Middle of the road filler products are so boring. They are usually a mishmash of memory from here, GPU features from there, all so confusing and boring. Just release a full line of new core and memory features, age down your older products according to how they perform compared to the new and be done with it.piroroadkill - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
I disagree. This is a compelling midrange card.Spunjji - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Good for you. Many of us disagree and this card has an obvious place in their line-up.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
Oh did you take a survey, or are you speaking for all amd fanboys just because ?CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
Hey a least it isn't a THREE GNERATION IN A ROW CLONE !HAHAHAHA
Like the 5770.
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Is there any actual evidence to support the conclusion that 1GB is not enough for 1080p? Given the choice between more compute units or more RAM, I would take more compute units.Spunjji - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Right now I believe there would not be. What people are anticipating is an inflation in the size of game assets spurred on by the next generation of consoles. Some people want to keep these things for a few years so it's a legitimate concern for a change!CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
LOLOLOLOLWow how fanboys change from just prior releases with 2GB or 3GB amd crapcards - then it was an ABSOLUTE WIN according to you - necessary and "future proof!" especially for "skyrim mods !"
LOL
You're a good laugh.