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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bebimbap - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
would it be wrong of me to wait for the 7790 ghz ed?SithSolo1 - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
There will be no GE of this card.Quote - "The Radeon HD 7790 runs at 1GHz, but is not going to be called a "GHz Edition" anymore. AMD feels that they have made the point about having 1GHz edition GPUs in the market in 2012, and did not feel a need to label this new one a GHz Edition. Therefore, it will just be known as Radeon HD 7790." - Brent @ HardOCP, Asus DCUII 7790 review
SithSolo1 - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Before someone gets confused, I'm not Brent. I just happened to read the review a bit ago and remembered that part about the Ghz Edition.Hardcore69 - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Don't see a point. As a PC gamer I want it all, not some laughably compromised card - just over 30FPS (if that) at 1080p with the settings turned up? What's the point, just buy a console. I'll stick with my 680.cyan1d3 - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
While I agree with your sentiment, this card was not designed with us in mind, there is a large portion of people on budgets, who can't go ahead and blow ~$450 on a graphics card. There is also a large portion of people who see no need to play games at Ultra with high AA, etc.This card is a great line-up filler. I can see a use for this in a variety of budget gaming systems.
R3MF - Monday, March 25, 2013 - link
agreed.i spent £400 on an MSI 7970 Lightning, but not everyone is that stupid! :D
evonitzer - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Well with a name like Hardcore69, of course you would want the best of the best of the best (with honors). But I'm a casual PC gamer, so this card looks pretty great to me. My 4870 is getting a little (ok, very) long in the tooth. Why would I buy a console and pay full price for games, only use a controller, and have to pay a monthly fee (x360) just to play casually when I could pick up a $150 card and drop it into my computer?CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
His point wasn't your pathetic budget, his point was the graphics suck like a console.Just keep the 4870, it sucks too.
I am as mad as hell - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
The day will come, in the not so distant future, that 700W PS requirements or higher for high-end gaming machines will come to an end (thankfully). And the whole system will not consume more than 100W and fits inside a mATX case or smaller (and no need for Godzilla size cooling fans anymore either).CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
It's called Haswell.