Can a bit of Sapphire spice make the
AMD HD 7790 even tastier?
MD has been making a big noise about its
monster HD 7990 card recently, despite the number of people who can afford one
being tiny. A far more realistic option for most of us, though, is the HD 7790,
which has now been improved.
As its name suggests, the Sapphire HD 7790
2GB OC Edition is tweaked beyond the normal imposed specifications, with a GPU
core that is upped from 1000MHz to 1050MHz, and GDDR5 memory cranked to 1600MHz
from 1500MHz to provide 102.4GB/s of bandwidth. Those are marginal improvements,
but Sapphire has managed to get them without increasing the power profile, as
the card still requires only a single PCI-E 6-pin power line.
Sapphire
HD 7790 2GB GDDR5 OC Edition
What impressed us even more than that is
how quiet this card is, even when stressed. A new housing and fan assembly,
together with a board-covering metal backplate keep the GPU within a
comfortable temperature range, while also stopping the GDDR5 from getting too
warm. The fan spins quickly, but without any appreciable whine or vibration, a
testimony to the quality of the bearings that used. The 1GB stock speed version
costs roughly £15 less than this model, which leads us to question whether the
tweaks on this one (and that extra memory) are worth the difference? Probably
not, but these aren't the only special aspects to this card.
Connecting three displays to an AMD
Eyefinity card simultaneously usually requires use of an active adapter, at
additional cost, but not here. Sapphire has added some of its FleX technology
to allow all four outputs (Dual DVI, DP and HDMI) to be simultaneously
connected and working. The best aspect of this is that you can connect three
monitors without using DisplayPort. Considering this feature, we can see how
the extra memory would come in very handy for frame buffering four panels,
especially if you went entirely mad and decided to use new 4K resolution
monitors.
What
impressed us even more than that is how quiet this card is, even when stressed
Back in the real world, though, there is
one part to this design that we don't really understand: why Sapphire was so
reserved in its overclocking? A quick adventure in tweaking revealed that the
card core will easily exceed 1200MHz if you set the fan to 100% RPM, although
it will make some noise then.
With stock settings this card falls
reasonably close to matching what the GTX 660 2GB cards can deliver on most
games, though they score marginally better on the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark.
Fascinatingly though, it's almost as quick in many tests as the reference AMD
HD 7850, which like the GTX 660 has 50% more bandwidth. For the money this is
an excellent card, better than stock in numerous ways, that has a wealth of
useful features and enough power to run most 1080p titles with the feature
levels set to high. You can pick up a stock version of this card with 1GB of
memory for about $181, and a pre-Overclocked design for $188. The extra FleX
output control and the additional GDDR5 memory is certainly worth a tenner,
though, if not more.
If
you can ignore the box artwork, that seems as if it was designed by a male
adolescent, this is a half decent card at an affordable price, and much better
value than the stock versions.
If you can ignore the box artwork, that
seems as if it was designed by a male adolescent, this is a half decent card at
an affordable price, and much better value than the stock versions.
Details
·
Price: $203 (Overclockers UK)
·
Manufacturer: Sapphire
·
Website: www.sapphiretech.com
·
Required Spec: PCI-E x16 Slot (to 2.0
specification)
Specification
Output
·
1 x HDMI 1.41a
·
1 x DisplayPort 1.2
·
1 x Dual-Link DVI-D
·
1 x Dual-Link DVI-I
GPU
·
1050MHz Core Clock
·
28nm GPU
·
896 Stream Processors
·
Video Memory
·
2048MB Size
·
128-bit GDDR5
·
6400MHz Effective
Dimension
·
215(L)x106(W)x38(H) mm Size. 2 x slot
Accessories
·
DVI to VGA adaptor, 6-pin to 4-pin power
cable, 1.8m HDMI cable, CrossFireX cable.
|