VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2013-05-06
The latest AMD Radeon HD 7790 GPUs feature a revised AMD PowerTune Technology implementation, with 8 states, more shader units compared to the versions and higher frequencies. The XFX Black Edition implementation comes with raised speeds from the factory and an enhanced Double Dissipation cooling system for a good efficiency, while maintaining low noise levels.
At first I would like to thank XFX for sending a sample of their Radeon HD 7790 Black Edition Video Card for testing and reviewing.
"XFX dares to go where the competition would like to, but can’t. That’s because, at XFX, we don’t just create great digital video components—we build all-out, mind-blowing, performance-crushing, competition-obliterating video cards and motherboards. And, not only are they amazing, you don’t have to live on dry noodles and peanut butter to afford them.
XFX is a division of PINE Technology Holdings Limited, a leading manufacturer and marketer of innovative solutions for the worldwide gaming technologies market. Founded in 1989, PINE designs, develops, manufactures and distributes high-performance video graphics technology and computer peripherals. The company’s dedicated research and development team are continually pushing the limits to meet the demands of the ever-growing and performance-driven community. Headquartered in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong SAR), PINE has more than 1,000 employees worldwide with 16 offices around the globe. PINE also maintains four state-of-the-art research and development facilities in the Asia Pacific region and two factories in Mainland China. To learn more about PINE, please visit www.pinegroup.com."
Additional hardware (e.g. Blu-ray drive, HD or 10-bit monitor, TV tuner) and/or software (e.g. multimedia applications) are required for the full enablement of some features. Not all features may be supported on all components or systems.
There were some rumors at the beginning of the year that AMD would release a new series of cards, in order to refresh the 7000 series that was released more than a year ago; AMD has confirmed this but they have also added that we should expect these at the end of the year. However, we can see from time to time some surprises from them like the 7790, which is meant to fill the gap between the Radeon HD 7770 and the Radeon HD 7850, or the recently released dual GPU 7990, which has taken again the crown as being the fastest video card yet. The card we are reviewing today is also a response to the Nvidia GeForce 650Ti, which dominated this price point with quite a lot of success.
The GPU is manufactured using TSMC 28nm technology with 2080M transistors and 37 square millimeters larger than Cape Verde. Bonaire also comes with 14 CU (Compute Units) and each of these units contains 4 VU (Vector Units). Also, each VU comes with 16 SP (Stream Processors) and a single texturing unit; after we do the math, we will get a total of 896 shaders and 56 texture units.
Based on the previously released GCN Technology (Graphics Core Next), we also get some updates like a new AMD PowerTune Technology implementation. The Bonaire has now 8 states (opposed to the original 4) it can jump to at any time, depending on the current activity, the current limits or TDP:
The latest Radeon HD 7790 Black Edition from XFX is shipped in a similar packaging as we have seen with their Radeon HD 7770 at the beginning of last year. Right from the start we can see that we are dealing with a factory Overclocked version:
The sides of the packaging will present us the technical details regarding the GPU:
In the same areas we will also find out that we will get a 5-star support from XFX after we register on their website:
Some of the product enhancements can be also observed on the back side of the packaging:
The System Requirements, along with the Supported OSes and Box Contents can be seen on the bottom side of the box:
Nearby, we will find an additional sticker, with the model code number, which we can check on the website, along with some serial numbers:
The inner box is quite simple and less modern compared to the one we have gotten with the 7770 SOE:
Inside it we will find the necessary documentation and the card itself:
The documentation is pretty rich; we will get a Quick Installation Guide, some leaflets regarding connectivity and warranty, a Driver Installation Guide, one disk with the drivers, but also two small catalogs with the XFX Power Supplies and available Adapters & Connectors:
Besides these we will also get a door hanger with the necessary details for registering our product, but also a small black envelope:
What does this envelope contain? Well, here we will find a nice XFX Black Edition badge:
The card itself is wrapped inside an anti-static bag:
The XFX 7790 Black Edition cooling system is pretty similar to the one we have found at the 7770 SOE variant; the heatsink is cooled with two fans that have proven to be quite silent during normal operation. XFX likes to call the fans Dust-Free IP-5X and the whole cooling system as Double Dissipation:
Here is a closer look at the Dust-Free IP-5X fans, which are mounted on the heatsink:
The Ghost Thermal technology used by XFX allows the air to pass through the heatsink for directly cooling the PCB and core components. If we look on one of the lateral sides, we will spot the large heatsink and the two heatpipes which travel from the GPU core to the upper laterals:
The back side of the card reveals a single PCI-Express 6-pin connector, along with the fan header, where the two fans are connected:
On the opposite side, the metallic shroud has a nice design which shows the card series name and thermal technology used:
On the back side of the card we will find some factory stickers which cover the heatsink mounting screws and 4 of the total of 8 memory chips:
The Hynix memory chips are GDDR5 and come with the H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C model number; these are designed to run at 1500MHz, but XFX has overclocked them at 1600Mhz right from the start:
The card also comes with a single Crossfire finger:
XFX Radeon HD 7790 also comes with the specially designed XFX Bracket which aids air circulation and here we will find two DVI connectors, one HDMI and one DisplayPort:
By removing the metallic top cover, we can have a clear view on the heatsink which covers most of the card surface, along with the two attached fans. The cover contributes to the cooling system and also gives an overall premium feel:
In order to remove the entire heatsink, only the remaining 4 screws need to be removed, around the GPU:
Unlike some cards that we have reviewed in the past, the VRM is switched near the I/O connectors:
On the opposite side, near the PCI-E 6-pin power connector, we can also see the 4-pin fan header:
Here is a close look at the Bonaire Radeon HD 7790 GPU, on 28nm, built at TSMC:
CPU: Intel I5 3570K Retail @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 OC
RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)
Video: XFX Radeon HD 7790 BE
Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
With the help of the GPU-Z 0.7.0 utility, we could extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:
To extract even more information, we have used the AIDA64 utility:
For finding out the temperatures in both IDLE and Full Load with the fan set on Auto, we left the computer IDLE for about 25 minutes and then started monitoring with HWINFO64 and logged the values obtained while running Heaven 4.0 at 2560x1440 resolution for an additional 30 minutes, with details at maximum and Tesselation set to Extreme. During this time, the ambient temperature was held steady at 22.5 degrees Celsius:
Before finding out the noise the video card was producing, we have first measured the noise inside the room the tests took place and we found out it was 30.9dBA (with everything turned off).
At all times, the sound meter was placed 20cm near the video card.
The GPU fan was controlled by the latest version of Catalyst Control Center:
The XFX Radeon HD 7790 Black Edition comes with a welcome speed boost compared to the previously tested 7770 SOE (which also featured factory overclocking). As we have mentioned before, besides the XFX 7770 and the HIS 7750, we have introduced inside the database a Sparkle GeForce 560, which, again, sports quite high speeds for both GPU and memory (930MHz/1863MHz), making it very close to the Ti variant.
During the tests, we have seen the HD 7790 Black edition trading punches with the Sparkle X560 and in most games the cards produced good FPS in both 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 resolutions; in some situations, by adding extra filtering like 8xAA at 1920x1080, we brought the cards to their knees and they were not able to produce optimal framerates. We definitely do not recommend the cards for the higher 2560x1440 resolution, since the average framerate was nearing 30. The XFX Radeon HD 7790 consumes, however, about half as the Sparkle X560 card.
Let’s talk a little about overclocking; the card does not come with extra software for upping the frequencies and we have used instead Catalyst Control Center; from start, we have seen that the memory was already set at 1600Mhz, maximum value the slider could go. However, with the GPU clock we went in small steps to the maximum value allowed, which was 1200MHz (from an original of 1075); we were impressed that the card was fully stable at this frequency too, without the need of further adjustments. For calculating the performance difference, we have used 3DMark 11, Performance preset; with stock clocks, we have obtained P6177, while at 1200MHz, the value has been upped to P6590.
During the stress testing and regular benching, we have seen that the card did not become noisy at all, while succeeding to keep the temperatures at very good values.
The Black Edition version of the XFX 7790 card can be found online for about 150 Euros, with all taxes included.
We would like to thank again to XFX for making this review possible.