AMD's Radeon HD 6790: Coming Up Short At $150
by Ryan Smith on April 5, 2011 12:01 AM ESTThe Test
For the AMD lineup including the 6790, we’re using the Catalyst 11.4 preview driver. For NVIDIA’s lineup we’re using a mix of the release 265 and release 270 drivers – we’re using 270 for the GTX 550 and GTX 460 768MB, however if you’re familiar with the performance of these cards you’ll quickly notice that the performance in our test suite is identical to the release 265 drivers.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Asus Rampage II Extreme |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 6990 AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB AMD Radeon HD 6870 AMD Radeon HD 6850 AMD Radeon HD 6790 AMD Radeon HD 5970 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 5850 AMD Radeon HD 5830 AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 4870X2 AMD Radeon HD 4870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 262.99 NVIDIA ForceWare 266.58 NVIDIA ForceWare 270.51 Beta AMD Catalyst 10.10e AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix AMD Catalyst 11.4 Preview |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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silverblue - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
Until we shift from 40nm, probably.mgl888 - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
Not much they can do without a process shrink. Architectural improvements can only go so far.Taft12 - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
No, there is no wall to speak of. The 4870 was a "first tier" part and this 6790 is "third tier". Compare the performance of the 4870 with a 6970 instead (and indeed the launch price of the 4870 with the launch price of the 6970) and you'll see we are doing just fine thank you very much.tno - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
But not long after release the 4890 was retailing after discounts for $160-150. That's what I bought mine at and I have yet to find a compelling card to take its place. Part of that does have to do with a decrease in my gaming, but if I was a budget gamer, I would look long and hard at a used 4890.tno - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
+1pandemonium - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
Only if you don't consider the broad picture and are looking at performance individually.marc1000 - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
I have a 5770. and even with the desire to upgrade to 6950/gtx570, i try to remain honest with me and tell to myself: "I don't need it"this level of performance if perfectly fine to play all current games, because we are all stuck with console ports...
jordanclock - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
I have a 5770 as well, and at 1680x1050, almost everything runs flawlessly, even with AA at 2x or 4x. The situation with multiplatform development is starting to really agitate PC gamers, I think. Crysis 2 looks infinitely better on PC (And ultra high end setups run tri-monitor quite well!), Dragon Age 2 has a texture pack that consoles wouldn't even have the memory to use, and so many games are looking identical on PC and console, meaning that while they run at high framerates on modest hardware, there is no option to increase visual fidelity to offset the increased hardware.tno - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
I concur. I have a 4890 that I picked up for $160 not long after its release after discounts. This thing was top tier, and it was pretty unique product coming out when ATI started treating their multi-GPU single card solutions as their true halo products. And for its flaws (noisy, power hungry and no DX11) it competes for performance at its original price.This is mirrored, frankly, in the PC market where the effective performance increase, that is performance that the average PC user (not us) will notice, has remained fairly flat since Conroe. What has improved is features. For that same budget dual-core Conroe price you get an integrated GPU worth its salt, improved efficiency, improved encoding/decoding performance (the thing users might notice most) and, possibly, more cores.
kmmatney - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
I also have a HD4890, bought for $170, and attached an Accelero S1 cooler, so its virtually silent (only a very slow spinning fan that I can't hear across the heatsink). I'm still amazed after so much time that I cannot get a better card for the same price - things just haven't progressed much in the bang-for-buck department.