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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Death666Angel - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
"pulling 7W more than the 7770, a hair more than the 5W difference in AMD’s TBP"That 5W is not at the wall though. Factoring in rounding PSU efficiencies, it's very possible that the cards are only drawing 5W more. :)
"The Sapphire card, despite being overclocked, draws 6W less than our reference 7790."
Seeing how the Sapphire runs cooler in Furmark, that might explain a Watt or two in reduced power draw, coupled with the efficiency of the PSU, it might explain three or four even. :)
pandemonium - Saturday, March 23, 2013 - link
"NVIDIA has for a long time set the bar on efficiency, but with the 7790 it looks like AMD will finally edge out NVIDIA."What is your definition of a long time? As far as efficiency standards, I consider AMD to be better for the end result when looking at the full definition and application of the word. See the spreadsheet I created here about 16 months ago to understand what I mean: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=21507...
silverblue - Saturday, March 23, 2013 - link
You just called Ryan a "dummy", did you, without even checking the statement further down which reads:"For anyone looking to pick up a 7790 today, this is being launched ahead of actual product availability (likely to coincide with GDC 2013 next week). Cards will start showing up in the market on April 2nd, which is about a week and a half from now."
If YOU had read the article, blah blah dumb idiot blah blah. As you've not replied to anybody in particular, your mistargeted rants could be construed as being directed toward the staff themselves, so keep it up and you won't HAVE to worry about what AT is reviewing in future.
Bottom line - it's faster than the 650 Ti, it's looking to be more efficient than the 650 Ti, and oh look, both have 1GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit memory interface, which you seem to have forgotten when you leapt down AMD's throat about the 7790, and when you went on your childish tirade about the 5770's 128-bit memory interface earlier.
As far as I recall, Ryan didn't mention anything about when Titan was available to buy, only that it had launched. Pretty much blows your theory of Ryan hating NVIDIA out of the water, doesn't it?
I'm not sure if I've said this before, and apologies to everybody else if I have, but I'm done with you, full stop. I can only hope everybody else here decides that not feeding the ignorance you perpetuate on every single AMD article would save them time they could be devoting to something far less boring instead.
To the staff - is there anything you can do to introduce an Ignore List? Thanks in advance for your response.
silverblue - Saturday, March 23, 2013 - link
A note about threading - doesn't look to be stepping in consistently, so sometimes it's a little difficult to see whom replied to whom.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
You got eveything wrong again, and you failed to read the article not I, and you failed to read my reply addressing half your idiotic non points, so you're the non reader, fool.Now I have to correct you multiple times. And you're a waste.
650TI overclocks and it's only faster in a few amd favor games which are here, of course.
Strike one for tardboy.
650Ti runs fine OC'd too, which it does well: " We pushed Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 650 as far as it'd go and achieved a maximum core overclock of 1125 MHz, with the GDDR5 memory operating at 1600. All it took was a 1.15 V GPU voltage. "
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-65...
The 128 bit bus - REPAYMENT for you FOOLS SQUEALING prior, what's so hard to understand ?
Did you forget all your WHINING ?
Did you forget your backing up the FAILED theorists with the nVidia dual speed memory ?
ROFL
You're up to strike 4 already.
" Ryan didn't mention anything about when Titan was available to buy, only that it had launched. Pretty much blows your theory of Ryan hating NVIDIA out of the water, doesn't it?"
NO, so why would it be mentioned if he didn't want anyone to buy it ? Why mention it, that would key in to save for release date, right ?
Instead we get this gem first off in BOLD to start the article: " Who’s Titan For, Anyhow? "
Guess that just crushed your idiot backwards bullhockey forever.
For all you know Ryan mentioned release date anyway.
You're not "done with me", you get everything WRONG, so you'll be opening your big fat piehole forever, that's how people like you do it. Idiot amd fanboys, all the same.
Also a beggar child for extra "control", since you "can't be an adult and control yourself" - please give me an ignore button ! I'm a crybaby who can't handle it !
ROFL
philipma1957 - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
One question does your 650Ti pays for itself? this amd will pay for itself via bitcoin. even with the asics. especially if you heat your home with electrical heat.nuff said
Rajan7667 - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
@form @LinusTech This is new New app for intel lovers. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gamers/vip-... …colonelclaw - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
To Ryan and staffAs a long-time admirer of AnandTech, I always enjoy reading pretty much every article you post, and have immense respect for all your writers.
However, I am now utterly fed up with the direction the comment discussions have taken. The general pattern is they start out as debates and end up as pretty nasty personal attacks that have nothing to do with the articles. You may say 'don't read the comments', to which I reply that they used to be an extension of the articles themselves, and were always a source of valuable information.
It pains me to say this, but if you don't start removing the trolls I will no longer come to this site at all, and I would guess I am not alone in having this opinion.
haze4peace - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
I agree 100% and actually sent off a few emails to the staff earlier in the day. I urge others to do so as well so we can put this problem behind us.KnightRAF - Monday, March 25, 2013 - link
I agree the trolls are out of control and need some pruning back. They have massively lessened my enjoyment of the site the last couple of times I've visited.