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
Final Words
Bringing our review to a close, the launch of the Radeon HD 7790 is another precisely targeted launch by AMD. The 7790 is intended to fill AMD’s price and performance gaps between the 7770 and the 7850, and it does this very well, offering 84% of the 7850’s performance – or 130% of the 7770’s performance – for around $30 less than the 7850. In the world of sub-$200 video cards where every $10 matters, this is exactly what AMD needs to fill in their product lineup.
Meanwhile as the first GCN 1.1 GPU, Bonaire doesn’t greet us with any great surprises, and if not for the new PowerTune implementation it would be indistinguishable from Southern Islands (GCN 1.0). With that said AMD already had a strong architecture in GCN 1.0, so even minor changes such as PowerTune and a new GPU configuration serve to make a good architecture better. The new PowerTune will probably take enthusiasts a bit of time to get used to, but ultimately we’re happy to see AMD moving to using just full clock/voltage states and not relying on their clockspeed-only inferred states, as the former is going to offer more power savings. As for AMD’s functional unit layout for Bonaire – 14 CUs, 2 geometry pipelines, and 16 ROPs – it looks to have paid off handsomely for them. They’ve improved performance by quite a bit without having to add too many transistors or a larger memory bus, making it a great way to iterate on GCN midway between new process nodes.
The big question of course is whether 7790 is worth its $149 price tag, and factory overclocked models like the Sapphire worth the $159 price tag. From a pure price/performance perspective, right now things look pretty good for AMD and their partners. Against the rest of the 7000 series it has a very clear niche to fill, which is does so but without being so good as to make the 7850 redundant. Meanwhile against NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 650 Ti things are still in AMD’s favor but it’s a bit murkier. A 12% performance advantage is distinct, but AMD’s also asking for nearly $20 more than most cheap GTX 650 Tis. At these prices there’s really no concept of a sweet spot since consumers often have fixed budgets, so instead we’ll point out that NVIDIA simply doesn’t have a suitable $150 video card right now; all they can offer are factory overclocked GTX 650 Ti cards.
Speaking of factory overclocked cards, our Sapphire HD 7790 Dual-X OC was exactly what we expected it to be. A 6-7% increase in clockspeeds leads to a 6% performance increase, showing that 7790 achieves the performance scaling necessary to make these cards viable. In this case overclocked cards are a very straightforward proposition: $10-$20 more for 6% more performance and typically a better cooler. This is all rather normal for factory overclocked cards, though we would point out that we have no reason to believe these overclocks aren’t achievable on stock-clocked cards.
Our one concern with the 7790 right now is one of memory size. Adding another 1GB of GDDR5 would definitely have a price impact, and having 2GB of GDDR5 on a 128bit bus would be a bit odd. But on the other hand we now know what the future of PC gaming holds: a lot of ports coming from a console with 8GB of GDDR5 memory. 1GB is going to look very small in a year’s time as those ports start arriving.
Ultimately we’re reminded of a discussion we had with the launch of the GTX 650 Ti last year, when we had the time to look at 2GB vs. 1GB on the 650 Ti and the 7850. Our conclusion at the time was such: “We have reached that point where if you’re going to be spending $150 or more that you shouldn’t be settling for a 1GB card; this is the time where 2GB cards are going to become the minimum for performance gaming video cards.” That conclusion has not changed. The 7790 looks good among the current crop of cards, but the 2GB 7850 is going to be so much more future-proof, at least in as much as a video card can be. At these prices consumer budgets are typically fixed and for good reason, but with 2GB 7850s available at around $180, it’s a very compelling upgrade for the extra $30. In 2013 it’s something worth considering if you want to keep a video card for at least a couple of years.
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Sabresiberian - Monday, March 25, 2013 - link
A roadmap is nothing but a projection of what is PLANNED for the future, not some kind of "promise" or "guarantee". Calling AMD people liars because the released product didn't match the projection is childish at best.And before you slap the "fanboy" label on me, I prefer Nvidia generally speaking (but I'm not going to cut off my proverbial nose to spite my face in order to be brand loyal; if AMD has the current best solution for my purposes, I'm going to buy AMD).
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 23, 2013 - link
128 bit bus is great, the HD5770 proved that.BWHAHAHHAAA
dishayu - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Good eye. But then they metion HD7790 as Pitcairn LE in that infographic. What they have launched as HD7790 now is Bonaire.ShieTar - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Maybe they surprised themselves by getting GDDR5 to run at 6GHz, and realized that they can stick with 128bit at that speed?Lonyo - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
They were going to use a cutdown Pitcairn, being 7870/7850 GPU, and cut down the GPU core to use excess cores that couldn't make the cut as 7870/7850s.They might have gone with 256-bit to simplify the product for AIB partners who could just re-use their HD7850 designs, rather than needing a new design for a smaller run product.
The 7790 now is a new GPU designed to be cheaper to produce (as it's smaller) than Pitcairn, and the fact the memory can run at 6GHz is probably due in part to the fact it's a new GPU rather than a cut down Pitcairn.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
I don't see a launch date in the whole article, it's NOT available. I guess that's another mystery freebie for AMD's products here.Didn't see port config either, so what cabling do we have to buy to run 3 monitors when Asus 650ti runs 4 out of the box, 3 with dvi and vga only ?
Not impressed with the huge AMD biased game line up either, so expect your mileage to be less than shown.
No overclock talk really either - so it must blow at that.
Other sites are reporting amd's beta driver, so maybe they won't even have a release driver for this card when they release it, as AMD is often known to do, for like a year sometimes or forever in terms of any sort of quality-LOL.
Civ5 has only 1 bench rez, it must have crashed in others.
Crossfire ? Article didn't say.
Multi-monitor - no talk of that anymore since nVidia SPANKS amd to death on that now.
Hopefully you've fooled the internet tards again, because amd is bankrupt, for good reason.
Spoelie - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Let's feed the troll.Did you even read the article?
-Launch date is mentioned on page 1, in one and a half week
-Ports are clearly visible and standard, 2 DVI + HDMI + DisplayPort
-Lineup is consistent with every other review on Anandtech.
-There's an entire page on the new PowerTune and how it impacts overclocking, single sample OC investigation is irrelevant and best left for a dedicated vendor comparison.
-... really?
Who's the real tard here?
Spunjji - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Oh for a down-vote button. We expect no less than mindless bollocks from Cerise, but failing to read the article entirely is a new low.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 23, 2013 - link
No, that's what you do all the time. But thanks for the compliment, since you know I always read the articles completely, yet you think I didn't this time, WRONG.I've made a lot of money this past short week without a lot of rest, so I'll give you and dipsy doodle a point on the svengali launch date the article writer for the first time EVER declares "solid" before it even occurs, og wait, he always does that when it's AMD, but if it's nVidia he says we'll have to wait and see as they are probably lying...
ROFL
Who cares, the card sucks, amd is dying, the drivers blow beta chunks, and amd is way late to the party.
ppeterka - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
Just a question: And how much will your favored brand of GPUs cost, if AMD really dies? 10 times? 100 times? An arm, a leg, and both kidneys? Grow up, and understand how an ecosystem works for us all.BTW. I don't have GPU preferences, just grab what gives bets bang for bucks. If it has EasternElbonianVideoPigs GPU on it - be it...