Review: HD 7790 shootout: Sapphire vs. PowerColor vs. Gigabyte

Final thoughts and ratings

The Radeon HD 7790 graphics card makes a lot of implicit sense. It provides solid performance at a full-HD (1080p) resolution that's common on most monitors, it's good with respect to power consumption, heat, and noise, and there's no reason why the GPU cannot be housed on a small card that's suitable for a wide range of smaller systems.

All of this potential goodness conveniently ignores the spectre of price. As far as we're concerned, for the UK market, a £120-plus HD 7790 makes little sense when faced with the £125 HD 7850 and £150 GTX 660 - both are fundamentally faster GPUs that provide a much-needed boost for buttery-smooth gameplay.

But AMD's partners also realise that many potential purchasers may not fully grasp the intricacies of market positioning/performance and look at the shiny, new graphics cards with semi-blinkered eyes.

Card manufacturers have got into the habit of producing overclocked variants of any and all GPUs, and while this method works just fine on high-end cards such as the GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970, there's far less scope in the hugely compacted mid-range space, where different-architecture GPUs are crammed into a £50 melting pot.

We believe that board partners need to revisit the HD 7790 and launch smaller, cheaper cards, preferably single-slot, such that they play on the enviable power characteristics of the Bonaire GPU - something that the GTX 650 Ti Boost/660 and HD 7850 cannot replicate.

On to the reviewed cards, Gigabyte's £125 HD 7790 OC is decent in most regards but doesn't stand out in any one area. PowerColor's £120 HD 7790 Turbo Duo has better cooling and overclocks just a tad more, but the best of the bunch, from a purely product perspective, is the Sapphire, which has the best cooling, lowest temperatures and better-configured outputs. Trouble is, it costs £130 and, as a consequence of close pricing of other, better GPUs, is also difficult to recommend.

HEXUS rating

Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 Dual-X OC

PowerColor Radeon HD 7790 Turbo Duo

Gigabyte Radeon HD 7790 OC

HEXUS Where2Buy

All three reviewed cards are available from Scan Computers*.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.