HIS HD7750 iCooler Graphics Card Review

I had high hopes for this product before starting the review but now that I have finished, I am finding it difficult to work up any level of enthusiasm for the closing thoughts.

AMD's HD7750 has been designed as a low cost discrete solution for light gaming and high definition multimedia duties. One of the primary focus points for AMD has been on maintaining a very low power drain and subsequent heat discharge. In this regard they have triumphed because the hardware takes all the power it needs direct from the PCI e slot. We measured just over 40 watts when gaming, which is undoubtedly impressive.

The latest AMD HD7000 architecture has augmented tessellation performance, clearly evident with results gathered from the Unigine Heaven Benchmark. The HD7750 manages to outperform the HD6790 in this specific test, even if only by a single frame per second. Sadly when we start to measure real world gaming performance the HD7750 struggles to pull away from the HD6770, indistinguishable in a combination of synthetic and real world tests we adopted today. The problem is connected to the stream processors, which have been castrated from 800 on the HD6770 to 512 on the HD7750. High clock speeds can only partially compensate for this, rather than push the card into an elevated low cost performance sector for 2012.

This places HIS in a rather poor launching point, after all how can they dramatically improve on this product for launch? To their credit they included a modified cooler, which is better than the reference solution, although we don't like the plastic locking mechanism at all. Even slight pressure on the shroud can ‘unclip' one side, which is not very reassuring.

The major redeeming feature would be the price, but sadly AMD appear to have dropped the ball again. We were instructed just before launch that this card will ship for £85 pre vat in the UK, which puts the cost at £100 inc vat. At this price point the card is up against the slightly less expensive, and superior HD6790. This card is still available in many UK stores and offers a higher level of overall performance for slightly less money.

The horror story for AMD doesn't end there however as the vastly superior HD6850 can be picked up for £103.99 on Overclockers. Can't get any worse? Well Asus are releasing a HD6850 with Direct CU V2 cooler for £89.99 inc vat.

To make the HD7750 a viable value for money product, I would like to see this card available for around £80, not £100. AMD need to get their pricing sorted.

Pros:

• good power consumption.
• HIS have improved the cooler.
• low heat output

Cons:

• AMD are battling against their last generation of hardware, still available and faster (such as HD6850).
• plastic cooler holding clips are not good.

Kitguru says: HIS have created a solid version of this product, but AMD have overpriced it at £100. Drop the price to £80 inc vat then it makes more sense.

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