Sapphire HD7790 2GB OC Review

The Sapphire HD7790 2GB OC is a very capable, cost effective graphics card with a massive amount of overclocking headroom. Our tests highlighted today that the core can be increased by almost 20 percent before any unwanted artifacting will occur. This pushes the overall performance to within striking distance of a reference clocked HD7850.

Sapphire have invested a lot of time and effort into creating an extremely high grade cooling system. This 2GB board features a new cooler design incorporating a dual heat pipe system and a single aerofoil section fan assembly with dust repelling bearings. The metal backplate cools the memory chips on the reverse side of the PCB and a finned heatsink attached to the backplate passes through the PCB and extends into the airflow from the fan on the front side of the card, enabling the airflow to carry away the heat from the components on the back.

Sapphire are clearly very confident in the performance of this cooling system, as the single fan profile is optimised specifically for acoustics performance. When idle, it spins at just under 1,000 rpm and when gaming the rotational speed only increases to around 1,300rpm. It produces very low noise emissions, right at the top of its specific class. The overclocked 1GB version of Sapphire's HD7790 is a little louder, but it does run cooler as the dual fan system drops temperatures by around 8c under the same load conditions.

The adoption of 2GB of GDDR5 may help in specific circumstances as seen when we tasked Max Payne 3 with a 1200MB+ memory overhead. With a 25mhz core clock deficit, the 2GB OC card is generally a little slower than the 1GB OC version, however in Max Payne 3 we recorded a slightly improved minimum frame rate during some sections of gameplay.

The biggest concern for the Sapphire HD7790 2GB OC is the pricing. The 1GB OC version of the card retails for £129.95 inc vat. While it is not listed at time of publication, Sapphire told us that the price point of the 2GB OC version should only be £5 extra, therefore around the £135 inc vat mark.

So far, so good, but Sapphire are selling the custom dual fan version of their HD7850 for only £139.99 inc vat. Even when factoring in the huge overclocking headroom available on the Sapphire HD7790 OC cards – which can be increased to 1,250mhz; the HD7850 is still faster – due to the 256bit memory interface and enhanced shader power.

There are clearly some pricing concerns, either the HD7850 is underpriced, or the HD7790 is too expensive. As it stands today, the products are really just too closely priced to wholeheartedly recommend the HD7790.

Right now, we would get the Sapphire HD7850 with dual fan cooler, it is just too good a deal to miss. If you are interested in picking up the Sapphire HD7790 OC cards then keep watching for the prices to drop, we imagine someone will realise that it needs to change.

Pros:

• fantastic cooling system.
• whisper quiet.
• solid overall performance.
• massive overclocking headroom.

Cons:

• why 1,050mhz and not 1,075mhz to match 1GB OC version, or even higher?
• two fans would improve cooling performance even more.
• Sapphire dual fan HD7850 is only £5 extra.

Kitguru says: A great card, but the £5 pricing difference between this and the Sapphire HD7850 makes no sense to us.

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