Sapphire HD7790 OC Review

This review today is focused on four cards, The Sapphire HD7790 OC, The XFX HD7770 Core, XFX HD7850 Core and Sparkle GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series. How does the new AMD HD7790 slot into the budget sector?

We couldn't measure individual graphics power demand today at the slot as our Keithley Integra unit is in for repair.

Test System

Processor: Core i7 3960 X Extreme Edition @ 4.4ghz

Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7790 OC (Catalyst 13.3 Beta)
Cooler: Antec 920 H20
Memory: 16GB G.Skill 2,400mhz @ 10-11-10-30
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung
Monitors: Dell U3011 and Dell U2410 x 3.

Comparison cards:
XFX HD7770 Core (Catalyst 13.3 beta)
XFX HD7850 Core (Catalyst 13.3 beta)
Sparkle GTX 650 Ti Dragon Series (Forceware 314.21)

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Far Cry 2
Far Cry 3
Alien V Predator
Sleeping Dogs
Total War: Shogun 2
Dirt Showdown
Max Payne 3

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

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