XFX HD 6790 Review (dual fan)

We would normally test these cards in a lower specified system, but today we wanted to see how the HD6790 will fit into the wider scheme of the market, so we are calling upon our Core i7 970 test bed which is overclocked to 4.33ghz. We have used this system to test many of our samples in recent months so it means with the synthetic benchmark testing we can get a better overview of overall market performance levels.

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Power Supply: OCZ ZX 1250W
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 7-8-7-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Dell 3011, Dell U2410 UltraSharp, Sanyo 50 inch LCD Television.

Other graphics cards:
Nvidia GTX590
Nvidia GTX580
Nvidia GTX570
XFX HD5970 Black Edition 4GB (QuadFireX)
AMD HD6990
AMD HD6970
AMD HD6950
AMD HD6870
AMD HD6850
AMD HD5870
AMD HD5850
Sapphire HD5770 Vapor X Edition (860mhz core)
MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II
nVidia GTX570
nVidia GTX 550 ti (900/1026)
nVidia GTX460 OC (715/900)

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Catalyst 11.4
Forceware 266.58 WHQL
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
HQV 2.0 Software

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Mafia 2
Resident Evil 5
Far Cry 2
Alien V Predator
Lost Planet 2
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Home Front
Total War: Shogun 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

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