MSI Radeon HD 7790 OC Edition 1GB Graphics Card Review

When it comes to over clocking the Bonaire core, I now know that I should be looking at hitting a speed somewhere in the region of 1250MHz, but as to which side of this figure I will end up can be looked at in two ways. Firstly the low temperatures mean that thermal throttling or topping out is less likely to happen but at the same time, the slimmer cooler and the fact that the performance has not been quite where I expected, could mean that the silicon lottery is not playing into my hands this time round.

Given my slight doubt on the potential this card has for over clocking, I have to say that I’m rather impressed with where MSI’s card ended up. With the core clock speed up 223MHz to 1273 and the memory up 160MHz to 1660MHz, this translates to a whopping 21.2% gain on the core and a more modest ~11% gain on the memory speed.

Given the impressive over clock, its worth making sure that it actually gives adequate gain on the actual performance of the card. Prior to over clocking MSI’s 7790 saw only X1639 points, but with X1871 points when pushed we get a pretty good gain of ~14%.