MSI Radeon HD 7790 OC Edition 1GB Graphics Card Review

With the number of Bonaire cards in my back catalogue growing and the testing data to go with them building a bigger and better picture on how the 7790 performs at a variety of levels, I’m at the stage where I can start to make better judgements on individual cards when compared to similar offerings. Sadly though I was a little disappointed this time round as MSI’s 7790 OC Edition didn’t quite perform as well as I was expecting it to with a slower card out performing it in most of the benchmark tests. Given the higher clocks, I was expecting an extra frame or two over Club3D’s slower 7790 but instead the results were the other way round. Granted there were some tests that did prove to be more in favour of this card, but overall if you are a frame counter that will only go for the most frames or best benchmark score then as it comes this may not be quite the card for you on that front.

Turning the tables though, there are a number of good points, if not some great ones at that that do work in favour of MSI’s card. The most notable of these and one that I reckon is going to stand for quite a while is the amazingly low temperatures that MSI have got this card running at.  Dropping nearly 6C below average to near room temperature at idle and only just creeping over 52C at full load makes this the coolest card that I have looked at to date. Given the fact that MSI have not used the biggest cooler on the market nor have they gone with any fancy cooler technology over the tried and tested twin copper heat pipes, I have to say that I am very impressed. OK so the fan is not as quiet as claimed, but its still very quiet and by the time its nestled into a chassis and left to its own devices, its going to be hardly noticeable compared to high end cards.

The point of low heat and low noise output therefore leads me to suggest that this card is ideal for anyone who wants to build either a quiet, entry level system for light gaming, or for a HTPC with a little extra grunt. On a similar note, if you do want the performance as well as the above, then why not over clock it seeing as its getting easier and easier to do so with MSI’s own Afterburner software.

Rounding this review off, justifying the ~£120 price tag for this card can be taken in two ways. If its the silence and cool running that is a higher priority over performance, then by all means go for it, after all you can add a second card in and get practically double the performance from it as I’ve shown from my CrossFire review, if its pure frame pushing performance that you want then yes there are other options.

Bottom line, whilst this isn’t the best benchmarking card that I’ve seen out of box as far as the 7790 goes, its got one hell of a cooler on it an it over clocks very well whilst staying cool. So based on the cooling performance and to give it some recognition I’m going to give this card our Extreme Performance award for its extreme cooling performance and a set of temperatures of which I don’t think are going to be beaten any time soon.