Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 Dual-X Review

Sapphire’s Dual-X cooler is easily recognisable by any Sapphire fan and we have a two colour plastic shroud that covers the heat sink and fans.

Alongside the two stickers which reside on the top of the fans to indicate this is a Dual-X cooling system, the Sapphire brand can be found along the leading edge as well as the face of the card to show the brand name when the card is installed in a case.

Sapphire’s Dual-X cooler has become on of our favoured solutions for VGA cooling. Two 80mm fans with a now noise output push air through to the cooler, keeping the new Bonaire core cool under the collar.

Given this card is set to give some of the bigger contenders a run for their money, we find the the 7790 has a very impressive TDP of only 85 watts, provided through a single 6-pin power connector.

Like other 7700 series offerings, the 7790 is capable of 2-way CrossFire X configurations, giving up to 2x scaling.

Display outputs come with a standard array of options with both single and dual link DVI, HDMI and a full sized DisplayPort. the rest of the backplate is packed with vents for hot air to pass through and assist with efficient cooling.

Looking at the nitty gritty on Bonaire, from AMD, the 28nm core based card comes with a core clock speed of 1000MHz and a memory speed of 1500MHz (6000MHz effective), 1GB of GDDR5 memory and typical power draw of 85W. Sapphire with their OC version of this card have raised both the core and memory clocks, with a new core clock of 1075MHz and a memory clock of 1600MHz. Naturally we expect there to be a bit more give in the card and we’ll have a look later on to see how far the card can be pushed.