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Sapphire HD6790 CrossfireX Review

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: Corsair Ax1200
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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12 comments

  1. Really good price for what you get, nice cooler too.

  2. Well let’s be honest, it wouldn’t take much to outperform the 550 ti

  3. Very nice card. Some very good work on AMD’s driver side.
    Image quality looks amazing for a card at this price and performance is on par with the price sector.
    It’s a shame that even with the much improved F@H Core 16 this card wont fold nearly as many PPD as a GTX550Ti. That kind of sours the whole deal to me.

    Stellar Review Zardon. Nice addition of the overall scoring on the conclusions page.

    Proud KitGuru Folder (Team 196420) and Gamer.
    Fisshy

  4. I really hate the way they change the naming conventions on these. why not call it the 6770 and be done with it?

    Otherwise its impressive for the price and fascinating to see the CFX results showing it often close between GTX570 and GTX580, for a fraction of the price.

  5. These are extremely impressive little boards, for the price I cant see it getting much better than this.

  6. I am very impressed with the performance results, I hear some of them will be 110 quid too, bargain really.

  7. That cooler is identical to the 5870 version, thats a nice way to do it. saves them development money on a new cooler too.

  8. The biggest problem is that 5830 has dropped in price, XFX are selling their 5830 XXX for 85 inc vat.

  9. How GTX550 Ti loss on Resident Evil 5?

    HD 6790 – Max FPS 72
    – Min FPS 57
    Average – 64,5

    GTX550 Ti – Max FPS 72
    – Min FPS 60
    Average – 66

    To me this is a victory by a green team… Well, the result yet remains in favor to red team, with 7 victory vs 5 victory.

    On games the battle is very difficult, 4 wins for each team. I was thinking, if is possible make this test in 1650×1050.

    After all, 1650×1050 is the better choice for both cards. 2560×1600 and 1920×1200/1080 is more High-end resolution.

    Maybe put more games DX11 e more titles. Just a idea. Anyway, good reviews! Thx for that.

  10. We don’t post maximum frame rate figures Guiherme. The 72 fps is the average figure, not the maximum.

    Thanks for the comments, glad you like the reviews.

  11. Hey guys, why would anyone buy a GTX 580 (AU~$500) when you can get two 6790’s and crossfire them for less than AU$300? Is there something I’m missing?

  12. ^^^
    because most users doesn’t have an XFire capable board to do this and some doesn’t want to Xfire at all.