Conclusion

The HD7790 GPU is a powerful beast for the name it carries as it well exceeds what we have seen from a 7700 series card. I believe with some driver optimizations this card could really wake up to be a greta bang for the buck. 

The limit to 1GB framebudffer I feel can be an issue on some modern titles but at this level the effect would be neglidgable as your not going to be pushing memory that hard before you run out of GPU.

This card is one of those products you need to look at for what it is, It is not a GTX680, or HD7970… It is a mainstream level card built for those who just like to game at medium or high settings and dont need every last bit of eye candy enabled.

If I were to build a budget rig for my family and they wanted to do some gaming I could imagine this card could be a good performance budget option, you just have to remember when you get to this level of card you have to know what you plan to play and know its limits out of the gate or you could end up disappointed.

I hope that AMD will loosen the strings a little on the overclocking headroom as even at out of the box clocks you are almost maxed on GPU and are maxed on memory.

 All in all I think Sapphire did a really good job on this card maxing the memory out and a healthy clock on the GPU all while making it look as mean as its big brothers. The overclock limitations I found on the card were due to AMD limiting the cieling on the Overdrive utility and not by Sapphire so they simply made what they could out of it.

**Reviewers Note: I would like to revisit this card as drivers mature to see how performance matures and capabilities increase, and also lets not forget possible higher limit to overclocks. (Pending time available)

OUR VERDICT: Sapphire HD7790

Performance 8.5 Value 9 Quality 9 Features 8 Innovation 9 We are using a new addition to our scoring system to provide additional feedback beyond a flat score. Please note that the final score isn’t an aggregate average of the new rating system. Total 8 Pros Cons Excellent overclocking potential Nice price point FleX display capability Support up to 4 displays Excellent thermal performance Low power consumption Super quiet cooler Runs most games quite well at HD resolution Simply a nice looking card Overclock ceiling cut off GPU&Memory potential Driver maturity questionable

Summary: The Sapphire HD7790 is a nice and powerful card at a very value price point. for this it earns the Bjorn3D Seal of Approval