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HIS iCooler Turbo HD 7790 reviewed

by on17 May 2013

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Review: Good OC potential and cooling

Today we’ll take a closer look at a factory overclocked HD 7790, courtesy of HIS. The HIS HD 7790 iCooler Turbo graphics card is cooled by HIS’ in-house iCooler which should keep the temperatures in check while providing silent operation.

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The HD 7790 is based on AMD’s new Bonaire core, which fits snugly in between the HD 7770 and HD 7850. The new Bonaire GPU is a 28nm CGN part, optimized for superior power efficiency.

HD 7790 iCooler Turbo’s GPU is clocked at 1075MHz, while the memory ticks at 6400MHz. The reference core speed is 1000MHz, and the reference memory speed is 6000 MHz. HIS also has a reference clocked iCooler card. This means that only the difference between the plain and "Turbo" card are tuned up operating clocks (+75MHz for the core and 100MHz for the memory). The overclock is not spectacular, but we believe it is controlled by AMD. Other AMD partners came up with the same factory overclock but not one of them dared to push his card further. In our overclocking tests we will prove that the card is capable of attaining much higher clocks than 1075MHz.

Here are the specifications for the HD 7790 iCooler Turbo:

Model Name

HIS 7790 iCooler Turbo 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E DP/2xDVI/HDMI

Chipset

Radeon HD 7790 PCIe Series

ASIC

Radeon HD 7790 GPU

Manu. Process (Micron)

28nm

Memory Size (MB)

1024

Memory Type

GDDR5

Engine CLK (MHz)

1075MHz

Memory CLK (Gbps)

6.4Gbps

Memory Interface (bit)

128bit

Power Supply Requirement

500 Watt or greater power 

Max. Resolution

4096x2160 per display (DisplayPort 1.2)
2560x1600 per display (Dual-link DVI)

Bus Interface

PCI Express 3.0 x16

DisplayPort

Yes

HDMI

Yes

DVI

Dual-link DVI-I + Dual-link DVI-D

VGA

No

 


HIS’s standard packaging for the HD 7000 series is almost identical to that for the HD 5000/6000 series. We like compact packages, but we believe it lacks a product photo, leaving much to the imagination. The cardboard is tough and will shield the card from the usual abuse in transport. In the box we found a CrossFire conector, HIS sticker badge, driver CD, and multilingual user manual. XFX opted for standard size connectors, so the only additional converter in the box is DVI to VGA converter.

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The full name of the card is HIS 7790 iCooler Turbo 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E DP /2xDVI /HDMI (Part No.: H779FT1GD). The iCooler comes with a single 75mm fan and is two slots high.
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The iCooler comes with a plastic frame which is not much to look at and it doesn’t feel as special as the aluminum frame used by XFX Black DD R7790. However, the frame is tough and we did not find any instability or vibrations. The blue fan comes as refreshing detail here. Due to the open design some hot air will exhaust into the case. Therefore a good air circulation inside the computer case is needed.

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The plastic frame of the cooler is longer that the PCB, resulting in an overall length of 22.4cm (8.8"). It is easy to see that the plastic frame is longer than the PCB.

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The HD 7790 requires a single 6-pin power connector. The power connector is hidden behind the plastic shroud, but plugging a power cable into it is relatively straightforward.

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Taking the cooler off requires removing only four screws but it voids the warranty, so we suggest you just leave it alone. The cooler uses a copper plate which is connected to the circular heatsink, measuring 11cm long, 9cm wide and 3cm tall. The memory is cooled by airflow alone.

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HIS used four GDDR5 chips (256MB each) made by Hynix (model number H5GQ2H24AFR R0C). These chips are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective), but HIS factory overclocked them to 6400MHz.

A five-phase design (four GPU and one memory) is used for power delivery and a tall aluminum heatsink sits on top of the MOSFETs to provide additional cooling.

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The HD 7790 iCooler Turbo card has two dual-link DVI outs (one SL-DVI and one DL-DVI), one standard HDMI 1.4a and one standard DisplayPort 1.2 out. You may combine this card with another HD 7790 card from any vendor in a CrossFire configuration. The CrossFire connector is included in the package.

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 Testbed:
- Motherboard: EVGA Z77 FTW
- CPU: Ivy Bridge Core i7 3770  (4.5GHz)
- CPU Cooler: Gelid The Black Edition
- Memory: 8GB Corsair DDR3 2400MHz  
- Harddisk:   Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB
- Power Supply: CoolerMaster Silent Pro 1000W
- Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos II Ultra Tower
- Operating System: Win8 64-bit

Drivers:

- Nvidia 314.22-whql
- AMD 13.5_Beta2

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The AMD OverDrive tool can be found in the Catalyst Control Center, but in current version 13.5 beta 2 it did not let us take the GPU clock past 1200MHz. The memory clock was limited to 1600MHz, which is actually the default clock on the HIS card. We faced the same limits when we tried using EVGA PrecisionX and Sapphire TriX tools. HIS own iTurbo software in current version 1.4.4 or MSI Afterburner allows users to override AMD’s overclocking limit, so we gave it a go. We were able to push GPU all way up to 1290MHz and the memory up to 1750MHz (effective 7000MHz). The card was stable at this clocks and we recorded up to 16% better results in Crysis 3.

iTurbo info

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iTurbo fan

iTurbo settings

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Although the GPU and memory are stock overclocked from 1000MHz/1500MHz to 1075MHz/1600MHz respectively, the card did not experience any overheating issues, nor was it loud.

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The fan gets a bit too loud for our liking when it is manually set at 45+ percent (2500RPM+), but as long as you keep it in auto mode it should be quiet. The fan never goes above 1700RPM while in Auto mode, and if we didn’t manage to push it higher, neither should you. We will not call it completely inaudible under load, but the fan is really difficult to pick up unless you’re in a very quiet environment, and gamers rarely are. Even after our overclock and under full load, the fan never went up beyond 32 percent of available RPM speed, which is one of the reasons we love the iCooler.

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Power consumption is not high, either, as it goes up to 100W. The HD 7790 uses a bit more power than Nvidia’s GTX 650 Ti, but it ends up faster, so it looks like a tie.

 


The HIS HD 7790 iCooler Turbo 1GB is very nice package at a fair price. The main selling points the low price and solid performance. You can get one for as low as €122. However, if you feel like pinching pennies, we recommend you go for the non-Turbo version which costs a bit less, but it uses the exact same PCB and cooler. Judging by our tests, the iCooler is more than adequate to cope with reference clocked or overlocked HD 7790 cards.

The factory overclock did not result in any noteworthy performance gains, but once we tried tinkering with the clocks we managed to hit 1290MHz for the GPU and 1750MHz for the memory. The bumped up clocks did not have a big effect on the fan speed, the GPU stayed quiet and there wasn’t much noise, either.

AMD designed the HD 7790 to fill the gap between the HD 7770 and HD 7850 and it did a pretty good job. Judging by our tests, the HD 7790 iCooler Turbo is sufficient for gaming on resolutions up to 1680x1050, with high detail settings and antialiasing. At 1080p it is still possible to have some fun, but with less antialiasing and details. It is still possible to get a good balance between performance and image quality at 1080p, which is pretty impressive for such a low-cost GPU.

The HIS HD 7790 iCooler Turbo has plenty of overclocking potential, it ships with a top notch cooler and it costs about 6 euro more than the reference clocked HIS card, which is an equally good choice.

 

fudz recommended ny



Last modified on 17 May 2013
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