MSI Radeon HD 7790 Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,314 words · ~6 min read
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This video is brought to you by the Corsair Vengeance K70 and K95. These
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fully mechanical keyboards are designed for performance gaming. Visit
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Corsair.com/Vengeance gaming to learn more. Tell me something.
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Am I the only one who gets confused by AMD's naming scheme? Do you know how
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many times I've had to reshoot part of a video because I was like, today we're
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going to be having a look at the 7970 versus the 7790 or the 7770 or the 799.
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I mean, they're all there's only two numbers that change. They should just
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call him like the, you know, rejuvenator
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and like the like the the the the
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Bushmaster or like things like that. They should have names like pocket
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knives. Anyway, this is the 7790, which
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is slightly better than the 7770, but
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not nearly as good as the 7970. This is one from MSI. It is an overclocked
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graphics card, which basically means that it comes with a higher default clock speed than a stock one from
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directly from AMD would if you could buy something like that and the year wasn't
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sort of 2006. Um, it has 1 gig of GDDR5,
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although this GPU is available with more memory, and I might recommend stepping
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up to the 2 gig one if it doesn't cost that much more. It's uh PCI Express 3.0,
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DirectX11. It supports AMD Infinity, all those good things. And here we are. So,
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we've got a piece of foam here that keeps it in place. We've got a graphics
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card here that puts your games in their place. And we've got a couple of little
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adapters. I remember when graphics cards used to have a lot of different stuff in
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the packages. And honestly, I don't really miss those days because nowadays
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they come with exactly what you need and not a whole lot more. Now, this card is
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not based on exactly the same core as the 7770 and the 7750. And it's also not
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based on the same core as the 7850 and the 7870. In fact, the rumor on the
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street is that this would have been an 8000 series card if things had gone
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slightly differently for it and it would have been more like a replacement for a
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7770 as a next generation architecture. And it kind of aligns with that rumor in
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terms of the performance. Although I can neither confirm nor deny whether that
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was ever true or not because quite frankly I actually don't know. So, there
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you go. I don't even know why I bothered talking about that. MSI includes little
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dust covers on all of the connectors. So, you don't have to worry about any kind of corrosion or like um you know,
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biohazardous leeches
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eating the connectors while it's in transit or whatever else could possibly
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happen to a DVI connector while it's sitting in a box. Uh, it also gives you
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if you're ever storing the card, like if you want to keep it on like a trophy
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shelf, like if you want a tournament with this card and you wanted to like
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put it somewhere and keep it on display, then you could cover up the connectors
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so that they don't get covered in dust or something like that. You know what? Why don't I just stay focused from now
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on? So, we've got a 100 mm cooling fan that uses MSI's propeller blades. So,
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you can tell from the uh the tip on there. So, these are designed to push a
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little bit more air flow than standard blades. Remember, cooling graphics cards
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is a bit of a challenge because of the form factors that are necessary. This is
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a two slot card and so you often end up using thin fans that aren't really able
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to do much in terms of static pressure. You also often end up with very dense
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fin arrangements. So, it's incredibly important to design a fan that is able
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to deliver ample pressure in order to push air through these fins and actually
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cool the GPU as well as the other components of the card itself. The
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shroud is plastic, but it has kind of a nice look to it. MSI has really done a
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great job with their styling over the last few years. So, there's a solid
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aluminum block here that is attached to some aluminum fins up here. And then
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there are two heat pipes that appear to be direct touch heat pipes. So, those
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are contacting the GPU core directly. And they then carry heat out to the
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aluminum fin arrangement here as well as here. Now, you can see into the back of
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the card there's some components that look like they're going to get some incidental cooling from the fan itself
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as well as your single six pin PCI Express connector. Then over here we've
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got another heat sink that's attached directly to the PCB. That's going to be
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for your VRM. So they're actually bringing power into the board at the
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back and then turning it into the different voltages that the board itself
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can use that the chips on board can use right over here. So that's some sort of
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fancy routing, but it's not the first time we've seen this, particularly on
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these shorter length PCI Express cards. So you can see the card itself isn't
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much longer than a PCI Express slot. And
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I think that's pretty much all there is to say about that. Okay. Cooler. Yep. On
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the back, we find we're going to be exhausting some of the air outside the
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case, but like most custom cooled cards, this one exhausts most of the air inside
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the case. So, make sure you have adequate ventilation. Two DVI ports and
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HDMI and DisplayPort ports ensure that this card is able to support AMD's
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iinity. So, that means multiple displays, and they really do have the
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best driver support for this guys. If you want a game across multiple
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displays, it's probably a good idea to grab an AMD card. However, don't buy
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this one. If you're going to buy this one, buy the 2 gig version because even
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older games once you start playing at extremely high resolutions stand a
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pretty good chance of utilizing all of that video memory that they have
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available to them. 1 gig is really not going to be enough for you there. It
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does support Crossfire. So, there's a single Crossfire connector on the top of
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the card, meaning it's going to be compatible with two-way configurations.
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And this is something that I haven't really seen on an MSI card before, but
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it looks like they don't want you removing that stock CPU cooler. So, your
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warranty will be void on this card if you remove that and take off the cooler.
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However, it should be noted that these low-end cards, particularly the
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aftermarket PCB ones, are usually not compatible with liquid coolers anyway,
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particularly full cover ones. And if you're going to spend the money on a liquid cooler, a full cover blocks 100
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bucks plus. So, I wouldn't be doing it on a card that doesn't cost that much
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more than $1 to $170.
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So, there that's my tech tip of the day. Don't forget to subscribe to Lana's Tech
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Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And don't forget to check out my review of this card,
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MSI's 7790C,
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which is also on my channel.