XFX Radeon HD 6790 Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,321 words · ~6 min read
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Radeon. Everyone's been requesting this unboxing. The reality of it is I didn't
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have a card, so now I do. I have a Radeon 6790. This is a one gig graphics
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card from ATI or AMD if you would prefer. No, AMD. ATI if you prefer,
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although you'd be wrong. AMD is the correct one. So, it's a 1 gig card. It
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includes XFX's five-star support, which is uh worldrenowned at this point. It's
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a PCI Express 2.0 card. It has dual fans, which is probably the reason for
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the graphic that looks pretty sweet on the front of the box here. Let's see
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what else they've got to say for themselves. Supports AMD Infinity multi-dis technology, AMD Crossfire X
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multiGPU technology, and AMD accelerated parallel processing technology. This is
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part of the AMD vision premium tier. So, if you wanted to build an AMD Vision
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system, then this would be part of a premium. So, you could go select a premium level processor and you would
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end up with a reasonably well balanced system. That's the whole idea of AMD Vision. It's a great idea. All right,
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we've got full DirectX11 support. AMD Infinity, which we mentioned before, PCI
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Express 2, which we mentioned before, 1080p full HD, which it bloody well
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better support. AMD HD 3D technology, which allows you to view 3D Blu-ray
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content, as well as play 3D games through your H through your 3D ready
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television using the glasses from that provider. DisplayPort 1.2 HDMI 1.4A,
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which is required for 3D. 7.1 HD surround sound is built into this card
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as well as GDDR5. What else do we got here?
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Pretty much it. Okay, let's open it up.
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I don't know if I showed you guys this yet, but I have a Hello Kitty key for my
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house now. I love it. I think it's awesome. Cameraman got it for me.
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There we are. I've always liked how XFX boxes look like a shoe box. Like it
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feels like I just bought shoes. Everyone likes shoes. I got new shoes today,
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actually. But they're badminton shoes. So, um I'm not wearing them right now.
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I'm actually just wearing my socks and sandals, which are a fashion atrocity,
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and I love it. Okay. Pro Series PSUs.
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So, they've got a little catalog for some of their other products, which are good. 5-year warranty. Something about
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fivestar support. All of that's good stuff. North America limited warranty.
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Okay, so there's some fine print for you. Don't forget XFX's warranty is
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actually here. Hold on. Why don't we have a look at what they have to say for themselves here. What is covered by this
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limited hardware warranty? What is not covered? Uh, how does state law apply?
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What will XFX do? May I transfer? Ah,
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may be transferred to one owner after the original owner. Pretty sweet, huh?
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Most graphics card companies will not let you transfer your warranty.
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Okay, cool. Next, we have a quick install
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guide. Next, we have a driver CD and
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installation guide. Don't use it. Okay.
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Finally, we have uh one of these awesome
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Oh, no. Here's the driver CD. That was just the install guide. One of these
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awesome door hangers. Do not disturb. I'm gaming. And like planes and stuff.
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Excellent. Everyone likes planes. You just put like
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planes on it and then it's faster and better.
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more performance. All right. So, here's my shoes. I mean
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graphics card.
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Because the 6790
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does not have a reference design. That
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means every 6790 you purchase, whether it's XFX or any
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other brand, will be a nonreference PCB.
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So, what that means in XFX's cases, because they're awesome, is matte black
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PCB, which as you guys may or may not know by this time, I am a huge, huge fan
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of. So, it's all matte black and awesome and looks great. And here's something I
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just noticed. So, it looks like XFX does not want you to remove the cooler from
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this particular card. You can see there's little warranty void if removed
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stickers on two of the screws on the back. So you cannot remove that there
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heat sink without voiding that their warranty. So watch out for that guys.
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PCIe 2.0 connector on the bottom of the
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card. And that pretty much does it for what I wanted to say there. Here you can
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see the design of the cooler a little bit. So we got three heat pipes embedded
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in the base. And it looks like those are heat pipe direct touch heat pipes. So
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those should perform pretty darn well. We've also got a fairly um wow opposite
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of dense. I'm like, I'm feeling dense right now cuz I can't remember what the
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word is for that. Sparse comes to mind, but that's not really something I would
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use to describe the uh fins of a heat sink. Okay. Well, a fairly uh low
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resistance heatsink design, rather resistant to air flow. So, the spacing
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between the fins is quite large, which means that these fans, although they're
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thin and are not going to be able to generate a ton of static pressure,
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should be able to push a decent amount of air flow through those and still
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remain quiet. Okay. So, you can see that the heat sink is solid here where those
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heat pipes come through. That's where the GPU core is. And then those heat pipes, which I showed you before, come
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up here from the top and are carrying the heat out to the fins where they can
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be directly cooled by these fans. Good
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stuff. We have two six pin power connectors,
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although from what I understand on the 6790, it's fairly debatable whether it
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actually needs a second PCIe power connector. Either way, the card won't
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work unless you plug in both. But this is not a super power hungry card. So
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regardless of, you know, how many connectors there are on it, don't worry
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too much about it. You're not going to be like, you know, going crazy on your
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power bill just because you plug in a 6790. Here at the back, you can see
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there's very little restriction in terms of air flow. Uh oh, low restriction. I
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could have said that. Okay. Very little restriction in terms of air flow for air
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coming out the uh front of the card. All
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right. So, this is an internal exhaust design. You can see that fairly clearly.
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You're going to kick a little bit of heat out here where the XFX logo is
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built into the PCI back plate at the back. But other than that, most of the
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exhaust is going to be in your case. As I said before, this is not going to kick
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out a ton of heat. So, I wouldn't worry too much about installing this in your
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case. And oh, my CPU temps are going to go through the roof. No, I'm wouldn't worry too much about that. Here on the
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back of the card, we see our output connector. So, we've got two DVI, one
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HDMI, and two DisplayPort. That means this card supports up to four displays
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in mode. So, two via DVI or HDMI. So,
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you can use these two, these two, or these two. And then two more via mini
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DisplayPort. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing of the XFX Radeon
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HD6790. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech
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