Why no love for the HD 6790

[mikegray]

Hey guys!

Has anyone out there had a look at the HD 6790? I'm thinking that it might be perfect for my next build - a little less power hungry than a 6850, a bit more oomph AND a bit more efficient that 5770. HIS has a modal called the IceQ X that might have some potential for silence right out of the box. Any advice here?

I'd be willing to go up to 6850 if I can get silence easily, though. I'm not really feeling like cludging on after-market coolers, though. That is, I will if that's the only way to get really good acoustics, but I'm pretty busy jut now ...

Mike

[dhanson865]

6790 can actually draw more power than the 6850 if you go by the TDP listed at Comparison of AMD graphics processing units : Northern Islands (HD 6xxx) series. From what I read that table is out of date the original 6790 had a 150W TDP but the newer revision that was actually released came in with a lower TDP (115W? I can't find an official TDP on AMD's site and the web references are all over the place on this one).

For truly silent video cards you want to look at 5750/5770 cards that are fanless or the upcoming 6670 which will be cheaper and will use less power (though won't be as fast in modern games).

I'd gladly take a 6790 if someone gave me one but I'm not interested in paying for one given the price/performance/TDP situation. Maybe if the price drops enough late this year or sometime next year we'll be talking about this as a good buy for silence. Basically someone has to make a fanless 6790 at or under the price of a fanless 5750 to catch my attention.

[Cryoburner]

Yeah, I was just checking the Toms review, and the 6790 tested there wasn't looking very promising in terms of power consumption. Higher power requirements than a 6850 while offering lower performance? That may have been partly due to tested card being based on a 6870 board though, and the non-reference ones are bound to be better. Even so, I doubt they'll get much better than the 6850 though, since the card is basically a higher-clocked 6850 with part of its GPU disabled. It's more or less the new 5830 of this current generation.

The current prices for the card don't exactly look that great compared to some 6850s either. There are a few 6850s at Newegg for roughly the same price as a 6790 after rebate. Just this weekend, they had one on sale for $140 USD after $15 rebate, $10 less than their lowest priced 6790. I'm sure there will be sales on 6790s in the coming weeks as well, but compared to the 6850, the card doesn't exactly look all that enticing at this time.

[CA_Steve]

There are a LOT of reviews out. Concensus is: lower performance than the 6850 for more power....and only $10 diff in price. Seems to be a very stupid product.

[dhanson865]

I have seen tables on numerous sites comparing some of these cards but frustratingly they always leave out one or two that I want to see in the table so I merged a few into one of my own.

Code: Select all

Card Name                SPs   GPU     ROP    Textures Memory    TDP
                              speed    p/c    filter/c rate**
Radeon HD 6850           960 775 MHz    32       48    128 GB/s 127W
Radeon HD 6790           800 840 MHz    16       40    134 GB/s 150W-115W?*
Radeon HD 5770/6770      800 850 MHz    16       40     77 GB/s 108W
Radeon HD 5750/6750      720 700 MHz    16       36     74 GB/s  86W

Radeon HD 6670           480 800 MHz     8       24     64 GB/s  66W
Radeon HD 6570 (GDDR5)   480 650 MHz     8       24     64 GB/s  60W
Radeon HD 6570 (DDR3)    480 650 MHz     8       24     29 GB/s  44W
Radeon HD 5670 (GDDR5)   400 775 MHz     8       20     64 GB/s  39W 
Radeon HD 5670 (GDDR3)   400 775 MHz     8       20     26 GB/s  39W
Radeon HD 5570 (GDDR5)   400 650 MHz     8       20     58 GB/s  39W
Radeon HD 5570 (GDDR3)   400 650 MHz     8       20     29 GB/s  39W

Radeon HD 6450 (GDDR5)   160 750 MHz     4        8     29 GB/s  27W
Radeon HD 6450 (DDR3)    160 625 MHz     4        8     13 GB/s  20W
Radeon HD 5450 (DDR3)     80 650 MHz     4        8     13 GB/s  19W
Radeon HD 5450 (DDR2)     80 650 MHz     4        8      6 GB/s  19W  

*The 6790 was originally listed at 150W TDP but then delayed to allow them to lower the TDP. I still can't find an official TDP for the released cards. It's likely that early reviews have higher TDP cards than what will be in stores this summer/fall.

** rounded to nearest GB/s

*** Yes there really is a 6750 & 6770 that is nearly identical to the 5750 & 5770 but so far they are OEM parts.

The ones in the top group with a TPD above 75W require an extra power connector and are very hard to make fanless as a retail product (though there is and will be a number of fanless cards in that group but they are more expensive). Look at PowerColor and Gigabyte as the most likely ODMs in the US (Powercolor products go by other names in the EU).

The ones in the middle group with GDDR5 are ideal for silent gaming PCs. Should be able to find a fanless card in this group much cheaper than the top group or convert a stock model to a fanless heatsink. Likely to save money in the long run as well.

The 6450 is the new HTPC darling that everyone is crowing about.

The thing I hate most about looking at the sub 75W cards for gaming is price checking with listings that don't make it clear if you are getting the faster or slower memory and sites that won't bother to put an accurate picture of the HS up (I've had to Dremel away pieces of heatsinks that interfered with a motherboard chipset heatsink before).