Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 2GB OC Edition Video Card Review

Temperature & Noise Testing

Temperatures are important to enthusiasts and gamers, so we took a bit of time and did some temperature testing on the pair of Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 overclocked cards that we have.

Sapphire HD7790 OC 2GB GPU-Z Idle:

Sapphire HD7790 Dual-X OC 1GB GPU-Z Idle:

The Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 Dual-X OC 1GB card idle temperature of 28.0C and the Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 OC 2GB has a temperature of 32C in a room that was 22.0C (72F). We expected to see this difference though due to the drastically different GPU coolers being used.

Sapphire HD7790 OC 2GB GPU-Z Idle:

Sapphire HD7790 Dual-X OC GPU-Z Furmark:

When it comes to load results things were certianly not identical! The Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 OC 2GB card with its single fan and smaller GPU cooler hit 72. The and the Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 Dual-X OC 1GB peaked at just 60C thanks to the dual fans and larger GPU cooler. That means that the Sapphire HD7790 Dual-X OC 1GB was nearly 20% cooler than the 2GB version even with the 25MHz higher core clock speed. Notice the fan speed difference though! The Dual-X 1GB card has two fans spinning at nearly 2500 RPM, while the 2GB cards larger single fan is spinning at just 1800RPM. The Dual-X 1GB was louder to our ears, but lets see what the sound level meter has to say.

Sound Testing

For sound testing we use an Extech sound level meter with ±1.5dB accuracy that meets Type 2 standards. This meter ranges from 35dB to 90dB on the low measurement range, which is perfect for us as our test room usually averages around 36dB. We measure the sound level two inches above the corner of the motherboard with ‘A’ frequency weighting. The microphone wind cover is used to make sure no wind is blowing across the microphone, which would seriously throw off the data.

When it comes to noise levels the Sapphire HD7790 Dual-X OC 1GB was the quietest of the bunch at idle, but once the core is under full load you see the pair of fans spin up to over 2000 RPM and the card starts to get audible. The Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 OC 2GB runs hotter, but it’s actually a 2-3dB quieter when gaming or in other GPU intensive tasks.