The AMD HD7790 (and in our case the overclocked GIGABYTE HD7790)shows us that you do not need to spend a massive amount of cash to gain playable framerates in the majority of today's games at the most popular resolution. Costing almost a tenth of the price of the ridiculously expensive NVIDIA TITAN GPU yet churning out framerates at a much better ratio demonstrates where the smart money should go. We haven't however reviewed the AMD HD7790 to compare against the flagship product from the opposition, the card the HD7790 is pitched against is the NVIDIA GTX650 Ti and to that end it triumphs.

Throughout the benchmarks, the AMD HD7790 outmanoeuvred it's counterpart in the majority of tests which when you consider the HD7790 is 25% cheaper is a great victory indeed. Sure our sample has been breathed on by the overclockers at GIGABYTE but we doubt very much a reduction in clockspeed by 75MHz to the reference speed of 1GHz would make that much difference and to that end we are happy to conclude the HD7790 is the faster card out of the two as it currently lays. However...



£100 (estimated) is still not cheap. While it is on a par with the current HD7770 pricing and cheaper than the equivalent NVIDIA card it could easily be argued that the price is a fair one and we would agree. It cannot however be labelled a budget card and at this level of the market, cost is clearly a high priority. For occasional gaming this card will suit fine however for serious gaming, you will need to invest in a more powerful GPU to reap the benefits of quality settings and/or higher resolutions.

NVIDIA are also rumoured to be releasing a new competitor codenamed the GTX655 which is apt as it would settle between the GTX 650Ti and the GTX660 - right where the AMD HD7790 currently finds itself. How this new battle will pan out remains to be seen however for the moment, the HD7790 can hold it's head aloft as the graphics card of choice at the entry level of the gaming market.