MSI Radeon HD 7790 OC Edition: Mid-Range Graphics

As we mentioned our introduction here, you’re saving a good $20-$25 by going with MSI’s HD Radeon 7790 OC Edition over one from ASUS or Sapphire. If you’re looking at a mid-range graphics card like this, you’re likely building a computer (or upgrading it) on a budget, so $25 means you have more cash that can go into buying a better version, or more of some other component, like memory. So, is this card the way to go? What do you gain (or lose) by going with MSI’s 7790 card?


In each of our benchmarks, the MSI Radeon HD 7790 makes its case as a solid mid-range graphics card. No, it doesn’t have quite the performance of competing 7790 cards that we tested. And no, it’s not a slam-dunk challenger to the GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST – by performance numbers alone. What makes MSI’s card competitive is its price. Viewed from the perspective of its $135 price tag, those performance gaps start to look smaller. For many games, the extra $25 is only buying you a couple more frames per second than other 7790s, which you'll be hard pressed to perceive in virtually any game environment. Given that, the MSI Radeon HD 7790 looks like a pretty good deal for casual gaming.


It also doesn’t hurt that the MSI Radeon HD 7790 has the lowest temperatures and power draw (under load) of all of the cards we compared it to. If you’re dealing with limited chassis space, or you’re watching temps and power draw, the MSI card is likely worth the very minor drop in FPS compared to the other 7790 cards.

It’s easy to give a PC component flack for bringing up the rear in the benchmarks, but given the context, we’re rather comfortable with the MSI Radeon HD 7790. A card like this is going to be the right choice for a lot of people looking at mid-range graphics cards on a budget or with cool and quiet performance in mind; though it might occasionally get passed over by people who are hunting for the absolute best mid-range performance.