New Budget Radeon Graphics Card

by Greg Woolston

Source: AMD

With all the recent talk of super high end PC gaming GPUs, sometimes the budget PC gamer can get a bit down. Well, AMD has recently announced the Radeon HD 7790, which promises to deliver 1080p visuals at the relatively low price of $150. This is good news for the budget minded PC gamer. This new card features the Graphics Core Next architecture, which boasts outstanding performance with games developed using the DirectCompute programming language. The language is used on a lot of games that have come out recently, and will most likely be used a lot more in the future. The following graphic shows the performance boost over another popular GPU at the same price point, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 TI.

Source: AMD

The DirectCompute language is used for various features in some of today’s highest profile games as shown by AMD.

• Tomb Raider: TressFX Hair and depth of field
• DiRT Showdown: Global illumination and advanced lighting
• Far Cry 3: Ambient occlusion and global illumination
• Hitman Absolution: Bokeh depth of field
• Crysis 3: Global illumination, particle shading, directional occlusion
• 3Dmark®: Numerous post-processing effects to improve lighting/shadowing

With 1GB of GDDR5 memory, 500MHz Memory Clock (6.0 Gbps GDDR5), 96GB/s memory bandwidth (maximum), and 1080p resolution, this definitely seems to be a great option for those looking to get into an inexpensive gaming machine. For the entire list of specifications I will direct you to the specifications page on AMD’s website.

Specs: AMD

From reviews around the web this chip seems to perform quite well with some of the games listed above, but others tend to bog it down when running at full settings. The AMD Radeon HD 7850 can be had for a little more cash than the 7790, which provides a performance boost. However, if building a budget gaming PC capable of 1080p resolution, then this could be the card for you. This new GPU will be available April 2.

Source: AMD Blog