Overall and Final Verdict
I’ll be honest, when I started with the cooling performance first I was a little concerned that the Diamond HD 7790 was going to be a bit ofa flop for us. The cooling results were at best comparable to what we would expect from a reference designed card. Of course that doesn’t take into account that the card is also overclocked and putting out a little more heat. But once we got past that, I was impressed with the cards actual performance across the board. In basically every test we did it managed to just slightly edge out ahead of the other overclocked HD 7790’s that we have tested. On top of that, because of its small fan, it did well in noise and power testing as well.
The unique cooling design of this card is going to polarize a lot of people. I expect some people to love the design while there will be others that just can’t stand it. I personally liked it once I noticed the black PCB they paired up with it. Being such an open design the black PCB is more visible, if they went with a nasty brown or even a blue the card might not have looked as good. I would have preferred it more if the cooler was blacked out to match though, but what can you do. Hopefully in the future Diamond keeps the top notch performance and considers a little better option for keeping it all cool. Considering it is the same price as some of the other cards and gets the best performance, I would seriously consider it if I were on the market for an HD 7790. On top of all of that, just like the other HD 7790’s you will get a copy of Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon and Bioshock Infinite with the card. That is a $74.98 dollar value on top of the card itself. That makes the $159.99 shipping price sound especially good.
