Introduction

I honestly don't get the debate people are having with the console vs. PC technology. Of course games are going to run a bit smoother and less buggy on a console. Companies have a single set of hardware to develop their games on and they can lock their frame rates at 30. They don't have to account for the near infinite hardware combinations a PC can have and the advanced instruction sets. However, the consoles are still limited to the technology inside of them. To an untrained eye, the differences might go unnoticed between console and PC. However, as a seasoned gamer and PC user, I can spot the changes immediately. Plus, graphics on a PC aren't all about gaming. DX 11 introduced some features that aren't only used with games, like DirectCompute.

Enough of that rant. Not every game on the PC needs to be tricked out to the max in order to enjoy, or meet the standards of their console sibling. There are many successful games that have a much lower system requirement than people think. There are also PC gamers either on a budget or that don't necessarily need the absolute best settings. That is where the entry market comes into play. This segment features cards that put out enough power for most gamers, but don't make you take out a loan to purchase. Typically these cards sit within the $100-$200 range and cover a wide spectrum of performance changes.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 6790 sits in that entry gamer market. The Radeon 6790 looks to edge out the competition with increased performance. It features a 840MHz core clock, 1050MHz memory clock, 800 Stream processors, and 40 texture units. Onboard, there is 1GB of DDR5 memory with a 256-bit interface. The 6790 has all of the same features and technology seen in the 6800 series. There is DX 11, Eyefinity, UVD3, and AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing support. The 6790 also has dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay technology. The I/O interface includes 2 DVI, 1 HDMI 1.4a, and 1 DisplayPort.