Value and Conclusion

After running the Radeon HD 7790 CrossFire combo through our test suite, it is clear that CrossFire support is still lacking and hasn't improved significantly in the last months. Major titles like Assassin's Creed 3, Skyrim, and World of Warcraft show terrible or negative CrossFire scaling, or none at all. New is that Hitman Absolution wouldn't load at all at 2560x1600.

When scaling works, it works very well, improving performance by around 80% compared to a single card. We singled out some of these games, such as Battlefield 3. HD 7790 CrossFire could be a pick if you happen to play them often. This certainly sounds nice, but you also have to consider potential scaling issues with yet unreleased games.

The dual-card HD 7790 CrossFire setup costs $300, which means it competes with the HD 7950 Boost ($300) and GTX 670 ($360). To be honest, right now I'd rather have a slightly slower HD 7950 that works with more games, or cough up a bit more money to buy a GTX 670, which is definitely more trouble-free. At this time, I can't recommend buying two HD 7790s for CrossFire just to save a bit of money.

It does, on the other hand, present an incremental upgrade path for gamers on a budget. They can spend $150 on a single card now and on another later, once it has, perhaps, even become cheaper, but there are many factors to consider, such as AMD's ability to ship out CrossFire profiles as new games are released. A single Radeon HD 7790 lets you play games at 1080p resolution, but some cases may require you to dial down the eye-candy. The HD 7790 CrossFire doesn't quite let you play things at 2560 x 1600, but, rather, 1080p with cranked up eye-candy. But hey, if you can afford a 30 inch monitor, you probably can get a faster single card as well.