A Closer Look

XFX's cooler consists of two separate pieces: the top metal cover and the cooling assembly. Above, we see the heatsink module that uses a copper base and two heatpipes to keep the card cool.


This metal cover sits above the heatsink module. It contributes significantly to both the look and feel of the card. Since it's a real metal surface, it gives the card a premium feel, unlike the plastic coolers used by other vendors. It is also sufficiently independent, so XFX can use various coolers without having to adjust this component.


The card requires a single 6-pin PCI-Express power cable for operation. This power configuration is good for up to 150 W of power draw.


XFX uses a uPI uP1643 voltage controller on their card, which I haven't seen before. All other HD 7790 designs that I've seen use the NCP81022. There is absolutely no information available on this uPI controller, but my guess is that it provides software voltage control and monitoring since the Bonaire GPU has special voltage control requirements while, as far as I know, not being supported by any OC software.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


AMD's new Bonaire graphics processor is built on a 28 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan. It uses 2.08 billion transistors on a die size of 160 mm².