Sapphire is releasing another 7790 graphics card, but this time one with a factory overclock as well as twice the amount of onboard memory. Previously, AMD had asked manufacturers not to overclock the 7790 chip to prevent the card from outperforming the slightly higher priced 7850.
Sapphire's new HD 7790 OC carries 2 GB of onboard GDDR5 memory that runs at a clock speed of 6.40 GHz over a 128-bit memory bus. The GPU's clock speed has been increased by five percent, boosting it up to 1,050 MHz, 50 MHz over the reference 1,000 MHz. Connectivity is taken care of by two DVI ports, a single HDMI port as well as a DisplayPort.
The cooler on the graphics card is one that has been used before; in fact, it's the cooler that is used on the regular HD 7790 that Sapphire sells. The cooler is built using an aluminum block through which heat is transferred to two copper heatpipes. Beyond this, the cooler comes with a backplate to ensure that the memory and VRMs also remain cooled up to 13°C lower than without a backplate.
So far there has been no word on pricing or availability.
