14 DAY TRIAL // Pictured for the very first time quite a few days before the launch of the Radeon HD 6790 graphics card, MSI's solution based on AMD's latest GPU has now become official and MSI states that the card features improved overclocking headroom and better cooling when compared with the reference design.
The Radeon HD 6790 is built on top of the Barts LE core, a cut-back version of the Barts XT and Pro GPUs used to power the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 graphics cards.
Compared with these cores, Barts LE features only 800 stream processors, 40 texturing units and 16 ROP units, but retains the same 256-bit memory interface that connects the GPU to 1GB of GDDR5 video buffer.
The stock operating frequencies of the card are set at 840MHz for the core and 1050MHz (4200MHz effective) for the memory.
As far as MSI's solution is concerned, this works at the same frequencies as those set by AMD, but it packs an improved cooling system which the company states it provides 50% better cooling efficiency when compared to the reference design.
This improvement is possible since it packs three direct contact heatpipes which push the heat generated by the GPU into an aluminum heatsink chilled by a 90mm PWM controlled fan.
Moving to the back of the card, we find that MSI has added a full set of video outputs, including dual mini-DP connectors, an HDMI port and a pair of dual-link DVI video outputs.
Users who are still stuck with a D-Sub only monitor can use one of the two DVI ports thanks to the included adapter.
Just as MSI's other creations, the R6790-2PM2D1GD5 packs full support for the Afterburner software (including core voltage adjustment) which the company states can provide up to a 25% overclocking headroom.