AMD Radeon HD 6790: specs and benchmarks

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Summary

AMD started Radeon HD 6790 sales 4 April 2011 at a recommended price of $149 . This is a Terascale 2 architecture desktop card based on 40 nm manufacturing process and primarily aimed at office use. 1 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.05 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 134.4 GB/s.

Compatibility-wise, this is dual-slot card attached via PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 198 mm. Two 6-pin power connectors are required, and power consumption is at 150 Watt.

It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at 4.17% of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.

RTX 4090GeForce RTX4090
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General info

Some basic facts about Radeon HD 6790: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in performance ranking642
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Value for money0.33
ArchitectureTerascale 2 (2009−2015)
GPU code nameBarts
Market segmentDesktop
Release date4 April 2011 (12 years old)
Launch price (MSRP)$149
Current price$184 (1.2x MSRP)of 168889 (A100 PCIe 80 GB)
Value for money

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Technical specs

Radeon HD 6790's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 6790's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.

Pipelines / CUDA cores800of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT)
Core clock speed840 MHzof 2610 (Radeon RX 6500 XT)
Number of transistors1,700 millionof 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile)
Manufacturing process technology40 nmof 4 (GeForce RTX 4080)
Power consumption (TDP)150 Wattof 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem)
Texture fill rate33.60of 969.9 (H100 SXM5 96 GB)
Floating-point performance1,344.0 gflopsof 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo)

Size and compatibility

This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon HD 6790 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16
Length198 mm
Width2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pin

Memory

Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 6790: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.

Memory typeGDDR5
Maximum RAM amount1 GBof 192 (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Memory bus width256 Bitof 19000 (GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB)
Memory clock speed1050 MHzof 23000 (GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER)
Memory bandwidth134.4 GB/sof 3276 (Aldebaran)

Video outputs and ports

Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 6790. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
HDMI+

API support

APIs supported by Radeon HD 6790, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectX11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model5.0
OpenGL4.4of 4.6 (GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile)
OpenCL1.2
VulkanN/A

Benchmark performance

Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 6790. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

Benchmark coverage: 25%

HD 6790 1616

3DMark Vantage Performance

3DMark Vantage is an outdated DirectX 10 benchmark using 1280x1024 screen resolution. It taxes the graphics card with two scenes, one depicting a girl escaping some militarized base located within a sea cave, the other displaying a space fleet attack on a defenseless planet. It was discontinued in April 2017, and Time Spy benchmark is now recommended to be used instead.

Benchmark coverage: 17%

HD 6790 13637

3DMark 11 Performance GPU

3DMark 11 is an obsolete DirectX 11 benchmark by Futuremark. It used four tests based on two scenes, one being few submarines exploring the submerged wreck of a sunken ship, the other is an abandoned temple deep in the jungle. All the tests are heavy with volumetric lighting and tessellation, and despite being done in 1280x720 resolution, are relatively taxing. Discontinued in January 2020, 3DMark 11 is now superseded by Time Spy.

Benchmark coverage: 17%

HD 6790 2887

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics

Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.

Benchmark coverage: 14%

HD 6790 2150

Gaming performance

Let's see how good Radeon HD 6790 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.

Average FPS across all PC games

Here are the average frames per second in a large set of popular modern games across different resolutions:

900p52
Full HD61

Performance in popular games

Full HD
Low Preset

Cyberpunk 2077 7−8

Full HD
Medium Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 7−8
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 1−2
Battlefield 5 10−12
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 14−16
Cyberpunk 2077 7−8
Far Cry 5 8−9
Far Cry New Dawn 8−9
Forza Horizon 4 14−16
Hitman 3 9−10
Horizon Zero Dawn 7−8
Red Dead Redemption 2 8−9
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 10−12
Watch Dogs: Legion 4−5

Full HD
High Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 7−8
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 1−2
Battlefield 5 10−12
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 14−16
Cyberpunk 2077 7−8
Far Cry 5 8−9
Far Cry New Dawn 8−9
Forza Horizon 4 14−16
Hitman 3 9−10
Horizon Zero Dawn 7−8
Metro Exodus 6−7
Red Dead Redemption 2 8−9
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 10−12
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 9−10
Watch Dogs: Legion 4−5

Full HD
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 7−8
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 1−2
Battlefield 5 10−12
Cyberpunk 2077 7−8
Far Cry 5 8−9
Far Cry New Dawn 8−9
Forza Horizon 4 14−16
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 9−10
Watch Dogs: Legion 4−5

1440p
High Preset

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 7−8
Hitman 3 7−8
Horizon Zero Dawn 10−11
Metro Exodus 2−3
Red Dead Redemption 2 2−3
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 7−8

1440p
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 1−2
Cyberpunk 2077 2−3
Far Cry 5 6−7
Far Cry New Dawn 2−3
Forza Horizon 4 5−6
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 2−3

4K
High Preset

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3−4
Hitman 3 4−5
Horizon Zero Dawn 7−8
Red Dead Redemption 2 2−3
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1−2

4K
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 1−2
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 0−1
Cyberpunk 2077 0−1
Far Cry 5 4−5
Far Cry New Dawn 7−8
Forza Horizon 4 4−5

Relative perfomance

Radeon HD 6790's performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.


NVIDIA equivalent

According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 6790 is GeForce GT 750M Mac Edition, which is faster by 4% and higher by 14 positions in our ranking.

GT 750M Mac EditionGeForce GT750M Mac Edition
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Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 6790:

Similar GPUs

Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

GTX 550 TiGeForce GTX550 Ti
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ATI HD 5770Radeon HD5770
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GTS 450GeForce GTS450
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ATI HD 5850Radeon HD5850
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R7 250Radeon R7250
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Recommended processors

These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 6790 according to our statistics.

User ratings: view and submit

Here you can see the user rating of the graphics card, as well as rate it yourself.


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Questions and comments

Here you can ask a question about Radeon HD 6790, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.