In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 7790 MSI 1GB OC Edition are marginally better than the AMD Radeon HD 5850 MSI Twin Frozr II 1GB Edition.

The HD 7790 has a 325 MHz higher core clock speed but 16 fewer Texture Mapping Units than the HD 5850. The lower TMU count doesn't matter, though, as altogether the HD 7790 manages to provide 6.6 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 7790 has a 325 MHz higher core clock speed than the HD 5850, but the HD 5850 has 16 more Render Output Units than the HD 7790. As a result, the HD 5850 exhibits a 6.4 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the HD 7790. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The HD 7790 was released over three years more recently than the HD 5850, and so the HD 7790 is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the HD 5850 when running the latest games.

The Radeon HD 5850 MSI Twin Frozr II 1GB Edition and the Radeon HD 7790 MSI 1GB OC Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The HD 5850 has 32 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the HD 7790, which means that the memory performance of the HD 5850 is noticeably better than the HD 7790.

The Radeon HD 5850 MSI Twin Frozr II 1GB Edition has 1440 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 7790 MSI 1GB OC Edition has 896. However, the actual shader performance of the HD 5850 is 522 and the actual shader performance of the HD 7790 is 941. The HD 7790 having 419 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the HD 5850 performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The HD 7790 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 5850. This means that the HD 7790 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 5850. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the HD 7790 should consume less power than the HD 5850.

The Radeon HD 5850 MSI Twin Frozr II 1GB Edition requires 151 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 7790 MSI 1GB OC Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 5850 and a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the HD 7790. The HD 5850 has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the HD 7790. The difference is significant enough that the HD 5850 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the HD 7790.