PowerColor RX 7800 XT Hellhound Review - it's a no brainer!

alright guys Dominic here for kick Guru and following on from our launch day review of amd's new RX 7800 XT today we are taking a look at our first partner card model specifically the power color hellhound so this card features a beefed up triple fan cooler there's dual bios and even a physical switch to control the lighting the question is though is it worth the 40 pound premium over amd's reference design well that's what we're going to find out in this video [Music] thank you kicking off with a look at the design of the card then as modern gaming graphics cards go I have to say it is fairly simple looking overall with a dark gray plastic shroud it doesn't feature any raised sections or sharp angles though giving it a fairly stripped back appearance some may find this boring but I personally quite like the understated visuals the three fans grab your attention too with their translucent fan blades which is of course designed to amplify the LED lighting which we'll get to in a moment it is worth noting though that the central fan is smaller than the altitude coming in at 90 millimeters compared to 100 millimeters and that Central fan does also spin in reverse a now common feature designed to reduce overall airflow turbulence in terms of its dimensions then the hellhound measures in at 322 by 134 by 50 millimeters it's definitely not a small graphics card then but nor is it a monster in the vein of something like an R RTX of 1490 it also weighed in at 1261 grams on my scales as for the back plate this is made of metal and it does span the length of the card but with four small cutouts towards the end to allow air to pass straight through the heatsink we can also note the Dual bioswitch which is positioned next to the i o bracket giving users the choice of either the OC or silent modes the OC bios does run with increased power clocks and fan speeds compared to the silent bios but we do test both modes later in this review interestingly there is also a second toggle switch on the card this time positioned next to those two power plugs and this switch actually controls the LED lighting you can either set it to ice blue amethyst purple or completely turned off we'll have nothing against those two colors in particular I do have to say I find this rather limited approach to be slightly odd I can only assume that power color either didn't want to add RGB either to keep the cost down or to help differentiate the hellhound and the Red Devil series either way it's really not the end of the world but do let me know what you think of these lighting options down in the comments below moving on though we can also find two 8-pin power connectors which is the same as reference and we also get a standard display allocation with three DisplayPort 2.1 and one HDMI 2.1 taking the card apart now to look at the PCB powercal has deployed a very healthy vrm with 12 phases for the GPU and three for the memory specifically power color is using a Monolithic Power Systems mp2857 controller for the GPU vrm while at mp2856 takes care of the memory vrm 70 amp monolithic mp87997 mosfets are used throughout as for the cooler as well this utilizes two Hefty fin Stacks connected by a total of five six millimeter heat pipes the GPU die and memory modules contact with one Central base plate while there's a couple other secondary base plates which contact with the mosfets [Music] that's going to do it then for our look at the card itself but of course it is time to move on to testing for this we used our regular GPU test system which is provided to us by PC specialist this is built around Intel's I9 3900 KS CPU which we've paired with the gigabyte z790 gaming X ax motherboard and we've also got 32 gigabytes of Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB ddr5 memory starting our benchmarks with the thermal performance then this is an area where the hellhound has made significant improvements versus amd's own design the OC bios for instance drops GPU temperatures down to 60 degrees with the hotspot hitting 81 degrees the silent bios meanwhile only ran three degrees hotter in our testing but both results are 13 to 16 degrees cooler than what AMD was able to achieve with its reference card now you may not think that's much of a difference between the OC and Silent bios but that's mainly due to the fact that the fans don't actually spend that much slower using the silent mode even the OC bios is whisper quiet with the fans running at 900 RPM hitting 33 decibels on our sound meter the silent Wireless meanwhile does Drop fan speed to just 720 RPM and at that point we actually hit the ambient noise floor of 32 decibels in other words the card ran so quietly it became impossible to accurately measure its noise levels in my test environment I'm also happy to say there was no audible coil wine throughout my testing and as you might expect based on those results then the hellhound is seriously impressive when we look at noise normalized thermals here we raised fan speed to 55 or 1750 RPM to hit 40 decibels of noise and we retest thermal performance again this time the GPU Peaks are just 49 degrees with the hotspot at 71 degrees making this the most efficient 7800 XT cooler we have tested of the four comparison cards it is really impressive stuff from the power color hellhound that also takes into account the fact that power draw has actually increased over the reference card the OC bios appears to Target 280 Watts total board power as we measured just under 278 watts of power draw in cyberpunk 2077 the silent bios though is less power hungry drawing 256.5 watts and that's just a small 8 watt increase over the reference 7800 XT that increase in power draw coupled with the 25 20 megahertz rated boost clock for the OC bios does mean that typical operating frequency is a touch higher than the reference card power color hasn't gone too crazy here though they actually told us it was instead prioritizing thermal and acoustic performance but the OC bios averaged 24-21 megahertz over our 30 minute stress test making it four percent faster than reference in terms of raw clock speed the silent whilst does reduce clock speed to reference specifications though and I kid you not the average clock speed proved identical overall testing between the silent bios and amd's reference card what all that means then for actual gaming benchmarks though is not a whole lot of difference that's the reason why we don't really focus heavily on game benchmarks in these aib reviews as the performance differences are usually within just a few percent of the reference card that's certainly the case here with the hellhound as it came in just two to three percent faster than amd's reference design if you do want to see gaming performance in a much wider range of games then do check out our day one review but just know the power color howhound will be a couple percent faster than amd's reference design due to those very small performance gains and the increased power draw we can also see that overall efficiency is slightly worsened for the hellhound compared to the reference card but by less than 10 when looking at the performance per watt figures overclocking is going to be our next area then and for the RX 7800 XT in my experience this essentially boils down to how far can you undervolt the GPU and how much more frequency can be added to the memory with the how Hound my sample was stable with voltage at 950 millivolts while we also pushed memory clocks up to 26 30 megahertz or 21.04 gigabits per second effective this undervolt slash overclock then actually resulted in in pretty hefty real world clock speed games with the hellhound running 380 megahertz faster once this overclock was dialed in as for what this overclock means then for real world performance we actually saw gains of between 10 to 12 in the three titles I retested in some cases bringing performance up to RTX 4070 TI levels it's certainly a lot more impressive than I was expecting and I have to say it is well worth doing if you've picked up one of these new rgna3 cards naturally though this overclock does increase power draw by a fair chunk now hitting just under 330 Watts so that's an 18 increase in power jaw for 10 to 12 performance gains that obviously means that efficiency is further reduced lowering performance per walk by six percent but it's hardly a major difference so that is it for our testing then of the power color hellhound 7800 XT and it is a seriously impressive if partner card for one it makes some huge improvements over the reference design reducing temperatures by between 13 and 16 degrees Celsius depending on the Bios mode you opt for while noise levels are also cut down to near silent levels speaking of the Dual bios as well this is a strong value add for the hellhound and is something I always like to see on a partner card not only do you get the choice of the OC and the silent bios but you also get that extra redundancy just in case something goes wrong when flashing a new bios plenty of more expensive RTX 4070 partner cards also don't have this feature so that's definitely something to keep in mind and is a strong positive for the hellhound actual gaming performance though as we saw is nothing to write home about coming in between two to three percent faster than amd's reference design overclocking on the other hand is well worth doing as we saw gains of between 10 to 12 percent and I even saw the 7800 XT rivaling the likes of the rcx 470 TI in cyberpunk 2077 and God of War being completely honest then the only thing I'm not actually that sure about with the hellhound is the L LED toggle switch it's definitely not the end of the world but it does feel a bit strange in a world where basically every PC component now offers you a choice of 16.8 million colors to be limited to just two with the how Hound I don't know it just doesn't quite sit right with me and I think this card should have RGB lighting at 520 pounds though here in the UK that's just a 40 pound or eight percent price premium over the reference RX 7800 XT that means it's still 50 pounds cheaper than the cheapest RTX 4070 one more premium 4070 options I guess more in line with the hellhound are still retailing for well over 600 pounds for me I have to say if you are looking at the RX 7800 XT the power color hellhound is a bit of a no-brainer I think the improvements are absolutely worth paying that eight percent premium over the reference card and honestly I think this is a highly impressive partner card so it's I guess a double thumbs up from me that is going to do it for this video though guys so if you liked it please do toss me a thumbs up and let me know your thoughts down in the comments below I'd love to know what you think about that led switch and the choice of just two colors and I guess overthinking it or is it really a limitation let me know your thoughts while there you can also subscribe and ding that notification Bell if you haven't already and why not come carry on the conversation in our Discord server which is linked in the description while there you can also find links to our brand new merch store where you could pick up a t-shirt like the ones on screen and if you're feeling particularly generous why not come and support us on patreon that is it for this one though guys I'm Dominic for kick Guru and I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: KitGuruTech

Views: 45,113

Keywords: kitguru, video, technology, news, interviews, reviews, exclusive, kitguru membership, join kitguru, rx 7800 xt review, 7800 xt hellhound, powercolor 7800 xt, powercolor hellhound 7800 xt, best rx 7800 xt, 7800 xt vs 4070, 7800 xt overclocking, 7800 xt undervolting, 7800 xt vs 4070 ti, amd, gaming pc build, pcgaming, best gpu, best value gpu, best gpu 2023, best value gpu 2023, best 1440p gpu, amd vs nvidia

Id: v6Sdaq1ryPU

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/AreYouAWiiizard]

Man those are some insane gains from OCing but that power draw using more than 7900XT :/

[u/UninstallingNoob]

This might be one of the best value models

[u/TheContingencyMan]

If I didn’t need the Pulse model for an ITX case I’d have gotten this one

[u/cnstnsr]

Happy with mine and glad that I can treat any buyer's remorse with videos like this.

[u/timorous1234567890]

Wonder what kind of performance gains you can get by undervolting and memory without increasing the power limit.

[u/InfamousAgency6784]

As someone who does not like having vanity LEDs in my computer, the fact I'm not paying for full RGB here and that I can disable them with a toggle instead of OS-specific bloatware is a godsend. Keep up with the good work Powercolor, this is a lovely card!

[u/pelusilla6]

Stop the good reviews, all MSRP stock is gone and the new one is incrising 30-40€ everywhere :(

[u/Fabulous_Gear_3732]

Problem with the Hellhound, is you have to remove the entire heatsink to just remove the fans!!

When will manufactures ever learn..

[u/Fabulous_Gear_3732]

The Hellhound is the first AMD card I've had that doesn't report either VRM or Memory temps, unbelievable for a card of this class !!