Powercolor RX 7800 XT Hellhound Review
Conclusion
Conclusion
The PowerColor Hellhound RX 7800 XT in Spectral White is a spectacular looking, and performing, card that costs much less than you might expect.
As regular readers will know we see a lot of cards in the OC3D offices. It’s not that we ever get blasé, but rather that a product has to be truly special to make us stop and stare. The PowerColor Hellhound is definitely a card which fits into that category. The attention to detail is spectacular. Many companies will give you a white fan shroud. Some will go with a white backplate too. That’s usually where things stop. Those with more attention to detail might go so far as to install white fans. How often do you see a card that has made everything white? Backplate, heatsink, heatpipes, cables, plastics, even the IO bracket is white on the Hellhound. It’s a stunning card to look at.
Take a closer look through our pictures and try and spot something that has been done haphazardly. There just isn’t anything. If we merely judged hardware based on the looks, we could stop there. But the Hellhound has other tricks up its sleeve.
Performance
The high-end Radeon 7000 series cards perform much better in ray tracing scenarios than their forebears. It’s worth bearing in mind that AMD are still new to this and haven’t yet caught up with Nvidia. It’s only a matter of time, but for now the 7000 is akin to a 2080Ti in RT performance. Where AMD really make a bid for the title is in rasterised titles. Or those you can turn ray tracing off. Even without the benefits of FSR you’re getting some gloriously high frame rates at both 1080 and 1440. Some titles, such as COD or F1 22, are clearly designed for the Radeon hardware. Turn of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and the efforts AMD put into this shine through. If anything it’s still a step ahead of the Nvida DLSS technology.
The PowerColor Hellhound itself is the fastest of the RX 7800 XT cards we’ve reviewed. We saw in its average clock boost that this might be the case, and so it proved. By having a 2520 MHz rated boost in OC mode – 2430 MHz in Silent mode – it rocks the house. The triple fan design with those five huge heatpipes and high fin density heatsink keep things frosty. This works in conjunction with the 14 layer (count them) PCB and 15 phase power stage to keep the average boost clock in the stratosphere. Having a high peak clock is one thing. Sustaining it is very different. The cool temperatures are testament to the work PowerColor have put into the Hellhound design.
Final Thoughts
With class-leading performance, aesthetics many other companies would kill for – and should aspire to – all wrapped up in a card that has a MSRP of a mere $539. What’s not to like? The PowerColor RX 7800 XT Hellhound easily wins our OC3D Aesthetics Award and Gamers Choice Award. The attention to detail in every department is jaw-dropping.
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