7950 or gtx 670? - Page 14

you might want to check those graphs again. Nowhere in crisis 2 does it eat a 670

Just re-read it. A 680 not 670... At which point your statement makes more sense
Edited by PappaSmurfsHarem - 5/15/12 at 1:54am

Wall of text raghu mop the floor here. +1 when I get home.

Stayed off commenting in this topic for obvious reasons. Chau.
Edited by zGunBLADEz - 5/15/12 at 2:42am

How did his wall of text 'mop the floor'? Did you even read/see my even larger wall of text which was a direct rebuttal to his?

As others are saying the 670 is on par with the 7970 not the 7950, so if it's between the 670 and 7970 it's a tough choice but this is an easy one. -670 all the way in this case-

Do you know that the HD 7950 is available in OC editions. People have been clocking in these forums at 1200+ Mhz speeds. I clearly said BF3 will be similar clock for clock . BF3 is one of the best games for Nvidia and still AMD is on par at OC's speeds. AMD needs to get to similar clock speeds for similar perf. Also there was a concern in hardocp forums where they questioned why 2x and 4x MSAA were not tested. my guess is the answer would be more in AMD's favour.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/10/sapphire_hd_7970_oc_edition_video_card_review/7

BF3 Ultra 4X MSAA 2560 X 1600

HD 7970 (950) - avg 40 min 27 fps
HD 7970 (1280 ) - avg 50.7 min 34 fps
GTX 680 - avg 42.9 min 25 fps ( press samples have been shown to boost to 1100 Mhz i am still giving conservative boost)

I would love to see MSAA 4X numbers for GTX 680 OC at 1.3 Ghz and my guess is GTX 680 will fall slightly behind given that MSAA is a huge bandwidth hog

You are showing a HD 7950 (1050) which is at the very low end of voltage OC. Also understand that Nvidia has not allowed voltage unlocking and has capped max voltage at 1.175 for GTX 680 / 670. Its for reasons which Nvidia knows better. when we have unlocked voltage then we will have another comparison. But for all you know AMD's latest chips seem to hit 1250 Mhz easily. So certainly gets interesting

http://www.techpowerup.com/165559/AMD-Readies-Radeon-HD-7970-GHz-Edition.html


I think we can clearly agree Deus Ex is better on HD 7950 .


http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-guide/10
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-geforce-gtx-680-asus-directcu-ii-top-review/18
HD 7950 OC (1150 ) - 50
GTX 670(915 / 980) - 38
GTX 680(1006 / 1058) - 39
GTX 680 OC (1137 base / 1267 boost) - 41

Now that you have the data and a top of the line GTX 680 with 1267 boost speeds can't cross 41 fps I think it should be pretty clear that bandwidth is affecting the scaling. There is only a 3 fps increase for 192 extra shaders and 220 Mhz core boost with 290 Mhz turbo boost when you compare stock GTX 670 to 680 OC . No matter what OC I don't think the GTX 680 can even hit HD 7970 (925 Mhz) at 44 fps. What seems to be your problem about the HD 7950 scoring 50 fps ? Perf is what is shown. HD 7950 scales very nicely because it has bandwidth and is not handicapped in any manner at high clocks like GTX 600 series. Is it that voltage OC was used. I said at the start the maximum performance is what I am discussing. The ability to hit 1200+ Mhz speeds with MSI Afterburner is well known and cannot be disounted.

Do you remember Metro 2033 was a Nvidia TWIMTBP title and Nvidia bragged about its performance in this game with GTX 480 and GTX 580 with tesselation and DOF (which uses compute shaders and is bandwidth intensive). Nvidia did not suck at this game with the GTX 580. It really kicked the crap out of HD 6970. If Nvidia could never get good drivers how come they were dominating this game last generation.

HD 6970 - 28
GTX 580 - 33
GTX 680 - 39
GTX 680 OC - 41
HD 7950 - 40
HD 7970 - 44
HD 7950 (1125) - 50

the performance scaling from GTX 580 to GTX 680 is the lowest of all games <20%. With GTX 680 OC its close to 25%. look at the performance scaling from HD 6970 to HD 7950 OC. thats 70% and I don't think you can discount bandwidth being a factor.


Thats why the choice of games, their relevance in terms of when the game was released and how they really give a good indication of GPU performance. There are many websites who bench Crysis games and Metro 2033 still. They are doing it because they are the most demanding and can show how these GPUs perform when really all resources of the GPU are really stressed like shader power, bandwidth, ROP etc . They also give the best idea of bottlencks. let me give you a good example


http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review/7

2560 X 1600
HD 7970 (925 Mhz ) - 36 fps
HD 7950 - 31.1 fps
GTX 680 - 30.8 fps
GTX 580 - 26 fps

"

While Crysis was a strong game for the GTX 580, the same cannot be said of the GTX 680. NVIDIA is off to a very poor start here, with the Radeon HD 7970 easily outperforming the GTX 680, and even the 7950 is tied or nearly tied with the GTX 680 depending on the resolution. On the bright side the GTX 680 does manage to outperform the GTX 580, but only by a relatively meager 17%.


Given the large gap in theoretical performance between the GTX 680 and GTX 580, as it turns out we’ve run into one of the few scenarios where the GTX 680 doesn’t improve on the GTX 580: memory bandwidth. In our overclocking results we discovered that a core overclock had almost no impact on Crysis, whereas a memory overclock improved performance by 8%, almost exactly as much as the memory overclock itself. When it comes to the latest generation of cards it appears that Crysis loves memory bandwidth, and this is something the Radeon HD 7900 series has in spades but the GTX 680 does not. Thankfully for NVIDIA not every game is like Crysis."

Do you still want to argue bandwidth is not important for a USD 400 - 500 card which you want to use for atleast 2 years


As for a 120 hz monitor I have a question for you. Between 100 and 110 fps can you tell the difference. I think you can't . Beyond 60 fps things become very difficult for the human eye to discern. Our eyes are not built like professional cameras with thousands of fps capability and ability to distinguish at those speeds.

I think thats the most incorrect statement of all. The GTX 580 excelled in games where there was lots of tesselation, very complex compute shaders and high bandwidth requirements like Metro 2033, Crysis 2, BF3. Drivers matter but the underlying hardware also does matter. Look at the HD 6970 being decimated in all these tests by the GTX 580 in the guru3d charts.



As for anno 2070
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-guide/14
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-geforce-gtx-670-directcu-ii-top-review/17
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-geforce-gtx-680-asus-directcu-ii-top-review/19

1080P 1600P
HD 7950 (800 ) - 67 45
HD 7950 (1020) - 85 56
HD 7950 (1150) - 93 62
GTX 670 (915 / 980 boost) - 75 48
GTX 670 (1058 / 1137 boost) - 85 54
GTX 680 - 87 55
GTX 680 (1137 / 1267 boost) - 100 64

I think your understanding of turbo boost is not enough. the boost speeds are the speeds at which the card runs unless severely constrained by cooling . turbo will function all the time if your case cooling is good and the GPU does not overheat or crosses its TDP which it won't because the binning assures of it running at turbo speeds across most workloads except maybe furmark or folding . HD 7950 (1150) is fighting against GTX 680 (1267 BOOST) at 1600p. I think we can agree that GTX 670 is no comparison.

Alan wake runs clearly better on HD 7900 series

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.hardware.fr/articles/866-9/benchmark-alan-wake.html&usg=ALkJrhhcpyTnay_shfVaqoNj8ZBlwO_HcQ

"The Radeon HD 7000 quite well appreciate this game in which they easily crushed the GeForce GTX 600 models which are particularly affected with 8x MSAA. "

at 1080p max (8XAA) the

GTX 670 - 42
HD 7950 - 50

The cards are closer at 1080p high but the lead grows at max settings. also this is a stock vs stock comparison the OC comparison will only widen the gap.

from another website

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_670/6.html

at 1080p and 1600p
GTX 670 - 70.6 and 42.9
HD 7950 - 70.4 and 45.5

Given the HD 7950 at 800 Mhz against GTX 670 (980 turbo) is winning at 1600p and tying at 1080p the HD 7950 will stomp the GTX 670 at OC'd speeds. for just an indication of HD 7900 perf scaling

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_7970_Lightning/6.html

HD 7970 (1070) - 59.9 fps at 1600p

Witcher 2
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/866-18/benchmark-the-witcher-2-enhanced-edition.html

stock HD 7970 (925 Mhz) is ahead of GTX 680 (1110 Mhz boost) card without ubersampling. with ubersampling its a tie. similarly for HD 7950 v GTX 670. I think you and I can agree the OC headroom of HD 7900 will put it clearly ahead when the cards are OC'd.


phew... I am a bit tired
Edited by raghu78 - 5/15/12 at 5:52am

seanpoe in oc 7970 will kick the oc 680
even that hardcop site is fanboys for nvidia thay didnt but metro or crysis or alan wake

^^

[H] are with AMD......
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-347556_15_1500.html

Ouch, again the raghul.. lol

I wouldn't argue that it's 'unimportant', however, it's REALLY only a factor in some VERY specific cases. Crysis with AA has always been demonstratively highly memory-bandwidth sensitive. The vast majority of other games ... are not.

Fact is, AMD has had a very good showing in Crysis ever since the 5000-series. It may well be due to the higher memory bandwidth they've run pretty consistently since that time.

But this is one example of 'a game where it matters', and everyone has to pick their poison, as it were. You give and take, you can't have EVERY spec be massive on a card. IMHO, the 670/680 have very adequate quantity of memory bandwidth & frankly I think the 7950/7970 is imbalanced in that regard. Not that having more bandwidth can ever be 'bad', but I'd have rather had more ROP's and less total bandwidth for the same $$$, for example.

If it was THAT useful to have more bandwidth and more vram, then the 680 SLI vs 7970 SLI review done by [H] wouldn't show that 680SLI is basically better on every test (except BF3 single player) given that they're all run at 5760x1200. I also find it troubling that they are continually reporting that Crossfire Tahiti basically requires a fairly large FPS delta in order to make it as smooth as nV SLI. Fact is, ATM, AMD's drivers pretty much SUCK for Tahiti. And who knows when they'll be fixed.

Anyways, so far I'm exceptionally happy with the performance I'm seeing from my new 670. I have it OC'd to 1345c/1612m (and that's with only 1.162V, not the full 1.175 available) and at this speed it's nearly matching my heavily OC'd SLI470's (even winning in Vantage High, and Crysis 2, so far)

It's also only using 380W on full load (in Crysis), compared to the 718W my previous rig tapped out at. It's never broken 64C, and that is with the fans COMPLETELY INAUDIBLE. Seriously, the card runs full bore w/heavy OC on benchmarks, and the fans don't even ramp up to audible level, and the card runs at 64C. It's CRAZY.

I say 'to each their own'. There's really nothing wrong with any of the 4 cards in question, they're all priced fairly, and they're all gonna 'win some, lose some', for various reasons ..

Although I'd argue that the 7950 should be priced a bit lower, or get itself a nice clock boost for the non-OC'ers of the world ... cause it's too slow at stock clocks to compete with the 670 at the same price point.

BTW, you AMD owners feel free to stop by my BenchOff thread, and contribute some 7950/7970 OC'd benchies. I'll post 'em in the OP happily as long as they're done with the same settings.