7950 or gtx 670? - Page 16

There are HD 7950 OC users who are happily running 1200 Mhz speeds with MSI Afterburner and I am sure its gonna be more than competitive vs a GTX 670 OC at 1300 speeds. Games where AMD will win are Crysis games, Metro, Alan Wake, Witcher 2, Deus Ex. BF3 , Skyrim would be a tie. Batman AC is better on Nvidia cards (TWIMTBP title) with better min fps. look at hardocp's latest article. the HD 7950 OC which they show is at the low end of voltage OCs. users on these forums and hardocp forums with HD 7950 OC and MSI Afterburner are at 1200 speeds. AMD just needs to clear out the old 800 Mhz HD 7950 and 925 Mhz HD 7970. And ramp up the clocks. Its possible as it seems AMD's latest batch of chips are easily hitting 1250 Mhz speeds.

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

This would be a good stack

Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition (1050) vs GTX 680
Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition OC (upto 1200) vs GTX 680 OC
Radeon HD 7950 (900) vs GTX 670
Radeon HD 7950 OC (upto 1050) vx GTX 670 OC

If you can find one in stock go ahead and get a gtx 670, but this is about the softest launch I have ever seen. No cards anywhere. It was all a tactic by Nvidia to get people to slow down on buying AMD's cards.

Yeah I have seen lots of 7950's hitting around 1200, or at least 1150. Mine is stable at 1200/7000 at 1.2v and I have seen many that are better clockers than mine on various forums. The stock 7950 is very underclocked. I have no doubt it will keep up with a oc'd 670 at decent speeds. Amd just needs to up the stocks clocks like raghu stated to make it a more compelling option to those that do not oc.

That being said, I like the 670. If I was not going to oc, I like the nvidia card better for the same price.

Agreed.

Okay for the record on bang for buck*.

670 is the best BFB* at 400 bucks
7970 is best BFB* on OCing at 500-540 bucks
680 is the best BFB on reliability and stability at 600 bucks.

If you do any video editing or high graphics rending NVidia is the way to go.
If you require high speeds, on demand graphics, and extreme FPS rates AMD cards work best here.

It all matters on your price range. 680s draw less power than 7970s but 7970s OC to the highest recorded OCs on standard GPUs. (MSI Lightning I've heard can push 1400 MHz on higher than normal voltage boost.)

670s at the moment will play any game available atm and only cost $400. This is clearly the best buy.

Edit: I can't wait for the new ATI cores to come out. What are the new chipsets called? Paradise island or some ****?

Anyways not counting Crossfire SLI comparisons the 670 is the best atm.
Edited by NinjaSushi2 - 5/15/12 at 9:09pm

Not really. At USD 409 you have a good competitor. This card will hit 1050 easily on AMD CCC. Clock for clock faster than GTX 670. For the bandwidth , framebuffer advantages I would say its a no brainer.

Sapphire HD 7950 OC (950 Mhz)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102991


On the contrary you have just one Nvidia GTX 600 card in stock out of 25 at newegg. GTX 670 at USD 409. . Its not even funny

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709+600315498&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=48&description=&hisInDesc=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=

Uh no.. These are better and one is cheaper.

Gigabyte - Clocked at 980 and uses less power.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125423

Mind you this is galaxy and I don't use them but the clock is the highest.
Galaxy - Clocked at 1006 and is also uses less power.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162109

I like XFX 7970 Black Edition Double D, but it's prices went from 509 to 600 in 1 month since I bought mine.

Edit: Are you recommending people to buy a worse card because the better one isn't in stock!? That is foolish. People need to learn patients instead of wasting their money.

Whoa hold on man. I think you have got your information wrong. Clock for clock HD 7970 / 7950 beat GTX 680 / 670 when you take a wide range of games. Look at hardocp for their latest OC benches.

BF3, Skyrim - tie.
Deus Ex - HD 7900
Batman - GTX 600 (because of better min fps) . I am being objective

From other websites I can tell this

Crysis games - HD 7900 (Crysis, Crysis warhead, Crysis 2)
Metro 2033 - HD 7900
Alan Wake - HD 7900
Witcher 2 - HD 7900

What are you sore about ? That the only straw you can grasp at is power consumption I would trade a bit of extra power for lots of extra bandwidth which proves its worth in bandwidth hungry games like crysis and metro 2033. that extra bandwidth should be more useful in future games. Also the extra 1GB. If you have a different view thats fine.

This review should give you idea of how much HD 7970 OC can get ahead. It would really require a 1.3 Ghz GTX 680 to be at par in BF3, Skyrim at 2560 x 1600 maxed out. Batman would be the only game they can be clearly ahead. The rest would favour AMD.


http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/10/sapphire_hd_7970_oc_edition_video_card_review/7
Edited by raghu78 - 5/15/12 at 10:27pm

You misunderstand and clearly you haven't read my previous post. I run an XFX Double D Black Edition 7970.

But no.. the 670 is the best deal for 400 bucks hands down. Other than that the ATI 7970 MSI Lightning OC'd is the best GPU hands down.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-radeon-hd-7970-lightning-review/

Edit: On second though I run a 27" monitor and this card wouldn't work lol

I am thinking of RMA'ing my XFX 7970 to newegg and ordering this instead.
Edited by NinjaSushi2 - 5/15/12 at 10:45pm

Are you RMAing because your card is dead,crashing or is it other issues like fan noise, coil whine. Sapphire HD 7970 OC at USD 449 is a good card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102982

Though there are complaints of coil whine from few users. Its more of a hit and miss case. Some users have said setting vsync resolves it. Worst case you may have to RMA. The Dual X cooling solution is the best in the market. Also there are few reviews which have reported less than 1200 Mhz max clocks for MSI HD 7970 Lightning with voltage OC. So choose after speaking to people who are using a MSI HD 7970 Lightning and Sapphire HD 7970 OC.

You need to stop trying to compare the 7950 and 670 clock for clock. They're a different architecture, and they're just completely different. They will never be at even overclocks, period. The 670 will always hit about 10% higher frequency than a 7950, but this is made up by the fact that the 7950 scales about 5% better. A high-end 670 overclock is 1350 (i've seen at least 8 670's on these forums hit that, out of about 20), a high-end 7950 overclock is 1200. You see the difference? They will never be at the same clocks, so stop trying to compare them clock for clock. At their average overclocks a 670 will be about 2-5% faster than a 7950 on AVERAGE (the key point here, so stop linking single examples of how a 7950 beats a 670 in metro, the average in ALL games is all that maters). Then you have the other benefits on the 670 to consider. Such as being twice as quiet, using 28% less wattage, having more stable drivers, having less micro-stuttering (this is a VERY big deal), supporting SLI better, adaptive vsync (which is so much better) and it's at the same price (actually it's cheaper if you get a non-reference model vs a non-reference for the 7950).

This is why i stopped bothering to post in this thread, everyone in support of the 7950 is just going in circles by saying things like, "IT'S NOT A CLOCK FOR CLOCK COMPARISON," (it never will be, the 670 clocks higher), "BUT LOOK, THE 7950 IS FASTER IN THIS GAME!" (great, and the 670 is faster in this one, the average is all that matters), and they always seem to forget all of the other benefits a 670 has over the 7950. Even if the 7950 was even or ~5% ahead in raw gaming performance (but it's not, it's 2-5% behind), the 670 is still a better buy for actual gaming for the other reasons i mentioned.