670 vs 7950 overclocking war - Page 4

Nop the first one review was with earlier drivers. I get some nice increase fps in bf3 with the latest drivers so i expect the same

That's true but i already accounted for them because the 7950 in the 670 graph is getting 43.3 fps and the 7970 in the 7950 graph is getting 44.3 fps. That's a difference of only 2% between a 7950 and a 7970 when it should be ~10% difference. That leaves an 8% difference unaccounted for, which must be made up from drivers and/or 2xMSAA. But based on what i've seen, the driver change alone explains this 8% and leave me with my original point:

Either HardOCP forgot to say they had 2xMSAA on or it has a negligible impact on performance.

BUT lets assume here that 8% difference was ALL because of 2xMSAA being left off (but we both know probably 7.5% of that was because of drivers, not MSAA), so i will boost the overclocked 7950 by 8%:
7950: original 54.2 ---> 58.5
compared to
670: 58.1

So you see, even with that assumption, the 670 and 7950 are practically dead even. But wait, this is a reference 670 and that's a non-reference 7950 (which costs $40 more than a reference 670), non-reference models almost always overclock better (by ~5%) so i need to boost the 670 by 5% to make this fair:

7950: 58.5
670: 61/0

Now the 670 is back ahead. So even assuming the WORST POSSIBLE case and giving the 7950 a free 8% bump just because, we see the 670 still comes ahead. Also keep in mind, the 670 just came out so it will have better drivers out soon too, that's why this ENTIRE debate here is irrelevant. Both reviews were using release drivers for each card, so in the end, assuming both NVidia and AMD have equal quality drivers production, then this becomes a negligible constant that doesn't need to be mathematically explained.

its 2 mhz more not 200 lol , I have those settings saved in my bios so i can compare.

4.2ghz vs 4198mhz lol thats +2mhz

your link says your cpu speed is 2147483647 MHz ***

that 2500k of yours should be smacking the crap out of my i5-750 even at 4.2ghz , I think your score should be higher than that dude i dont know whats up with your rig.

the 7970 i had surely does not ever beat my 670 at least in my rig, i tried like hell to beat my old gtx 470 sli record for myself with the 7970 and FAILED heres the link

edit: furthermore if I had paid $399 for the 7970 , i would have kept it , however at the time it was $599 and i didnt feel it was worth it. Now i have the 670 and it performs better in MY rig , and for $399.
Edited by dumpsterj - 5/14/12 at 4:11pm

A reference 7950 with a non-reference 7950 its even. The better cooler doesnt mean lower potential in overclock. For example the reference 7970 especially sapphire/asus from what i seen in this forum and general have the most overclock potential except msi lightning but thats its a lightning. Your logical that a non-reference card is 5% better from a reference card doesnt apply to this generation of ATi. In kepler yeah (gtx670 cheaper-shorter pcb) but in ati no. Also you must take in account that the actual clocks of a gtx670 is around 1 ghz.(not the defaults clocks) and already the 7900 series is underclock. Also bf3 works better in nvidia like anno works better in ati

New review OC

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/05/14/geforce_680_670_vs_radeon_7970_7950_gaming_perf/3

Sorry, but no. Both cards are about evenly overclocked. A high-end 670 overclock is about 1350, a high-end 7950 overclock is about 1200 (ratio of 1.125 to 1). The 670 in that review is at 1234, that 7950 is at 1050, (ratio of 1.175 to 1). So that means the 7950 is only 4% underclocked here. A 4% overclock translates to about a 2.8% increase in performance for a 7950, so if we increase the 7950 by 2.8% we get 56.23fps which is still lower than the 670 at 58.1 fps. But the thing is, a 670 is MUCH more likely to hit 1350 than a 7950 is to hit 1200. Anyways, the point is, people need to stop trying to compare them clock for clock because the 670 will always hit a higher frequency than a 7950.

LOL a whole thread debating what card clocks higher....
Get some LN2 then shut the hell up, jeeze.

7970/670/680 are withing punching distance of each other... what is so hard to understand?

Things to be worried about when getting a card:
Heat.
Power consumption.
Driver stability.
features (physX/ openCL)

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What in gods name is hard to understand about that?
Any overclocking headroom is an added bonus.
I am an enthusiast and a overclocker, but the arguments here are petty.

I'm thoroughly enjoying this thread... even though it's not going to change the fact that I'm buying a 670 no matter what even though I'm "an AMD guy" and all. I feel like features such as adaptive vertical sync in itself make the 670 a better buy. I don't know about you but I play with Vsync on and I have a 60Hz monitor. When I dip below 60FPS, I'm running at 30FPS - EW.

AMD's drivers don't allow for that, and Nvidia always seems to have AMD beat on the drivers front lately. All that power of a 7970 means nothing to me if the drivers suck, and I've had nothing but issues with all my AMD cards and their drivers lately. I don't care about gimmicks like PhysX, but TSAA is far from a gimmick and is another place where AMD just doesn't compete right now.

I was going for a 7970, but now I'm just waiting for a 670 TOP from Asus and I feel a lot better about that purchase right now.