7970, 680, or something else? - Page 3

Completely false. Nvidia smacked that rumor down around noon today on multiple sites.

You'd be holding off for a long time for no reason, as nVidia already denied these claims.

7970 is better card then GTX670, no doubt...but, for the games you play go with 670.

I would grab a 7970 and overclock it. You can find the sapphire oc editions for $450

A gtx 670 only hangs with a 7970 Till they get overclocked

Does Nvidia pay you for this

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/10/sapphire_hd_7970_oc_edition_video_card_review/5
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/05/21/asus_geforce_gtx_680_directcu_ii_top_gpu_review/6


Batman Arkham City 2560 X 1600 FXAA high
HD 7970 (1280) - avg 62.2 min 36
GTX 680 (1291) - avg 55.6 min 37

Battlefield 3 Single player 2560 x 1600 Ultra 4x MSAA
HD 7970 (1280) - avg 50.7 min 34
GTX 680 (1291) - avg 51.3 min 30

HD 7970 has > 10% min fps. I consider that significant

Elder Scrolls Skyrim 2560 x 1600 MSAA 8X + FXAA

From the Sapphire HD 7970 OC review

"At 2560x1600 with 8X MSAA and FXAA enabled, the Overclocked Sapphire HD 7970 OC Edition had an average FPS in the mid 80's."

HD 7970 (1280) - 85
GTX 680 (1291) - 70.4

Stick to the facts. But I think thats difficult for you . The HD 7970 is a good card as is the GTX 680. The GTX 680 has perf/watt. The HD 7970 has raw power, scalability and bandwidth. No point just ridiculing a card without understanding its pros and cons. There are more demanding games like crysis 2, alan wake, witcher 2, anno 2070 where a HD 7970 OC will win clearly against a GTX 680 OC. But you wouldn't want to know about it. So lets leave it at that.
Edited by raghu78 - 5/21/12 at 11:35pm

You're nothing but an AMD marketing shill/troll. I also like how you patch work benchmarks from different reviews and compare them when you "think" it favors AMD. That is a logical flaw because you don't know when or where the benchmark started during gameplay, or the in-game scenarios going on at the time during both reviews.

Exhibit A:
Batman benchmark taken from the SAME review with both cards tested...AMD Shill FAIL!
GTX 680 1228MHz 55.7=30min
HD 7970 1260MHz 56.2=26min



The AMD card is clocked higher and loses in this bench due to minimum fps. -Raghu78

Exhibit B
Again, comparing numbers from different reviews is not an honset way to go about it.

Here is a more accurate representation

GTX 680 1228MHz
HD 7970 1260MHz


Exhibit C:
This is a PRIME example of patch work benchmark posting. According to that quote you "assumed" that it averaged 85 fps with MSAA enabled ,eventhough they don't have a graph showing that anywhere during the review.

But here is a graph showing performance overclocked vs the GTX 680

GTX 680 1228MHz
HD 7970 1260MHz


Even without MSAA enable it failed to reach 85 fps while highly overclocked.

To be fair, I'll also post the Deus EX benchmark that the HD 7970 shines in....well sorta.


The HD 7970 is able to maintain a much higher average, but according to that graph and the minimum fps, the gameplay experience seems very chaotic to say the least..

And since you like pulling quotes, I'll go ahead and pull a few of my own.

-HardOCP
Edited by Benchmarksli - 5/22/12 at 10:19am

I can't believe you went through this much trouble. He does this on every thread.

I've literally seen threads locked after someone gets into a pissing contest with him.
Edited by Warfare - 5/22/12 at 10:50am

I will tell you a little something,

I've had dual GTX 580's, dual 7970's, and dual gtx 680's, and I will tell you the best option for you will be to find a gtx 680, these cards run every game at max with no stuttering, and they overclock great. Without water, it overclocks to 1200mhz and boosts to 1263, no issues whatsoever. I will be posting a review on gtx 680's, but for now, you can take a look at these:

http://www.overclock.net/products/msi-r7970/reviews/4805
http://www.overclock.net/products/msi-n580gtx-lightning-xtreme-edition-geforce-gtx-580-fermi-3072-mb-384-bit-gddr5-pci-express-2-0-x16-hdcp-ready-sli-support-video-card/reviews/4648

If I were to be buying today, I would base my preference on the following order. Left side being what I would prefer the most:

670, 680, 7970, 7950.

Personally I have both the 680 and 7970 at the moment. Both my 680s overclock higher than my 7970--even with the voltage up +125mV on the 7970--and both also overclock higher than the second 7970 that I sent back RMA due to AMD drivers being so terribly unstable when using eyefinity... Such is the lottery I suppose. So all that I am saying is this: 7970 don't always overclock higher, and due to such, don't always perform better when overclocked. How anyone could confidently claim something like this in regard to performance that isn't guaranteed is beyond me...

However, 680s are a bit more difficult to overclock due to the boost. It's tricky to find what is actually stable when approaching the card's maximum clock, and being stable in one bench doesn't always mean you're stable in another. For example, I can overclock a tad higher in 3dmark 11 than I can in heaven with my 680s. In my opinion, the 7970 is better in that regard--more consistent results when approaching max overclocks. So I prefer overclocking the 7970.

As for heat and fan noise, reference to reference, the 680 wins hands down. The reference 7970 is loud and hot, and well...the reference 680 isn't.

My 680s run smooth, and without stuttering when using them as a single card, or in SLI.

With my 7970s, single card ran smooth, but when I got a second and used crossfire, the micro-stutter was really, really bad. I had to use a 3rd party application to lower the flip queue to 0, and even then, it never completely smoothed out. Due to this, I was forced to play without vsync because the stutter was a lot more dominant when I had vsync enabled with my crossfire 7970s. This made me a very sad, sad panda.

In the end, this is my take on it: At 1080p, and with a signgle card, you'll be fine and happy with any of those four cards. Now if you were to go multi-monitor and SLI/crossfire, I would say go Nvidia, as their drivers are a lot more stable, and in my experience with the 680s and 7970s, give much smoother gameplay.
Edited by svthomas - 5/22/12 at 11:49am

Sorry, Im a newb here This guy copies and paste the same pre-written post on several tech websites. I'm convinced he's a shill.