Nvidia GTX 660 suppose to be 299-329$ - Page 2

I don't know prices in slovenia. If the HD 7850 is available for less than 300 bucks thats your best card. clock for clock HD 7850 is 5 - 10% slower than HD 7870. A HD 7850 overclocked to 1150 - 1200 Mhz will beat HD 7870 and get you close to GTX 580 perf in games.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_7850_PCS_Plus/9.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_7850_PCS_Plus/31.html

GTX 480 - avg 44.0 fps
HD 7850 (1 GHz) - avg 45.4
HD 7870 (1 Ghz) - avg 49.5
HD 7850 (1240) - avg 50.2
GTX 580 - avg 51.7

HD 7850 cards do 1050 Mhz at stock volts. with sapphire trixx some cards can do upto 1100 Mhz - 1150 Mhz at stock volts. so a little bit of voltage tweaking can get you to 1150 Mhz - 1200 Mhz . HD 7850 will give you close to GTX 580 perf for much lesser power, heat and noise compared to GTX 580.
Edited by raghu78 - 6/17/12 at 12:31pm

If the GTX 660 is 300 EUROS I will buy a MSI 7850 Twin Frozr for 230 EUROS, 70 EUROS cheaper and great OC

7870s are getting some good sales too; I just picked one up for $300 shipped.
Not bad when you consider a good chunk of 7850s are around $270 as it is (and a 7870 can easily keep up w/ 7950s, even 7970s at times).

As for running games smoother, what do you mean better fps? That's relative to what price-range card you're looking at really.
If you just mean Nvidia vs AMD in general, I wouldn't say so - each seem to have their own set of quirks from gen to gen.
Edited by candy_van - 6/18/12 at 8:18am

If you are trading cards or something, maybe.. but 7850 over 6870, you really won't see that much of a difference. I would wait for a GTX 660 or get a 670. About smoothness, my own experience is Nvidia is always better with their drivers. When a new game comes out Nvidia releases new drivers with optimizations for that game right away, but it sometimes takes months for ATI to do the same. I was originally going to buy a HD7850 a month ago but there werent many options back then so I went with an overclocked GTX 570, I am happy with it but HD7850s are more efficient and performs about the same when overclocked.

Currently, SLI gives a smoother experience than crossfire and has been verified by hardocp reviewers especially when testing battlefield 3 multiplayer . Gameplay was choppy with 7970cf.

Talk about single player experience, nvidia seems to have their anti aliasing performance right as seen in elder scrolls v skyrim. Turning on transparency supersampling on amd cards really wreaks havoc and 7970 gives less than 30 fps in fullhd with max msaa and adaptive supersampling (nvidia calls it transparency supersampling).

Gtx 680 with same settings and 8x transparency supersampling gives 80+ fps. Driver support too has been spot on by nvidia this generation.

Recently, I tested two cards (for personal purchase) at the same price point ... a Diamond 7850 2GB and an EVGA 2GB 560 ti. I can tell you that, although the 7850 overclocked much higher and had higher FPS (@11FPS higher vs 7850 stock clocks in Furmark) the GTX 560 TI was by far smoother with way less chop and shutter in game. The 560 Ti would chop ONLY for about 10-15 seconds after level load on Diablo III (max settings no v-sync) but the 7850 would chop every time I came upon a large mob or the screen angle changed. I was very dissappointed in the 7850, since it was a 2GB card as well, and the 2GB Memory with buffer should have cut the chop to that of the 560 TI or less. I even tried tripple buffering and it had no affect. Also, once you start adding in AA and other filtering, settings that extra 11FPS is going to get chewed up fast anyways so aslong as either card stays above 60FPS with V-sync on you're good to go even without the 11FPS boost from overclocking IMO. And to get that 1250Mhz clock out of the 7850 while staying at decent temps you're going to need to flash the bios to get around CCC Overdrive and or buy a higher priced model like an ASUS Direct whatever it's called or MSI Twin Frozer III or PE model. You could go aftermarket heatsink but then you'll spend more $, void the warranty and loose Crossfire space. Not worth the extra 5-8FPS over a modest 1050mhz core +20%OV imo. Personally, I'd rather modest clock to 1050Mhz with 20% overvolting and keep stock fan, CF space and warranty; or, like I said buy a model that can handle higher clocks like the ones mentioned above.

Also just FYI, On temps they both sucked. On noise the EVGA sucked worse becaue the fan sounds like a jet engine at 50%... How EVGA gets around this is they have the heat handling heavy on the passive heatsink side of things. Essentially, they run the fan stock low at about 36%-46% even at full load and thus let the heatsink take on more heat because it is a big ass heat sink. The down side is, at stock clocks and stock fan levels, it will run quite BUT the temps will run over 85-88* C at full load and around 48*C idle. That's why the tests that show the 560 Ti runs quiter is an absolute joke and a lie because it only runs quiter at stock fan curves and the trade off is it runs hot as shizz! The Diamond 7850 had a radial fan with noticeably lower noise above 50% but virtually the same exact temps because I discovered the heat sink heat plate was machined horribly rough like a finger print. http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=167140

In the end both cards went back to the store and I'm waiting on the GTX 660 Ti before I make any more purchases. I think if I'm going to purchase again it will be a 2 fan model, something like the MSI TwinFroz III, or the Zotac 670 short twin fan model coming out soon. I would suggest that if you're going for an AMD 7850 spend the extra cabbage to get a 2 fan short model like the MSI http://us.msi.com/product/vga/R7850-Power-Edition-2GD5-OC.html or http://us.msi.com/product/vga/R7850-Twin-Frozr-2GD5-OC.html that has a good 2 fan heatsink assembly that can take better advantage of the high overclocking potential of the 7850 GPU and still remain within good temps and not require an aftermarket cooler that takes up Crossfire space.

But yes, my personal expierence showed Nivida to run smoother against nearly a direct competitor (7850 is slightly stronger) with all things like game, game settings and CPU remaining constent. The 7850 sucked IMO.. well let's be kinder and say it fell really short of expectations. Oh and catalyst was, is and always will be the biggest piece of crap. Would only see my HDMI monitor as an HDTV even though the onbarod intel chipset picked it up at 1920x1080 no problem. Catalyst gaming profiles saved to .exe never worked properly, colors wonkey, it conflicted with MSI Afterburner startup profile settings and no matter how many times you delete Catalyst profiles they hide in some obscure reg key. All in all, the 7850 has more raw power and higher FPS potential (depending on the game and baring equal tessallation handeling because Nvidia is much better at tessallation handling) but way less fit, finish and finesse imo. Nvidia, as mentioned above by OPs, has smoother operation and way better drivers that work right. Essentially, would you rather drive a big jerky transmition V8 Corvette with bad radio buttons or a smoother Lexus 250 ISF that works right? That's a decent analogy.

Hope this helps. I'm Sorry for wall of text and spelling check crits but it's a lot of info!
Edited by RigRebel - 7/5/12 at 9:26am