660 Ti vs HD 7950

[GearShack]

This question has probably been beaten to death, but which is better? I have found a 660 Ti for $265+ Assassins Creed here: http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=75183&vpn=GV-N66TOC-2GD&manufacture=Gigabyte&promoid=1033.

I have a 7950 with a mail in rebate from newegg that brings it down to $275 here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131478.

Pretty much which one should should I jump for?

 

[ern88]

I have a hd7950 sapphire vapor x and I love it. Great card. Thats my vote. HD7950!!!

 

[Ironsounds]

hello... PassMarks hd7950-4402 660ti-4614 pretty close performance... other features would be my consideration here... connectivity? current gaming driver tweaks?

 

[popatim]

Those two trade wins when it comes to gaming. You might want to go with one based on which games you play.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review

 

[GearShack]

Currently, the only really graphically intensive game I play is Battlefield, which i'm aware is biased towards nVidia. But is the performance really so bad as to turn me off of ATI?

Edit: Also, i like to overclock. Not extremely, but enough to give it a boost.

 

[ern88]

HD 7950 will OC fine. And the new 12.11 beta drivers are great. I get roughly 80 FPS in farcry 3 1080p everything jacked up high. BF3 75 fps easy

 

[dubstep]

http://techreport.com/review/23981/radeon-hd-7950-vs-geforce-gtx-660-ti-revisited

 

[dscudella]

As popatim said, both cards go back and forth. Also BF3 doesn't "favor" one card over the other with the 12.11 drivers from AMD. With that said, it boils down to features.

AMD has the smoother setup for multiple monitors but if you're using a single monitor, that doesn't apply. AMD also has higher memory bandwidth, but if you're playing on a single monitor at 1920x1080 you won't see any difference. Nvidia has Phys-X, but if you don't play any games that actually take advantage of it, it's a wasted feature.

The 7950 has "higher" framerates where as the 660 Ti has smoother, more consistent framerates. You can't go wrong with either card.

Edit: I don't know if it's within your budget, but I would try to increase your budget another $30-$40 and get a GTX 670. The GTX 670 is a very good card and overclocks like a champ. An OC'ed 670 has the performance output of a stock GTX 680 for $60 less and goes head to head with the 7970 Ghz Edi.

 

[ern88]

I know what my HD7950 does with my 24" monitor. I dont know what rez the OP is running. But I love my HD7950.

 

[GearShack]

I know what my HD7950 does with my 24" monitor. I dont know what rez the OP is running. But I love my HD7950.

Yeah... i'm running my rez at 1366x768, so nothing too fancy. But i don't think i'm upgrading in the near future, but maybe in a year or two.

The 670 is kinda in my price range, I do have the money for it, but i'm also trying to save up to upgrade my mobo/cpu combo. It's currently an i5-650 and generic dell board... so yeah.

Edit: I also found the 7950 on NCIX again... Seems like a pretty sweet deal: http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=67748&promoid=1257

 

[ern88]

ya and you get 3 free great games!!!

 

[sam_p_lay]

As popatim said, both cards go back and forth. Also BF3 doesn't "favor" one card over the other with the 12.11 drivers from AMD. With that said, it boils down to features.

AMD has the smoother setup for multiple monitors but if you're using a single monitor, that doesn't apply. AMD also has higher memory bandwidth, but if you're playing on a single monitor at 1920x1080 you won't see any difference. Nvidia has Phys-X, but if you don't play any games that actually take advantage of it, it's a wasted feature.

The 7950 has "higher" framerates where as the 660 Ti has smoother, more consistent framerates. You can't go wrong with either card.

Edit: I don't know if it's within your budget, but I would try to increase your budget another $30-$40 and get a GTX 670. The GTX 670 is a very good card and overclocks like a champ. An OC'ed 670 has the performance output of a stock GTX 680 for $60 less and goes head to head with the 7970 Ghz Edi.

+1 to this. You'll also get adaptive v-sync with nVidia, so far better framerates with v-sync enabled when you drop below 60fps. Your CPU is not bad at all by the way! Haswell might be worth the upgrade this summer, but I wouldn't bother with any of the current stuff. It's better, but not that much better for gaming.

 

[GearShack]

So i'm gonna hopefully sum all of this up. Get EITHER card, you won't really go wrong. Someone tell me if i'm incorrect

 

[sam_p_lay]

Pretty much 🙂 I'd personally take the GTX660 Ti without a doubt (did you read the article about framerate consistency?) and adaptive v-sync would be an absolute must-have feature for me. But the 7950 will do fine too.

EDIT: And if you could stretch to a GTX670, that would be the absolute winner by far.

 

[ikes9711]

If you could spend the extra money to a 7970 for $330 (at it's current discount from the link) that would be the best of all mentioned.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202008&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=2026489&SID=2vD3DiziwD1D2

 

[determinologyz]

I know what my HD7950 does with my 24" monitor. I dont know what rez the OP is running. But I love my HD7950.

Yeah... i'm running my rez at 1366x768, so nothing too fancy. But i don't think i'm upgrading in the near future, but maybe in a year or two.

The 670 is kinda in my price range, I do have the money for it, but i'm also trying to save up to upgrade my mobo/cpu combo. It's currently an i5-650 and generic dell board... so yeah.

Edit: I also found the 7950 on NCIX again... Seems like a pretty sweet deal: http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=67748&promoid=1257

Ima be honest i see alot of people saying get the gtx 600 series and yea those is the cards thats out for the moment but if its going to be anything like early q2-q3 of 2012 we going to start seeing the new gtx 700 series in a few months and i think getting a gtx 770 would be better. If i was to buy a gtx 670 i would have buyers remorse and thinking i could of waited to get a beast card would kinda be painful.

 

[determinologyz]

+1 to this. You'll also get adaptive v-sync with nVidia, so far better framerates with v-sync enabled when you drop below 60fps. Your CPU is not bad at all by the way! Haswell might be worth the upgrade this summer, but I wouldn't bother with any of the current stuff. It's better, but not that much better for gaming.

Thats what im looking forward to as well is updating when haswell comes out.. I could of gotten ivy bridge but ima stick with my i5 2500k for now and see how things play out..Also adaptive v-sync is right on the money to

 

[vishnu92]

I posted the same question few months back....
After a lot of research HD 7950 is really good...
GTX 660Ti is also good but Memory Interface is 192 bit.....
HD 7950 has 384 bit which could process anything thrown at it...!!!

I chose 7950 but either card is good....

 

[sam_p_lay]

How is it that nobody has mentioned yet that spending this amount of money to play games at 1366x768 is BAT **** CRAZY????????????????????

You never heard of future-proofing? And before somebody says "lol theres no such thing as futureproof" I simply mean buying a bit more than the bare minimum needed to play today's games on your current monitor. If you buy only for today's games, you'll just have to upgrade again tomorrow. Buy something with a bit of surplus and you're set for a long time.

 

[sam_p_lay]

I posted the same question few months back....
After a lot of research HD 7950 is really good...
GTX 660Ti is also good but Memory Interface is 192 bit.....
HD 7950 has 384 bit which could process anything thrown at it...!!!

I chose 7950 but either card is good....

The bus width thing is pretty much irrelevant. Bus width doesn't help the 7950 here:

www.techreport.com/review/23981/radeon-hd-7950-vs-geforce-gtx-660-ti-revisited

Bigger memory and bigger bandwidth only starts to become beneficial at very high resolutions (or multi-monitor setups) and 8x AA.

 

[mohit9206]

i suggest OP get a 660ti or 7950 ONLY if he is gonna upgrade his monitor within a year.
else even a 7870 or 660 non ti is what i would suggest

 

[sam_p_lay]

"Future proofing" is not a value proposition and a 7770 is already a "bit more" than what is needed to play at that resolution.

So now you not only decide how much value there is in future-proofing, you also decide how much a 'bit' constitutes? Remember that different people place different value on longevity. You're obviously somebody who likes to buy the absolutely bare minimum needed. I like to buy a bit more (or a lot more if you want). OP could be either of those or anything inbetween. But to call other points of view "bat sht crazy" (I'll leave out the excessive punctuation) is pretty narrow-minded.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Is this going to be another one of threads that I'll have to keep my eye on I wonder?

 

[sam_p_lay]

And if you think I'm obviously somebody who likes to buy the bare minimum needed, you need to learn to read, because my signature would invalidate that in about 0.1 seconds.

Bragging about your specs now? OK, very nice. I admire your colossal e-peen. Guess you have one set of rules for yourself then and another set when it comes to giving advice.

Mousemonkey, probably 🙂

 

[Ironsounds]

hello... well you CPU is good... I would suggest getting a better video card TOO...