660ti vs 7950

[watty12]

Been looking to upgrade my graphics card recently , and i was wondering which of these cards would be better for me

I play games such as battlefield 3 , skyrim and will be playing borderlands 2 when it is released

660 ti

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-msi-gtx-660-ti-power-edition-oc-28nm-6008mhz-gddr5-gpu-1019mhz-boost-1097mhz-cores-1344-2x-dl-dv

7950

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-msi-radeon-hd-7950-5000mhz-gddr5-28nm-gpu-880mhz-1792-cores-dual-link-dvi-i-hdmi-2x-mini-display

Thanks for the help

 

[beardedvillain]

Definitely the 7950.

Also,Do you plan on overclocking? At stock clocks, the 7950 will outperform a 660ti in like 9/10 games. However, if you do a little overclocking, you can expect to outperform even a 670. The 7950 overclocks really well, so if you do get the 7950 I would suggest you do some overclocking, considering it is so easy to do.

 

[fastreaction]

They are about the same actually. You can't really go wrong.

- Fastreaction

 

[blazorthon]

The 660 TI can't overclock anywhere near as well as the 7950, fastreaction. The 660 TI also has very poor tessellation, AA, and DirectC feature performance. If someone wants a Nvidia card, the 660 TI is not the card to have. At least the 670 has decent AA performance, although its tessellation and DirectC performance still leaves much to be desired when you use these features.

 

[fastreaction]

Yeah but that is when you are overclocking. Not everybody is "ready" to overclock it. I don't see how a 660TI is "very poor" though.

- Fastreaction

 

[beardedvillain]

Yeah but that is when you are overclocking. Not everybody is "ready" to overclock it. I don't see how a 660TI is "very poor" though.

- Fastreaction

Well, even on stock settings it would outperform the 660ti in most games. From what I've seen it gives a 5-10FPS difference in most games. You pretty much get what you pay for, if you want to spend the extra $50 you will get what you paid for, if not the 660ti is still a good card.

 

[blazorthon]

I didn't say that it is very poor, I said that it has very poor AA, tessellation, and DirectC performance. That only matters if you use these features, but most higher end gamers use at least one or two of them, so it can matter.

@beardedvillain
that 5-10FPS increase number is inaccurate, to say the least. The 660 TI can be very close so long as the above features are not in use. It can even win in some games. The 660 TI, however, also has poor minimum frame rates, so if you refer to its minimum frame rates, yes, those can be lower than the AMD competition in pretty much any game at any settings. The averages are usually very competitive so long as AA, tessellation, and DirectC are not in use because the 660 TI can have very high maximum frame rates.

 

[watty12]

So if i wasn't overclocking , i should go for the 660 ti. If i do want to get the 7950 ?

 

[blazorthon]

no, if you don't care about tessellation, AA, and DirectC, then consider the 660 TI if you also don't mind the slightly under-performing minimum frame rates. if You do want these and don't overclock, then get a Radeon 7870. If you overclock, then get a 7950 whether you want these features or not because the 660 TI overclocks very poorly and the 7870 can't compare to the 7950, although it does overclock well.

If you really want a Nvidia card, then I'd recommend the GTX 670, not the 660 TI. The 660 TI's 192 bit GDDR5 memory bus is quite the hindrance.

 

[fastreaction]

He can play his games fine with either card. There are always cards out there which are better than others and you can also "tweak" a card faster by overclocking it. The point is still, is he able to play his games fine? Yep. 660 TI and 7950 are both on the upper tiers of hierarchy charts. I agree they differ in performance but as long as he is able to play his games I think it does not make such a big deal. I recommend him to check his budget and consider weither to buy the more expensive one or the cheaper one but he won't expect a HUGE difference.

- Fastreaction

 

[PapiLouis4]

Remember that he is planning on playing Borderlands 2 which comes free with the 660ti, so in a sense he will be paying about $100 more for the 7950.

edit: you might also want to consider what resolution you'll be playing on, multiple monitors, or whether you plan on SLI/crosffire.
if you won't be playing on anything higher than 1920x1080 resolution the 660ti should max most games and save you some money.

 

[blazorthon]

OP doesn't seem like he/she us going to overclock, so the 7870 or the 660 TI is probably the better question now. Again, keep in mind that being able to play and playing with inferior graphics is the trade off to consider. Also, why would OP pay $100 more? There are 7950s for about $300-$320, so at worst, it would be $60-80 more including the game and many 7950s come with free games that OP could play or sell to make up the difference.

Also, being able to overclock by say 10% like the 660 TI (maybe 15% in some games) compared to nearly 50% with the 7950 is a huge difference. Even the 7870 can go more than 20% above stock. Not important for OP if OP doesn't overclock, but it can be quite considerable.

 

[blazorthon]

yes, they can get a minor performance increase that is almost negated by their overly slim memory bus. If they could Turbo their memory bus rather than their GPU, then it would be a good feature. Turboing something that is behind a bottle-neck doesn't do a whole lot of good.

 

[tassietim]

waiting to see toms big 660ti shoot out , that i think should be in the works atm
but from what i've gathered the 660ti i meant to be the mid range card for gamers playing on 1080p res sizes not super high res on mutli screen setups
in aus Pc case gear just sold out of some HIS7950 3gb iceq turbos going for $299 Aus and thats what i'm looking forward too, 7950 price drops to go against the 660ti's prices
also dont the 660ti's ramp up their speeds anyways automatically

 

[revro]

i would go with 7950 if you dont intent multi monitor setup, otherwise you could get problems with connectors. i myself al quite not amused about the display port connector chaos of ati/amd ... and thats coming from guy who had always ati cards

revro

 

[blazorthon]

If you intend to do a multiple monitor setup, then even Nvidia's higher end cards can have memory bandwidth bottle-necks with their wider 256 bit GDDR5 memory buses compared to AMD's 384 bit GDDR5 buses. Nvidia is less of an option in multi-monitor setups if you want the best performance and the best performance for the money, although they can still win in performance per watt (although memory bandwidth bottle-necks do hurt this) so long as youkeep them away from tessellation and DirectC/OpenCL.

If the connectors are a problem (which, admittedly, AMD did do quite poorly with), then there are adapters that can be bought. Most cards come with at least a few.

 

[revro]

well 5760x1080 is the reason i am waiting for gtx 685 4gb beside waiting for haswell in 7 months

best
revro

 

[blazorthon]

I still say that I'm not sure of the GTX 685 even releasing. Even if it does, it'd probably cost like $600 or $700. If it does, then it'd definitely be a card for 5760x1080 if it really does have a 512 bit GDDR5 memory bus. That would be as minute of a memory bandwidth bottle-neck as reasonably possible with GDDR5 memory and in the best situation for it too.

 

[revro]

well we do need gtx685 4gb as 690 really just uses 2gb itself which can be limit when using skyrim with enb or high textures or crysis2, i mean we will get in february crysis 3. if futureproofing and you have time, then yes wait for gtx 685 4gb g as godot worst case scenario you get haswell and maybe 7xx cards in march/april 2013

best
revro

 

[blazorthon]

well we do need gtx685 4gb as 690 really just uses 2gb itself which can be limit when using skyrim with enb or high textures or crysis2, i mean we will get in february crysis 3. if futureproofing and you have time, then yes wait for gtx 685 4gb g as godot worst case scenario you get haswell and maybe 7xx cards in march/april 2013

best
revro

That's also true. The 690 is better suited for 3D/120Hz gaming rather than very high resolution gaming with memory intensive games where 2GiB is simply not enough.