7970 vs 670

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Oct 24, 2012
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HI guys, so I need help choosing between the 7970 and the 670. I was gonna get the 670, but now seeing as how the latest drivers for the 7970 has really ramped up the speeds for the 7970 in games like bf3, its more even. I need help choosing in between the

Msi 670 power edition

Asus direct cuii 670 nontop (will oc myself)

And the XFX Radeon HD 7970 Double D Ghz edition.
Any help will be appriciated.

Edit: Will be ocing all cards.
 
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+1. A video showing a comparison of the two is hard to argue with... the effects are plain to see. I don't think it's even an official nVidia video anyway, so not sure how it's marketing.
 
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Mack, you said yourself that you take a huge framerate hit (30fps vs 50fps wasn't it?) on a very well overclocked i7. Not many of us have that much CPU muscle to play with, and 30fps is still only borderline smooth. What about i3/i5/FX users? Or old stuff?
 
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Well I think the reason why its marketed the way that it is, if you will take a chance to listen is that it is rendered through your gpu rather then your cpu and I think that is really the benefit of using a nvidia card is how its done. Now you could get into how it looks is it game breaking and that would be up to opinion. For me it is with the games that I play. I don't think its marketed in a dishonest way. Why would someone advertise something like physx if it could be done with a AMD card because it can't its not the same thing. Havok is a Phsyx engine but its not the same thing. Now you can get into a argument about how its shady for Nvidia to lock people into there games to get the eye candy and that would be fair but I think you are a little off base. I came around and agree with most of what you said but I think you still are a little off in some places.
 
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The only thing that bugs me is when people ask if they need a physx card to run physx at this point its like man >< ugg! For some games it makes a difference quite a huge difference but I don't know why we are focusing on physx so much here the OP plays skyrim cant we all just agree on AMD being better with Skyrim and more then just because of the chip.
 
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The fact of the matter is, AMD is better for high memory requirement games, multi-screen setups/high resolutions. Nvidia is best for a single 1080p monitor and a game that's more CPU-intensive, like Battlefield.
AMD is better for rendering/video editing/semi-professional use as well. Not quite workstation use, but at least editing.
 
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You'd need some kind of hack to pair PhysX with a Radeon. As for "PhysX sucks", that's a pretty stupid statement. I think we can all agree that even if it's just a minor benefit, it's still nicer to have it than not have it. I don't see how something that's better to have than not have can suck.

I personally appreciate playing games the way the developer intends them to be played. That's why I don't like gaming without everything maxed, because that's the experience the developer created. But playing BL2 on my Radeon meant I missed out on a lot of the eye candy and wasn't seeing the game at it's best. This is what I could have been seeing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAfzjTAhpBk&feature=player_embedded

Had I waited to play it on a GeForce. Comparisons start around 40 secs in and show that you easily can see the difference. I don't believe for a second that Gearbox couldn't have achieved the same effects with Havok physics or even an in-house solution, but they chose PhysX, and as a result, that's the only way those effects can be seen. Like I say though, I'm not arguing it's a major advantage anyway (just that it doesn't "suck") so I'll leave it at that.
 
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Agreed I look at things when people discount a opinion of visuals as a bias. Because already you are passing judgment on something discounting what it's doing and just saying well I don't care and it sucks and the end. Being objective I find is key when recommending computer hardware if you can't be objective it will truly show its called fanboys. And just because you don't enjoy something someone else may. A persons trash is another persons treasure.

I would like with games that use physx for them to have AMD able to use there Havok physx to render the physx engine. I don't like when games are pigeon holed into well in order to see these effects ran by the gpu you need this card. I don't like it so hopefully in the future I know however unlikely it would be nice to have both companies showing in the physx argument I want to see benchmarks were both companies get compared apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.
 
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Huge +1 to this. And to the use of Havok. Physics modelling by its nature is something more suited to SIMD/parallel processing (that takes place on GPU, not CPU) so the best solution is something that's GPU-accelerated but also open. Obviously it's not up to us which physics engine is implemented though, we go with whatever the developer decides!
 
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Urgh not this again. I don't have a highly overclocked i7 2600K like you do, so I don't have the CPU muscle to do that. And even on your setup you said you were dropping to 30fps in combat with PhysX on your CPU.

I'm disappointed I didn't see BL2 at its best and you're gonna have a hard time convincing me I'm not disappointed. I'm sure you'll try though, so go ahead.
 
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I currently see no point since none of the games I play use physx, but eventually, i might do that, or just get a geforce card when the time to upgrade comes, which should be in a few years.
 
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