Asus 680 vs Sapphire 7970

[xmutagenx]

Asus GTX680 Direct CU II 2GB

vs

Sapphire Radeon 7970 Ghz 3GB

My main concern is playing Crysis 3 @ 1080p BUT I want the most silent performance!!!

Okay so here's the deal I know that Sapphire WILL run a bit louder than Asus with it's godly DCU II, however, does anyone have any experience with these cards? Sapphire is cheaper and a lot of benchmarks show it's faster than 680 as well as having 3GB vRam is somewhat future-proof.

Discuss!

 

[ASHISH65]

Hd 7970 is faster but mostly perform same.with nvidia you can get physicx and other features.its your choice.

 

[ASHISH65]

Getting gtx 680 is not worthwile as difference between gtx 670 and 680 is 5% performance + big price gap.

 

[xmutagenx]

It's quite difficult to decide which way to go. I do however mostly want silent performance.

The price tag on 670 and 7970 are roughly the same, however wont 7970 heavily outperform 670?

 

[aleksanderdev]

NEVER BUY 680!!!!
Now thats how easy it is.

The 7970 outperforms the 680 easily!
And to top that off the 7970 is cheaper aswell!
Forget the cudas, only a handfull of games use it and those who do use still works great with amd

 

[ASHISH65]

Yes hd 7970 is slight perform faster than gtx 670 but still not big.Mostly hd 7950,gtx 670,680 and hd 7970 have small difference.as if you do moderate overclock with hd 7950 then it will get ahead even of gtx 680!.so do some research and choose.

 

[aleksanderdev]

If you where to get SLI or Crossfire later check this out and see how much the 7970 beats the 670 and 680
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/01/14/asus_geforce_gtx_670_directcu_ii_4gb_sli_review/2#.UThw_RyEx6I

 

[JJ1217]

Yes hd 7970 is slight perform faster than gtx 670 but still not big.Mostly hd 7950,gtx 670,680 and hd 7970 have small difference.as if you do moderate overclock with hd 7950 then it will get ahead even of gtx 680!.so do some research and choose.

Yeah, in some cases a 7950 at around 1.1-1.2 flat out beats a 7970 GHZ and a 680. A 7950 at 1.2 GHZ beats a 680 at 1.3 from what I've heard. Of course overclocks are not definite and that is why you can't exactly say a 7950 is better than a 680.

 

[JJ1217]

If you where to get SLI or Crossfire later check this out and see how much the 7970 beats the 670 and 680
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/01/14/asus_geforce_gtx_670_directcu_ii_4gb_sli_review/2#.UThw_RyEx6I

Interesting article, they seem to be changing the settings when benchmarking.

 

[xmutagenx]

RE: to pretty much all... Noise?

 

[kunto]

As a owner of sapphire 7970 dual x (nearly a year old card so not a GHz edition) I can say that it's a fast card, but it's not quiet as such. By using MSI afterburner you can make a fan profile that makes it a lot quieter but that ofc increases the temperature of the core. It seems that for this particular cooling solution 44% fan speed is inaudible (when playing less than 50% load games such as skyrim, wow etc that 44% is enough) but when you play games which load the GPU to the full (crysis 3 or far cry 3) you can really hear the fans. I sometimes also crank up the fan speed of the case fans to keep the noise down to bearable numbers.

The base fan profile for the sapphire card is very aggressive and it wont let the core heat up over 75C. With Afterburner fan profile the card turned into a lot quieter but now runs at around 83C at max load.

If you don't mind spending a little more, I would get Asus 7970 DC2 card or perhaps Nvidia card since they are supposedly quieter, however I have no personal experience of those cards.

P.S. I have overclocked my card to 1000/1400 but also decreased the voltage from 1,112V to 1,060V. Also bear in mind that case ventilation has a major effect in the noise of the card. With no OC and a bit better ventilation I think the card can be quite inaudible. I'm currently considering on improving my current case ventilation by adding an exhaust fan to the top.

ASRock Z77 Extreme4 | i5-3570K | NH-D14 | 4x4GB Corsair Vengeance LP | Sapphire HD7970 | Samsung 830 256GB + WD CG 2TB | Define R3 + SF Golden Green 550W

 

[rdc85]

The noise will depends on the cooler did u use...

if u go with asus direct cu, saphire vapor chamber, msi twinfrozer or HIS IceQ (HIS had most silent cooler that i know), it will quite silence...

and as kunto said, u could use custom fan profile to adjust the noise as u liking....

 

[aleksanderdev]

Interesting article, they seem to be changing the settings when benchmarking.

You have to look at apple to apple test the bottom graphs on each page!