Asus GTX 670 DCU2 or Gigabyte 7970 Windforce?

[tonysama916]

Hi,

3 weeks ago I bought an Asus GTX 670 for $409.99 USD thinking that it would be a great upgrade from my 560ti for Far Cry 3.

My experience with this card has been less than stellar for a $410 card... It is running Far Cry 3 on High settings with Post FX on low; HDAO; Alpha set to standard; MSAA OFF just to get a smooth gaming experience.

I overclocked it +185mhz core and +550mhz on VRAM. Also i am using a xeon e3-1245 @ 3.3ghz

Do you think I should return this card and pick up a 7970 instead?

 

[cc_moreau_cc]

Before I start off, I'm not sure how gaming performance is with xeon processors but I'm sure it isn't as good as Core i series CPUs gaming performance so that right there, is problem number 1. Now, have you installed the latest drivers, which are 310.90? Also, running Far Cry 3 at Ultra with MSAA at 60 FPS is damn near impossible unless you're running SLI or a 690 so forget about that. Getting a 7970 won't improve performance much, maybe by 3-5 frames but the 670 and 7970 are pretty neck and neck. The 7970 does have more overclocking headroom but I think it still doesn't warrant the extra $ on the price tag. What other games are you playing? Are you satisfied with performance in those games?

Edit : Never mind me talking about the extra $ on the price tag, didn't see the price on the poll silly me. If you really aren't satisfied, then go for it, but you won't see a dramatic increase from the 670, honestly, it'll be pretty much the same.

 

[tonysama916]

Sorry, I am using the latest 310.90 drivers. So my expectations are too high eh? darn.

 

[cc_moreau_cc]

Yeah, a 7970 isn't really going to help your situation unless you're ready to go crossfire or SLI on the 7970 or 670. Your Xeon might be bottlenecking that 670 a bit though since Xeons aren't optimized for that sort of load coming from pc games.

 

[Sumukh_Bhagat]

You should Max out the Game at 1080p

But your Xeon is Bottlenecking. They aren't for Gaming, Not at all.

I would suggest you a i5 for Gaming.

 

[darksparten]

if you already have a GTX670 I'd just keep it, 7970 will be an improvement but honestly not a big one and certainly not worth 30+ dollars in shipping/restocking.

 

[darksparten]

Xeon is a bad idea for gaming also, Xeon are like FX, focus on more threads but low per core performance for server/rendering optomization, for gaming the highest you can get is the i7-3970x(or even i5-3570k if you dont use hyperthreaded games) before the parabola starts to angle down.

 

[tonysama916]

cool thanks for all the suggestions. I think I'll wait to upgrade everything once the swiftech h220 releases