Best Graphics Cards For The Money: January 2012 (Archive)

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Yup, if you needed low profile, that was not the card. :-D
 
The 7950 has been hovering around $200 these past few weeks on sale, whereas the 760 hasn't budged much from its $250 price tag, so saying the two are tied doesn't seem right, although I guess if this article was being worked on for a few weeks prior maybe tom's just didn't get the most current prices in for August.
 


I'm a little leery of a few of those scores. Compared to Tom's BF3 results, they show the 760 a few frames higher ( not unheard of, ) whereas the 7950 ( both variants ) are 10 fps slower ( very unusual to see this big a discrepancy. ) Their Crysis run ( noted: it's Very High while Tom's was only High, ) also puts the 760 much higher than I've seen other sites report. I know not all review sites run things the exact same ( both detail settings and testing bed, ) but I'd expect to see some consistency in a relative nature and scoring order. Tom's scores seem much more similar to others reported here, here, and here while Anand's are very different in a few key places.

Yes, OCing a 760 might get you a few points higher then a stock 7970 in a few titles, while the other half of the time the 7970 is still ahead. But why aren't you comparing it to OCed 7970?
 


7970 is in a different price league. So when 760oc is comparing to 7970 its a big deal. I was comparing 760 vs 7950 and i see 760oc way ahead of 7950 boost. Yes u are right there are some other bench at toms where results are quite different but anand and techpower are in favor of 760 so i dont know whch one is right

 

Not really. It's not uncommon for GPUs to leapfrog their more expensive counterparts when overclocked. An overclocked 7950 can outperform a stock 7970 in many cases too.

Edit: Here are some examples from Tom's original 7950 review:

3dmark%20overclocked.png


battlefield%203%20overclocked.png


crysis%202%20overclocked.png


dirt%20overclocked.png


wow%20overclocked.png


metro%202033%20overclocked.png
 

Saying the same thing as others isn't being the devil's advocate. An overclocked 760 can surpass the 7970, but so can an overclocked 7950.
 
When I was bitmining with it, I had my Gigabyte Windforce-3 HD7970 running at 1130MHz without any problems at all. That's as high as I tried, so I don't know how much higher it might have gone. The fans were running around 70% and weren't too bad. I want to say I was getting at least 650 MHash/s with it, but don't properly remember. I may have to crank it up again just to check.
I've got a HD7770 casually mining now, at about 200MHash/s. Just for giggles, I tested my GTX650Ti and got around 45MHash/s.
 
The fanboy is strong with them. I called them out on it and they just tried to call me ignorant and blame it on me. Let them bask in their prejudice.


Yes, the pricing is different, but you still haven't explained why you think it's applicable to compare an OCed 760 to a stock 7970. Either leave them both stock or OC both so you have consistency in the comparison.

As for the 760 vs 7950, yeah those two sites show a larger gap than I've seen other places ( again, different test beds and settings most likely. ) But the 7950 is currently $50 cheaper too, so that's understandable. Considering the 7950 right now is the same price as I payed for a 6870 Vapor two years ago, the amount of GPU power you can get for the money right now is pretty staggering.


Um, yeah, that's the same review I linked above. It goes right along with what I was saying that a 760 can beat a Radeon in some games and fall behind in others. The BF series has long been one that favors nVidia cards.


I'm not saying the tiers are perfectly populated, but you also have to consider how granular you you want to make them. AMD and nVidia usually play a ladder game of each model fitting between two of their competitors. What decides whether two adjacent products are in the same tier or not? 5fps average? 10fps? I agree, the 7970 may not have quite the graphical prowess of the 780, but the added compute power and the fact it doesn't fall off sharply on the high end makes it a top-tier card to me.
 
The Kool-Aid is strong on the path we have taken.
I, for one, love grandiose. gratuitous platitudes

Save up. It's all good ... GPU prices are in for quite a tumble over the next few months, leaving more cash in your pocket for guns, ammo, gas, drugs and prostitution. (Is that GTA5 meets Leisure Suit Larry ???)

😀

 

I think some people just call that "Tuesday." 😉
 

I am saying this for over a month, since 780 is at least one tier higher. Actually it already pointed on Tom's review both for GTX780 and GTX770, so I don't really know what's going wrong here.

Yeah but I linked images of an GTX760 that surpasses not the 7970 but the 7970GE.

Nah, I just linked the image to show how much an 760 can be oc'ed. People still see the tree and not the entire forest around the tree. The point is that a GTX760 from MSI can be oc'ed on air so much that can bring as much as 30%!!!!! increased performance!!! (not just meaningless clocks...)

Still there is no point for the obvious misleading here. Everyone can see that 7970GE is nowhere near GTX780. What's the point of placing them in the same tier??? Actually not even a watercooled @1250Mhz 7970 can touch a GTX780.
 


I thought AMD also provide turbo with their new gpus not just 75mhz.
 


Keep Kepler cool and 75MHz is not even a fraction of the turbo they can do with Boost 2.0...
 
Wow I just had sort of a personal GPU revelation
I just poured over some of the benches on Toms 2012 chart
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/benchmarks,135.html

now granted drivers have matured especially for the 7970 but this is eye opening
I looked specifically a 1920x1080 performance
I looked at 3Dmark 11 performance,Unigine Heaven performance,Metro 1080 and Crysis 2 1080

what i realized that is at 1920x1080 the following cards are within about 5 FPS of each other
7970,7950,660Ti,670,760,770

really they trade blows back and forth
there are instances in those benches where a 660Ti is beating a 7970 or 7950 beating a 770
funny thing is they are all generally around the 60 FPS mark at performance 1080 settings
so really at 1080 all that matters is price
at a 5 FPS average difference across a variety of benches it doesn't seem to matter
heck on one bench a 650Ti SLI was beating a Titan LOL
really if you selectively use a few benches you can make almost any similar performance card look better than another

I would have to say right now the smartest choice in a gaming card is the 7950 at its new price point if you are gaming at 1080 and gaming is all that matters

arguing over a difference of just few FPS is sort of silly isn't it?

 
I agree, that small of a difference can easily come down to a driver update. If you're thinking long-term expansion and upgrading, I'd stay away from the 660 with its limited memory lane. It's ok at 1080 with med-high details, but you want to go beyond that with a later monitor upgrade or more challenging games, it can start to choke. If AMD can get its XFire issues sorted out, a 7950 with 384-bit 3GB VRAM would make a really great multi-GPU solution ( get one now, get one next year for cheaper. ) But if XFire stays choppy and you're thinking dual GPU down the road, the 760 is the current sweet spot.

 


660 or 660Ti?

my 660Ti maxed game I have easily at 1080 but these are older games like Battlefield 3, Max Payne 3, Crysis 2
I havent tried out Metro 2033 which is probably the most demanding of the games I have
think I will buy BioShock Infinite just to try out a newer game
 

Yes, almost any two graphics cards in SLI/CF will beat a single card. That's not really a fair comparison (even though the price gap is massive because nvidia got really greedy with titan's pricing)
 
and again look at this review

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/12


in BF3, Far Cry 3 and Bio Inf the 660Ti is beating the 7950 Boost even at 2560
so not too sure if the memory bus is that limiting
also remember you can crank the 660Ti memory bus up to 7000 mhz. 500 mhz OC on the 660Ti memory isnt too hard

but again we are talking about only a couple of FPS difference
really comes down to price point and features needed

edit - for pure gaming purposes I would pick the 7950 boost over the 660Ti due to price
 


that was the reason I had the LOl at the end of that statement :)
because of the price difference between the Titan and a pair of 650Tis
really silly to charge that much for a Titan
 
Both, really, though I was talking longer term because my guess is that memory constraints will start to show more as textures get larger with 4K displays moving in. Yes, you're correct, as long as you don't get crazy with most current games shouldn't have a problem. I should have clarified that it's not a given and definitely doesn't happen in all games. I'd just rather be safe and not have it as a potential problem.

But considering you can get a 760 right now for the same price as the 660 Ti, I can't see why you'd pick the latter.
 
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