HD 7970 Vs GTX 670?

[TekSeven]

Should i get the Sapphire Radeon HD 7970

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=79472&vpn=11197-11-40G&manufacture=SAPPHIRE&promoid=1139

OR

the MSi Power Edition GTX 670

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=72914&vpn=N670%20PE%202GD5%2FOC&manufacture=MSI%2FMicroStar&promoid=1139

Or should I grab a reference GTX 680

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=70705&vpn=68NPH6DV5ZGV&manufacture=Galaxy%20Technology&promoid=1382

Can someone give me a suggestion? I do plan to overclock but if I do decide to get the GTX 680 I probably wont because of the reference cooler. I do plan SLI/Crossfire in the future. My resolution is 2500 x 1600. Oh and if someone could find a better HD 7970 at roughly the same price that would be nice. thanks

 

[zcosmin]

Gtx 670/80 all the way, it uses physx

 

[zcosmin]

7970 has better oc and better fps on higher resolutions. I have a gtx 680 and I personally think the 7970 is better.

7979 uses much power, runs hotter and louder which I don't think it will oc better than 670, and doesn't have physx

 

[burntpizza]

7979 uses much power, runs hotter and louder which I don't think it will oc better than 670, and doesn't have physx

Physx is useless.

YOU don't think it will OC better than 670. Too bad it beats a GTX 680 already.

Comparison: http://kotaku.com/5964022/the-best-graphics-cards-nvidia-vs-amd-current+gen-comparison

HD 7970 wins hands down

 

[tlg]

Its funny how many people actually have been mislead by marketing that nVidia gtx680 is more power efficient than a 7970...

Its also funny how many people say that the GTX670 is as fast as the 7970 because they roughly cost the same (at least in EU), while they think the GTX680 is simply faster...

Buy the 7970, by preference a NON-Ghz NON-boost edition (because these are also marketing tricks). The first version of the 7970 is 100% the same as the newer with simply bios set to run slower.
-Set your normal 7970 to 1000/1500Mhz or more if it can take it and there, you have the same card.
-Buy a card with aftermarket cooler cause the stock fan is a leafblower...
-The 7970 has more vRAM which is very useful at higher resolutions. Some games such as Crysis, Hitman, Farcry, modded Skyrim (those are that I play and can confirm) already exceed 2GB vRAM on a 1900x1200 screen when all options enabled.

 

[willard]

7979 uses much power, runs hotter and louder which I don't think it will oc better than 670, and doesn't have physx

The only true statement here is that it doesn't have PhysX, and who cares? My computer is capable of performing physics calculations on the CPU, thank you.

The 7970 overclocks FAR better than the 670, and is faster to start with. When all cards are overclocked, the 7970 is closer to the 680 than it is the 670. The 7970 GHz edition can actually beat the 680 in a lot of games, and overclocks better still.

Basically, the 7970 was relatively weak when it launched, but a year of driver updates have brought its performance up to what a flagship card should be. Plus, you can do Bitcoin on it. I bought my cards back in August, and they've literally paid for themselves. How's getting $850 in video hardware refunded to you after six months sound? With the 8000 series delayed, the 7970 is going to remain profitable for a while longer still, and there's still time to get in early enough to get your investment back.

 

[willard]

Buy the 7970, by preference a NON-Ghz NON-boost edition (because these are also marketing tricks). The first version of the 7970 is 100% the same as the newer with simply bios set to run slower.

Not true. The GHz editions are more aggressively binned to guarantee a higher overclocking limit. As a result, the GHz editions actually are measurably faster, even though it's the same hardware.

-Set your normal 7970 to 1000/1500Mhz or more if it can take it and there, you have the same card.

Again, not true. The GHz edition is not just a factory overclocked 7970. Also, the 7970 runs at 1050 MHz core clock by default anyway, AMD released a BIOS update back in July that updated the stock settings.

 

[nacos]

The 7970 most definitely overclocks farther than any nvidia offerings at the current time. My 7970 has a whopping 40% performance boost from a 1275/1700 overclock and this is without watercooling. My temps never even see 70C. I would go farther but going above 1.3v really REALLY heats up the VRMs and I don't have proper cooling for the VRMs so I choose not to.

 

[bystander]

Physx is useless.

YOU don't think it will OC better than 670. Too bad it beats a GTX 680 already.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/A/K/342524/original/idle display off power.png

Comparison: http://kotaku.com/5964022/the-best-graphics-cards-nvidia-vs-amd-current+gen-comparison

HD 7970 wins hands down

Why do you show only the idle power chart, under load, the GTX cards are much more efficient power wise.

PhysX is useless on the vast majority of games, but that isn't to say it is always useless.

 

[ryan5609]

Go for the 7970. Just upgraded to a 7970 from a GTX 580 and the difference is night and day. After rebate my XFX 7970 Black edition cost $369. Cheaper than most 670's and it will out perform any 670 on the market. Plus it came with Crysis 3 and Bioshock for free. It is kind of loud on occasion, but overall it destroys every single game I throw at it. But to tell you the truth, your not going to go wrong with any of the cards your thinking of.

 

[nacos]

Why do you show only the idle power chart, under load, the GTX cards are much more efficient power wise.
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6025/47618.png

PhysX is useless on the vast majority of games, but that isn't to say it is always useless.

Yes they do have more power use but this is solely because nvidia chose to cut out all compute performance to appear better in power efficiency. The reality is that the difference between the 7970 and 680 will end up costing you $8 a year MAXIMUM if you live in a place with very expensive electricity and you have it at 100% load almost 24/7

 

[bystander]

Yes they do have more power use but this is solely because nvidia chose to cut out all compute performance to appear better in power efficiency. The reality is that the difference between the 7970 and 680 will end up costing you $8 a year MAXIMUM if you live in a place with very expensive electricity and you have it at 100% load almost 24/7

The biggest issue I have, is under load all that extra power usage translates to much more heat and noise to cool it down. I had 470's before, and I dreaded every minute of it. I'll never use a loud card again.

 

[nacos]

The biggest issue I have, is under load all that extra power usage translates to much more heat and noise to cool it down. I had 470's before, and I dreaded every minute of it. I'll never use a loud card again.

Noise is relative to your fan profile and overclock. The 7970 has no trouble maintaining completely fine temps at stock while being completely silent (assuming you have a double/triple fan model.) The gtx 470s and 480s are among the hottest gpus in history. If you read my above post you can see that my 7970 is overclocked to its limits while the temps stay under 70C at full load. This is provided that I can actually hear it but I'm always wearing headphones when I game so it's not a concern. If I lower the fan aggressiveness then my temps will see a maximum of about 75C with the same insane overclock while being completely silent.

 

[bystander]

Noise is relative to your fan profile and overclock. The 7970 has no trouble maintaining completely fine temps at stock while being completely silent (assuming you have a double/triple fan model.) The gtx 470s and 480s are among the hottest gpus in history. If you read my above post you can see that my 7970 is overclocked to its limits while the temps stay under 70C at full load. This is provided that I can actually hear it but I'm always wearing headphones when I game so it's not a concern. If I lower the fan aggressiveness then my temps will see a maximum of about 75C with the same insane overclock while being completely silent.

There may be some quieter cards, but the charts I was just looking at showed the 7970 Ghz to be louder and hotter than the 470's were. That's frightening and it wasn't even close.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

another upside to the gtx 6xx cards apart from power consumption and physx, is they run better in multi-card setups- higher overall fps, better sli driver/game support and less stuttering. Driver support in general from nvidia is better, updates to fix bugs/performance issues are generally fixed faster. the 7970 is a good buy for a single card though, but performance isnt always everything, many other factors in to what makes a good card, now the choice is yours.

 

[nacos]

Here is my 7970 at the updated stock speeds (faster than the original stock speeds) while mining bitcoins (mining bitcoins pushes the gpu farther than any game and gets it hotter than even OCCT or furmark will). As you can see, the fans are a tad above silent (you can change that manually) while the gpu temps stay at a solid 65C.

 

[nacos]

another upside to the gtx 6xx cards apart from power consumption and physx, is they run better in multi-card setups- higher overall fps, better sli driver/game support and less stuttering. Driver support in general from nvidia is better, updates to fix bugs/performance issues are generally fixed faster. the 7970 is a good buy for a single card though, but performance isnt always everything, many other factors in to what makes a good card, now the choice is yours.

While I can agree with nvidia having SLI profiles for games sooner than AMD releases crossfire profiles for games, microstuttering is a thing of the past and is virtually nonexistant today with Radeon HD 7000 series setups and Geforce GTX 600 series setups alike.

 

[yummerzzz]

Posted from Tom's, thread over.

EDIT : Thread not over- OP's res is 1600p, but I'm fairly certain the AMD cards perform better at higher resolutions anyway.

 

[nitrium]

From most benchmark's I've seen a GTX670 would be better compared with an HD7950, not an HD7970 which easily trumps it in anything that is not an nVidia "The Way It's Meant to be Played" optimized title. Also keep in mind you get a whole extra GB of VRAM on the HD7970.

 

[nacos]

From most benchmark's I've seen a GTX670 would be better compared with an HD7950, not an HD7970 which easily trumps it in anything that is not an nVidia "The Way It's Meant to be Played" optimized title. Also keep in mind you get a whole extra GB of VRAM on the HD7970.

Oh good point. When the GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 came out, anything above 1GB VRAM was a complete waste. Crysis 3 uses a whopping 2.4GB VRAM when maxed out, and that's just as 1080p.

 

[willard]

The biggest issue I have, is under load all that extra power usage translates to much more heat and noise to cool it down. I had 470's before, and I dreaded every minute of it. I'll never use a loud card again.

I use a pair of 7970s. Even under Bitcoin (ludicrously high load), my temps peak out at 80c with the standard fan profile, which is very quiet. I have to crank the fans up if I overclock the cards while mining, but otherwise noise isn't an issue. Gaming on overclocked cards is perfectly acceptable, as far as noise is considered, though I have no reason to (at stock my setup maintains 100+ FPS in every game I've thrown at it).

 

[bystander]

I use a pair of 7970s. Even under Bitcoin (ludicrously high load), my temps peak out at 80c with the standard fan profile, which is very quiet. I have to crank the fans up if I overclock the cards while mining, but otherwise noise isn't an issue. Gaming on overclocked cards is perfectly acceptable, as far as noise is considered, though I have no reason to (at stock my setup maintains 100+ FPS in every game I've thrown at it).

Are yours Ghz editions? It's the Ghz editions that are ridiculous by the reviews. Some of the new HSF help a lot, but they are still rather noisy cards. I guess for some it matters more than others.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

While I can agree with nvidia having SLI profiles for games sooner than AMD releases crossfire profiles for games, microstuttering is a thing of the past and is virtually nonexistant today with Radeon HD 7000 series setups and Geforce GTX 600 series setups alike.

where is your proof that it is non-existant? i have experienced it recently, and there are many other reports with fps drops and worse playability than with a single card.