MSI 670 PE SLI vs XFX 7970 GHZ CrossfireX

[bcontoursvt]

So I currently have the XFX Dual Dissipation 7970 GHZ edition card in Crossfire on my machine - paid approximately $779 after MIR, cash back, etc... I recently found the MSI PE GTX 670 2GB for $731.50 after MIR, cashback for two cards in SLI.

Lastly, I found the Gigabyte GTX 680 Windforce 2GB for $883.50 after MIR, cashback, etc ... for two cards in SLI.

So far my Crossfire setup is working well, but sort of have that little nagging voice, saying "get NVidia for PhysX 'bonus.'"

I understand that PhysX is not a mainstream thing and only a few games use it, so I wouldn't pay it too much mind EXCEPT that it's attached to a set of graphics cards (GTX670 SLI) that's $50 cheaper than the 7970 GHZ CrossfireX. A bonus, if you will. Plus, I know a non-reference GTX 670 will, on average, outperform a reference GTX680 so I am deciding between non-reference GTX670s and GTX680s to even things out.

So basically, a) Is PhysX worth getting the MSI GTX670 over the XFX 7970 GHZ and pocketing the $50 difference? b) Will the MSI GTX670 be outmatched SIGNIFICANTLLY/AT ALL by the XFX 7970 GHZ? c) If the MSI GTX670 will be beaten by the XFX 7970 GHZ, will the Gigabyte GTX680 for PhysX be a subtantial upgrade over the XFX 7970 GHZ to merit the more than $100 difference? d) Finally, if the MSI GTX670/Gigabyte GTX680 is clearly superior to the XFX 7970 GHZ, will opting for a 4GB version of the GTX670/GTX680 be worth it considering it's only a few dollars more?

Thanks!

 

[Ceee9]

A) i dont know it depend on games ur playing(just afew game)
B)i dont know about this, but not too much i think, the ati is better on price/performance, just significantlly imo
C)i dont think so, probably someone will show u the benchmark, i still think the 670 and normal 7970 is worth more then 680 and the ghz version
D)absolutely in my opinion, i read it somewhere, people testing the 2gb and 4gb card,with 1 monitor to triple with 2560x1980p on each monitor, heavily moded games,
And the far it can go is 3.9 gb or vram, eventhough none of this apply on ur daily(if) gaming, but im really sure the next gen gpu will be using higher vram and higher bus rate. It will be good to coop with the next gen card, unless u buying new thing every year

 

[bigcyco1]

I would take the MSI GTX670 over the XFX 7970 GHZ and pocket the $50

 

[Sunius]

I'd go for SLI. This generation it's superior: Crossfire is too microstuttery.

 

[bigcyco1]

And lastly, there's the Physx thing.I think you know the right choice now lol.

[flash=560,315]http://www.youtube.com/v/kAfzjTAhpBk?version=3&hl=en_US[/flash][/quotemsg]

 

[stuffsearcher]

Wait for the next generation, and you'll have a better deal

 

[Sunius]

^
You will have a much better deal in 100 years. Point is, there's no point in waiting as there'll always something better in the future.

 

[bcontoursvt]

So I think I am going to pass on the GTX670 as PERSONALLY, I want to have the best card available (be it 7970GHZ or GTX68). Thanks for the input on that though.

To throw a wrench in the mix, my wife said I could also chose from the GTX690. Now, most of the reviews say that even though the GTX 690 kicks arse, it gets beat (barely) by the GTX 680 in SLI and for less (GTX 680 2x $469 = $939 , GTX 690 $999).

So at $940 for GTX 680 SLI or $820 for 7970 GHZ CrossfireX, what then?

P.S. Machine is i7 3770k, 16GB Vengeance RAM, ASRock Z68 Fatal1ty, Samsung 840 Pro 256GB, Seagate 2TB Hard drive.

 

[sam_p_lay]

Well the GTX690 is definitely the more energy efficient option if you're considering energy bills and saving rainforests etc... 300 watts TDP vs 390 watts on dual GTX680s.

 

[sam_p_lay]

Aw wow I just watched that video. First 45 seconds I was thinking 'meh. It looked the same on my Radeon.' but after that... well I'm gonna take people who talk down PhysX a lot less seriously.

*smothers Radeon with pillow*

 

[bigcyco1]

Aw wow I just watched that video. First 45 seconds I was thinking 'meh. It looked the same on my Radeon.' but after that... well I'm gonna take people who talk down PhysX a lot less seriously.

*smothers Radeon with pillow*

Yeah some say it's a gimmick clearly it's not

 

[renz496]

^
You will have a much better deal in 100 years. Point is, there's no point in waiting as there'll always something better in the future.

+1. keep waiting and in the end you end up not buying anything. also waiting for the next generation does not necessarily equals to get better deal. the recent example is HD7000 series. many would expect it will debut around 6970 (many dictate around 380-430) launch pricing but in the end AMD decides to sell the card even more expensive than nvidia 580.

Yeah some say it's a gimmick clearly it's not

to me gimmick or not it does add more eye candy to the graphic. sometimes even more so than DX11. for example in batman arkham city the visual effect done by PhysX are more visible than DX11 effect (such as tessellation done on the environment).

 

[sam_p_lay]

to me gimmick or not it does add more eye candy to the graphic. sometimes even more so than DX11. for example in batman arkham city the visual effect done by PhysX are more visible than DX11 effect (such as tessellation done on the environment).

Agreed - when I have a really powerful card, I'll certainly prefer to have the tessellation cranked right up than not have it, but it's this kind of attention to detail with PhysX that really stands out. I'm willing to bet Gearbox could have pulled it off without using PhysX, but they didn't. And they probably won't next time either. Well, maybe I'll hold off playing DLCs 3 and 4 until I grab a GTX770 or whatever next year

 

[Ceee9]

Lets buy 700 series gpu, Hahahahahaha, hope the fake rumors of gtx780 using 6.5gb vram is true and i will rock gta 5 and next fallout with thousand of mods. Hahahahaha

 

[renz496]

Agreed - when I have a really powerful card, I'll certainly prefer to have the tessellation cranked right up than not have it, but it's this kind of attention to detail with PhysX that really stands out. I'm willing to bet Gearbox could have pulled it off without using PhysX, but they didn't. And they probably won't next time either. Well, maybe I'll hold off playing DLCs 3 and 4 until I grab a GTX770 or whatever next year

this is just my opinion but i think gearbox choose to use advance PhysX for the PC version so they can convince pc gamer (some not all because some people will still pick the game even without those fancy PhysX effect) than the PC version at least have something extra graphically compared to the console counter part. the game using cartoonish graphic so they can't boast about higher setting will make the game are much more closer to real world graphically.

 

[darksparten]

It's literally not even a competition.

GTX670 vs 7970 is last year, a 7970GHz edition revision will easily stomp any GTX670 and when overclocked can reach and sometimes even surpass GTX680 levels.

Not to mention AMD Scales way better with CF than Nvidia does with SLI because of it's 384-bit bus.

2GB of memory on the GTX670 will bottleneck you way before the max potential of both cards are actually used. And on higher resolutions it's no contest.

PhysX is a formidable technology that's used in some 150 games(many of which are triple A titles and it's likely you play many of them). But the truth is a decent CPU can do PhysX's task just as well or even better than the GPU itself.

50 dollars is simply not worth losing so much raw performance and losing the ability to future proof(2GB is a huge bottleneck for SLI) and the ability to play at high resolutions/multi-monitor setups, CF 7970GHz is my choice, but if you go with 7970GHz after all go with a Sapphire or ASUS, XFX isn't the greatest.

 

[renz496]

Not to mention AMD Scales way better with CF than Nvidia does with SLI because of it's 384-bit bus.

got links or source with benchmark to prove this? AFAIK this memory interface stuff only matters in situation that might affected by bandwidth related situation but i never heard about smaller memory interface will holding back scaling in multi gpu

 

[darksparten]

While I agree with the overall sentiment of your post...

There's not much evidence out there to show 2GB as a "bottleneck" for SLI.

Also there's nowhere near 150 games that use GPU accelerated physX...
http://physxinfo.com/index.php?p=gam&f=gpu

By my count that's 27 total with just 4-7 of them being important depending on your gaming tastes...

Weird lol I read there was 150 on the Nvidia website, meh maybe I went crazy that day.

Well if 2 cards are running at FULL potential in SLI(as in like 95-100% usage), the application is probably intensive enough to warrant more than 2GB.

For gaming maybe no bottleneck, because in gaming SLI/CF cards are rarely used to max potential, but for other tasks, 2GB is a bottleneck.

 

[darksparten]

Not to mention AMD Scales way better with CF than Nvidia does with SLI because of it's 384-bit bus.

got links or source with benchmark to prove this? AFAIK this memory interface stuff only matters in situation that might affected by bandwidth related situation but i never heard about smaller memory interface will holding back scaling in multi gpu

Hi

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865-12.html

 

[renz496]

While I agree with the overall sentiment of your post...

There's not much evidence out there to show 2GB as a "bottleneck" for SLI.

Also there's nowhere near 150 games that use GPU accelerated physX...
http://physxinfo.com/index.php?p=gam&f=gpu

By my count that's 27 total with just 4-7 of them being important depending on your gaming tastes...

i don't know how many games use PhysX as their physics engine but at least i think every game based on Unreal Engine 3 will use PhysX because PhysX is part of UE3

 

[renz496]

Hi

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865-12.html

it's about when the HD6k series starts to pull ahead in scaling (6900 series). but it did not mention about how memory interface related to scaling performance in multi-gpu. btw 6950 memory interface is 256bit and GTX570 have 320bit although in total bandwidth 6950 is a bit faster (160GB/s vs 152GB/s)