Radeon HD 7990 Vs. GeForce GTX 690: The Crowd Picks A Winner

Status
Not open for further replies.

bin1127

Distinguished
Dec 5, 2008
736
0
18,980
A great article with some very interesting results.

Chris really knows use funny and imaginative metaphors to start of his articles. Keep up the good work!
 

merikafyeah

Honorable
Jun 20, 2012
264
0
10,790
If I had $700 to spend on graphics, I'd buy the fastest single-gpu card there is:
The Galaxy GeForce GTX 780 HOF Edition

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/08/14/galaxy_geforce_gtx_780_hof_edition_review/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DZIFN4M/

Out of the box it beats the Titan in pretty much everything and when overclocked I'd bet performance would be indistinguishable from a GTX 690. And did I mention single GPU? Frame-pacing = non-issue. And those temps/noise ratios are in a league of their own.
 


you are pretty much right on there. people often overlook galaxy cards (i know i do), for obvious reasons (quality/after sales support) . but this card is insane, with extremely good OC capabilities. If i had a choice between this and a 690, i would certainly take this card. Althogh i would take 2 x of the cheapest 770's available before any of the mentioned cards.
 

geok1ng

Distinguished
Jun 25, 2008
111
0
18,690
With due respect for TH efforts on the subject, but keeping Metro LL results is a BIAS. How about some piecharts WITHOUT METRO LL?
 

Iron_Sean

Honorable
Sep 5, 2013
1
0
10,510
Why did you only test Triple monitors with no frame pacing versus single high res monitor with frame pacing?

You're confounding variables and making your results hard to compare directly: Is the difference 6 MP vs 4 MP, frame pacing, or their crossfire/surround technology? This is an interesting idea, but I'd really like to see it narrowed to a single variable to better compare the technologies.
 

opmopadop

Distinguished
Apr 12, 2009
277
0
18,780
"But when you hop on a forum and ask, “Which graphics card should I buy, AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 or Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 770?” get ready for an epic war of words, often waged by folks who don’t own either one."

More likely folks who have only owned the same brand for the last 10 years.
 

ddpruitt

Honorable
Jun 4, 2012
1,109
0
11,360
Sorry Chris but 6 people does not a
room full of people
make. This and the results on Bioshock make me think that a bias has been inadvertently been added to your data. Don't know what kind of effect the beer would have though, hopefully beneficial. Unfortunately this type a survey can't be taken too seriously with such a small group. Hopefully Tom's can survey a large group on a number of platforms in the future making the survey useful, even if it means dropping a couple of games.
 

Treynolds416

Honorable
Jul 5, 2013
30
0
10,530
Very interesting article, but you guys really need to get a larger sample size. You could make it a week-long event, stagger in participants, and even include many more varieties of systems like dual 7850's, 760's, etc so that more people can play and not waste as much time. This article was pretty much a test run, now you should do the real thing
 

NinjaNerd56

Honorable
Apr 6, 2013
58
0
10,630
I just built a new Windows 8 game / test box last weekend.

Budget dictated a single GPU and I went with nVidia.

Performs well but I had a massive failure with beta 326 drivers (originally had 320.49 but ran into stuttering issues with Thrustmaster HOTAS stick and Xbox controller - known Win 8 issue) that forced a reload of the OS...no amount of scraping worked.

Now on 314.22 and all is well. Still glad I went NV...the box runs well with no issues/artifacts in 10 games tested so far.
 

Computered

Distinguished
Oct 8, 2011
30
0
18,540
The premise of the testing methodology was good but the execution was flawed. You began the test by using the first example that was NOT a true test and you admitted it. By using the multi-monitor test first you gave the test participants a much higher likely hood of detecting which system used which card. The testing to be accurate should have done the single monitor first to begin opinions on closer to a level playing field.
 

flexxar

Honorable
Oct 6, 2012
431
0
10,860
When the benchmark numbers support nvidia, the numbers are what matters. When the benchmark numbers support amd, all of a sudden benchmark numbers aren't important anymore. This is the best example of "fuzzy science" that I've ever seen.
 

Au_equus

Distinguished
Mar 31, 2011
812
0
19,060
fuzzy science? there are some things that current analytical methods cannot explain, but the reason may become more apparent in the future as new methods come out. Example? Microstuttering. About 2yrs ago, FRAPS was telling us we were getting consistent 60-70 fps but our eyes were telling us something different. then the guy at techpowerup had the notion of evaluating seconds per frame and found the problem. don felt some games were choppy, even with the frame pacing and the FPS/FCAT benchmarks were telling us everything was alright. The purpose of this test, although subjective, was to confirm what don has found and he has achieved that purpose. IMO, a double blind study with at least 10-15 participants would be more definitive, but testing again with a larger group is only going to confirm what don has already found. time and effort would be better suited to find what is going on rather than carrying out subsequent tests or bashing a legit qualitative study.
 

flexxar

Honorable
Oct 6, 2012
431
0
10,860


Ever seen the tv show Brain Games? They did several studies where they gave products to about 6 people to analyze. In each study, each person gave intricate answers about why one product was better than another one. The twist was that they were given multiple copies of the exact same item. Without us even knowing it, the human brain will make up reasons for why it prefers one thing over another even when there is no difference at all.

There just isn't enough science in this study to declare a winner in anything. It's based off the observation of a few people that realistically, probably couldn't even see a difference. So they made up a reason to choose one over the other.
 

cangelini

Contributing Editor
Editor
Jul 4, 2008
1,878
9
19,795


Thank you =)
 

cangelini

Contributing Editor
Editor
Jul 4, 2008
1,878
9
19,795


Is it equally biased to use a number of AMD Evolved titles? Do folks who play Metro not want to know that, while a previous driver update might have improved the game for Radeon owners that 13.8 has issues? Don gave AMD a free pass yesterday in his calculations, factoring Metro out completely.
 

cangelini

Contributing Editor
Editor
Jul 4, 2008
1,878
9
19,795


Where'd you see a room of six people? I'd estimate we had between 20 and 30 throughout the day, but the number of respondents we had (12--6 with frame pacing and 6 without) represented a full day of testing. I would have loved to have had 100, but that would have been a full work-week of gaming.

Basically it comes down to this--we could have run one game with A-B comparison testing and accommodated five times as many people (but they had issues with game sample size) or five games with the number of people we did (but had issues with participants). As it was, many people had to go home without getting to do the experiment because it simply consumes too much time to have two people test two systems in five games.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.