Gigabyte 7950 $289 vs MSI 7970 $329

[Shephard]

ok guys these 2 cards are on sale.

For the Black Friday I was going to get either the MSI or Gigabyte 7950. You guys helped me decide in my other topic.

Now I see a 7970 by MSI for $329. $100 off regular price. There's also a $20 rebate but I ignore that because rebates are dumb.

The Gigabyte is the windforce.

The MSI looks like a reference card. It's only got the 1 fan and is red/black.

I don't got a lot of money, do you think 7970 is worth it?

Remember I am in Canada and we don't get as good deals as you guys.

by the time you guys respond they could be out of stock!

[lilvaratep]

100 off the 7970? go for it! i got my 7950 for 315

[aaksheytalwar]

Assuming you only need to pay 25% or $75 extra for a 7970, it is easily better bang for buck.

[Shephard]

is this the card you have aaksheytalwar? the msi reference card?

[aaksheytalwar]

Yes

10 chars

[steeb0z]

Where are you finding that price for the 7970?

[Silverforce11]

I would NOT get a reference single fan 7970, it will be extremely noisy and a poor overclocker.

Aakshey has a custom heatsink n fan on his. A 7950 needs 50mhz higher clocks to reach identical performance to a 7970. A custom 7950 would be much better OC than ref 7970, while being less noisy and using less power.

[aaksheytalwar]

My ref 7970 does 1125 at stock volts and I have benchmarked 1225+ without artifacts.

[raghu78]

OP get the Gigabyte HD 7950. this card is clocked at 900 Mhz and just behind the MSI HD 7970 at 925 Mhz. the windforce3x cooler is much superior to the reference HD 7970 cooler. if you are serious about voltage overclocking to 1.2 Ghz and higher the windforce will allow you to do that. the reference cooler is good for slight overclocking at stock voltage. it will get loud once you increase voltage as heat/temps will icrease and the fan will get loud.

[aaksheytalwar]

A ref 7970 has a higher chance of hitting 1150+ MHz compared to custom 7950s. ESP with MSI ref.

[raghu78]

Originally Posted by aaksheytalwar

A ref 7970 has a higher chance of hitting 1150+ MHz compared to custom 7950s. ESP with MSI ref.

there are many users running the Gigabyte HD 7950 at 1.2+ Ghz speeds on overclock.net . the point is the msi hd 7970 will be constrained by its cooler. once you approach 1.2 Ghz with voltage tweaking the fan will be very loud.

[Silverforce11]

Originally Posted by aaksheytalwar

A ref 7970 has a higher chance of hitting 1150+ MHz compared to custom 7950s. ESP with MSI ref.

A reference 7970 at that speed would sound like a jet. I have nothing against the reference PCB, its robust and overengineered, its just the reference cooling is already bad for stock operations.

[aaksheytalwar]

It will be loud. And you will need the fan at 100%. But. If you can bear the jet sound, which I couldn't and hence got aftermarket cooling.

[skipsneeky2]

Originally Posted by aaksheytalwar

A ref 7970 has a higher chance of hitting 1150+ MHz compared to custom 7950s. ESP with MSI ref.

I had a msi 7970 earlier this year,reference like yours and it hit over 1200 core,of course it ran hot and keeping it cool required much more noise then i was a fan of allowing and those early drivers for that card were god awful,i ended up trading the card for a i5 notebook.

I had a stuttering issue with a gtx670 recently and went back to using my msi tf3 7850 which can't clock to 925 on stock without artifacting,but might consider picking up that same exact msi reference 7970 again,especially with how smooth the recent beta 8 drivers have been for my 7850.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127652 The 7970 i had that hit over 1200 core

[Shephard]

I thought you guys said reference cards were actually better. I thought they were reliable and 1 fan does not matter?

[Corporate Thug]

$299 7970

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=67605&...r&promoid=1030

[thilanliyan]

Originally Posted by Shephard

I thought you guys said reference cards were actually better. I thought they were reliable and 1 fan does not matter?

AMD reference cards ARE very good...but the cooling solutions could be better, as in quieter. The one good thing about the reference versions is that they exhaust heat out of the case, which few non-reference versions do.

nVidia's coolers have traditionally been better/quieter.

[Silverforce11]

Originally Posted by thilanliyan

nVidia's coolers have traditionally been better/quieter.

No. Just Kepler.

[thilanliyan]

Originally Posted by Silverforce11

No. Just Kepler.

I'm pretty sure nVidia's coolers have usually been better. I could be wrong, but going all the way back to the 7800 GTX cards, I remember them being cooler and quieter than AMD cards for the most part.

[Shephard]

so I do I want either of these cards or are these bad deals. Maybe the Cyber Monday will have better?

[thilanliyan]

They are not bad deals...especially the 7970 unless you want a really quiet card.

[Shephard]

well the 7970 deal is over.

maybe I will wait until the Cyber Monday.

[RussianSensation]

Originally Posted by Shephard

well the 7970 deal is over.

maybe I will wait until the Cyber Monday.

Are you going to be overclocking?

If not, the reference HD7970 should be fine with a custom fan profile in MSI Afterburner. The msi version is back in stock:

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=67605&...r&promoid=1030

If you are going to be overclocking, I'd rather get an after-market 7950.

[Shephard]

it's back in stock but not $100 off.

Everyone says 7950 is very good overclocking card and easy to do.

I decided on either 7950 by MSI or Gigabyte from my other forum topic. I only looked at this 7970 because of good amount of money off.

whatever is cheapest on the Cyber Monday! I hope...