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680 oc 4gb vs 7970 3gb?

F

fbgkimpan

Junior Member
So once again I have to seek advice from one of the best site to give me advice when it comes to building my computer.

I have to decide between grafic cards. I have a budget of 3000 sek (not sure how much in euro).

However; I found two great deals on two cards.

1. KFA2 GeForce GTX 680 EX OC 4GB DDR5 2xDVI HDMI DisplayPort PCIe - 2999 sek
2. MSI Radeon HD7970 3GB DDR5 DVI HDMI 2xDisplayPort PCIe - 2999 sek


I cannot find any proper benchmark between these two cards.
I plan to TRY and get eyefinity / nivida surround system in the future.

The games I currently play are WoW and LoL. I'm not sure what kind of games I will play in the future as if it matters in my decision. (prob bf3 etc)


I've always looked at the Radeon due to it's higher memory, however this 680 has 4gb so I suppose it might be better for eyefinity / surround?
All advice possible is appricated as I cannot find any good benchmark between these two cards.

What would you pick and why?
 
I would pick the 680 because it supports physX and use less power than the 7970. That was the reason I chose a 670 over a 7950.

They perform similar, where the 7970 is probably 5-10% faster. There's no reason to buy a 4 gb card, so save some money and get a 2gb card. (The only reason I have a 4Gb card was because I could get it at the same price as a 2 gb card.)
 
biostud said:
I would pick the 680 because it supports physX and use less power than the 7970. That was the reason I chose a 670 over a 7950.

They perform similar, where the 7970 is probably 5-10% faster. There's no reason to buy a 4 gb card, so save some money and get a 2gb card. (The only reason I have a 4Gb card was because I could get it at the same price as a 2 gb card.)
Click to expand...

He specifically said he is going to run multiple monitors. Some current games already use 2GB at 1080P. Running three displays is not going to improve things.

I say go for the 4GB card if you want nVidia. That way if you want a second card in the future, you are not so limited.

Also, it is rumored the 770 (renamed 680) is going to cost less than the current 680. but its all rumor at this point.

I think you would be fine with either card. Their performance is very close to each other.
 
That's either a really good deal on the 680 or a bad deal on the 7970. At the same price, I'd choose the 680, but they're not normally the same price.
 
I think those games run better on Nvidia cards, at least wow does last time i checked.

Other than that it's more or less a coin toss.
 
Is that a reference 925mhz 7970? I'd pick GTX680 in this case - will be faster in those titles and the cooler is much better. As others have mentioned, just wait 2 more weeks for GTX770 to drop. We should see clearance prices on GTX670/680 too.
 
Stuka87 said:
He specifically said he is going to run multiple monitors. Some current games already use 2GB at 1080P. Running three displays is not going to improve things.

I say go for the 4GB card if you want nVidia. That way if you want a second card in the future, you are not so limited.
Click to expand...

from these reviews
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013...670_directcu_ii_4gb_sli_review/9#.UZPEx5zhljg

We've given the ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II 4GB video cards plenty of opportunities to prove to us why we would need 4GB of VRAM on these. Unfortunately, these have come short of proving this. We tried pushing a single ASUS GTX 670 4GB to the max on a 30" display, at more than playable settings, and also at 1080p. We saw no advantages with a single card. Then we put two together in SLI and tried to push them to the max at 5760x1200. What we found was that higher settings were possible to enable, but the performance wasn't there to allow them to be playable. Simply, the performance of GTX 670 isn't enough to utilize the capacity of 4GB of VRAM.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/evga-geforce-gtx-670-4gb.html
Increasing the amount of memory on board of GeForce GTX 670 and GTX 680 cards translates to obvious performance benefits only in specific unique cases, such as triple-monitor set-ups with 3240x1920 resolution and enabled antialiasing. Metro 2033: The Last Refuge and Sniper Elite V2 are the only games that need more than the standard 2 GB of graphics memory, but the contemporary High-End graphics cards are anyway too slow in these games even with 4 GB of video memory. In the rest of our games we could hardly see any difference between GeForce GTX 670s with 2 and 4 GB of memory in 3240x1920 and no difference at all in 2560x1440. So, purchasing a 4GB card wouldn't be worth the investment unless you've got a triple-monitor configuration. But if you do have one, 4GB graphics cards really make sense for 2-, 3- and 4-way SLI configurations and playing contemporary games at high resolutions. In this case, the increased amount of memory would not become the bottleneck.

So running multiple monitors with 2gb is not a problem, but when you need more than 2gb you will still need 2, 3 or 4 way SLI to reach playable framerates.
 
Sounds like from what you've posted that the 680 is priced lower right now than it typically is. If that's the case, and you are leaning towards nVidia, it could be worthwhile getting. Most rumors make the 770 more expensive than the 680 and 4gig on nVidia cards is usually sold at a pretty good premium. I'm in the group that thinks 2gig won't be enough next gen for max settings at 1080p. Probably will be at first, but I can see that changing quickly when the new consoles come out. Besides, it doesn't seem like you are paying anything for the extra RAM if the card's the same price as a 7970. That or, where you are, you get boned on AMD pricing. 😉
 
in north america, gtx 680 are more expensive than 7970.

i don't know the KFA2 company at all, MSI i trust.

if you look at benchmark between 680 and 7970, the 680 is usually faster.

so, if you trust KFA2 brand, go for it.
 
gammaray said:
in north america, gtx 680 are more expensive than 7970.

i don't know the KFA2 company at all, MSI i trust.

if you look at benchmark between 680 and 7970, the 680 is usually faster.

so, if you trust KFA2 brand, go for it.
Click to expand...

KFA2 is equal to americas galaxi or something like that if I understand it. KFA2 is one of the better brands.

Here are a few price examples:
KFA2 680s normal price is at 4900 SEK (2999 sek with this limited discount)
MSI 680 price is at 4700 SEK


Thanks for all the tips guys.. but tomorrow I will check if the prices are still there and if 680 is still there, I'll go for it. But with my luck it will prob not be >.< (I need to get back some cash from a friend that ive lent some to, hes gonna pay me back tomorrow, thats why I gotta wait).
 
Last edited:
fbgkimpan said:
KFA2 is equal to americas galaxi or something like that if I understand it. KFA2 is one of the better brands.

Here are a few price examples:
KFA2 680s normal price is at 4900 SEK (2999 sek with this limited discount)
MSI 680 price is at 4700 SEK


Thanks for all the tips guys.. but tomorrow I will check if the prices are still there and if 680 is still there, I'll go for it. But with my luck it will prob not be >.< (I need to get back some cash from a friend that ive lent some to, hes gonna pay me back tomorrow, thats why I gotta wait).
Click to expand...

YUP! I KNEW IT.. the deals were off once my mate paid me my cash.


However, I am in no rush so I'm going to be looking for these deals:
Used 7950 for about 1600 SEK
New 7950 for about 2000 SEK
Used 7970 for about 2300-2500 SEK
New 7970 for about 3000 SEK

and same prices for 680 but its not likley that ill find that 🙂
 
It really is a matter of how much money you want to spend but really if you are currently on a single 1080P monitor the HD7950 is the better performance/price value and if you want to do Eyefinity in the future then you would need another card for crossfire even with HD7970 to be happy.
 
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