7950 or 670? Possibly 7850 or 660ti

[Greenlepricon]

So I missed the newegg deals on the 7950 for the games and prices (especially the awesome twin frozr price), and now I'm wondering whether it's worth still sticking with my original plan of getting the 7950 for about $350 or adding $50 and getting the 670. Amazon also sells used ones for about $40 off each of those prices sometimes, so I could opt for one of those. I won't have money for a few more days but want to decide which one will keep those frames up for longer. I plan to experiment with sli/crossfire in the future (heard good and bad things all around about this), but I only want one card for as long as possible.
Also, with the 660ti coming and all the news of the 7850 overclocking like a monster, I'm curious about whether these are going to be a better deal. I only game at 1080p right now. I might decide to get a second monitor some time from now, so I'm not sure these could handle that. Still debating on that one. Any advice?

 

[Shmee]

What games do you like to play? At 1080p vs 1440p and up, at least you have more options to work with.

Depending on games, an OC'd 7850 or 660ti should be enough.

 

[Greenlepricon]

I play games that work with both amd and nvidia so they won't really decide which company I lean towards. The Witcher 2, Battlefield 3, and Metro are the games I have that will stress it out the most right now. I'll also take a 7870 if I can get one close to the price of the 7850. The biggest question is will these run games at max for a little into the future? Obviously I don't expect to run games at max a couple years from now, but I want to safely skip a generation or two of gpu's before having to upgrade again.

 

[cmdrdredd]

For 1080p either one is plenty. Buy based on the price.

 

[Shmee]

If you want to keep the card a while without upgrading, I would likely recommend getting a deal on a good 7950, its superior memory bandwidth and OC ability should make it better for the future for a while.

 

[Greenlepricon]

That's sorta what I'm leaning for right now. I overclock some but don't like to go for the highest possible just cause of added power and stress. From what I hear this generation of amd cards are all amazing for overclocking. Thanks for the advice. Hopefully there are some good deals for it soon.

 

[RussianSensation]

Might as well wait 2 weeks:

1) You'll see exactly how GTX660Ti performs
2) If GTX660Ti performs well and is priced very aggressively, we might see more price drops
3) It gives you time to catch another deal on an after market HD7950 card.

All the games you listed are pretty demanding.

 

[Greenlepricon]

Alright thanks. Yeah I decided to list the ones I know will challenge the gpu. The rest of my games are pretty weak like Left for Dead and Team Fortress. I think I'll go ahead and wait to see what happens for now. Thanks again guys

 

[Arkaign]

If you want to skip a gen or two, best bet right now is to look at one of the beastly new 7970s with the higher clocks and very good coolers. Russian up there usually has the skinny on which ones are best at the best prices. IIRC it's something like ~20% faster maxed out avg compared to something like my 670 FTW edition, and the 3gb will probably keep it viable for longer.

Yes, it's gonna cost you a bit more, but probably worth it if you really want to stretch things as long as possible.

 

[Greenlepricon]

Huh that's quite a bit better. I was going to stick with the 7950 cause it seems amazing after an overclock and also I hate paying $400+ for a card, but if I'm getting the performance I can't really complain. If it is worth that extra cost then I'll definitely check it out!

 

[Dark Shroud]

Sounds like you want the MSI 7950.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r7950twinfrozr3gd5oc

You can't beat the price and the rebate is good until the end of the month so you can try waiting to see on the 660TI. I doubt the 660 TI will beat a factory OC'd 7950.

 

[RussianSensation]

If you want to skip a gen or two, best bet right now is to look at one of the beastly new 7970s with the higher clocks and very good coolers. Russian up there usually has the skinny on which ones are best at the best prices. IIRC it's something like ~20% faster maxed out avg compared to something like my 670 FTW edition, and the 3gb will probably keep it viable for longer.

Not at 1080P though. GTX670 + OC can pass GTX680. At 1080P, an overclocked 7970 won't be that much faster. Where it takes off is 2560x1440/1600. I am curious to see how GTX660Ti will do and what it's price will be.

Tweaktown has retested the 660Ti with overclocking and in 4 out of 5 games it couldn't touch a stock GTX670 with AA at all, came close in Mafia 2 only. But if this card is $250, it would be great value. If it's $300-330, then I'd get an after-market 7950 + 1.1ghz overclock.

 

[Masahiro]

I'm just gonna copy paste what I put in another thread literally 2 minutes ago:

I did some quick searching for a review that compared the 670 680 and 7970 in gaming to see how different they were and this is what I found:

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/05/1..._gaming_perf/2

Long story short here is what they said in the end:

"If you are not one to overclock, it is clear the GTX 670 is the better value even when compared to AMD's $449 HD 7970. The $399 GTX 670 can deliver a similar experience for less money. When compare the price compatible GeForce GTX 670 to the Radeon HD 7950, the value delta is tremendous; it is simply an embarrassing scenario for the Radeon HD 7950. The GeForce GTX 670 clearly offers much better gaming performance at the same price. At the current prices the Radeon HD 7950 cannot compete in the market."

"It is also worth again noting that AMD has been having trouble this generation keeping up with driver issues and CrossFireX support. For the first four months of the Radeon HD 7970 there wasn't even an "official" driver. NVIDIA on the other hand has been quick to support new hardware with unified drivers at launch of GTX 680. Even with the launch of GTX 690 that driver already supported its next release the GTX 670 so we were able to use publically available drivers from NVIDIA's website for the GTX 670. We've also seen [here] [here] [here] how NVIDIA's SLI is smoother than AMD's CrossFireX, and in every case we've tested so far this generation we prefer SLI over CFX for the best experience. And if you have not been exposed to NVIDIA’s Adaptive VSync Technology, you should give this feature a few moments of your time.

The GeForce GTX 680 represents a tremendous piece of technology that any gamer should love to have in his rig. The GeForce GTX 670 represents what is easily the best value in enthusiast PC gaming GPUs. Pick your poison."

Yes I'm an Nvidia fanboy lol, but this is the general consensus (from what I remember at least). Long story short, I'd take the 670 and save some money, it meets or beats the 7970 @ stock, and with an overclock (according to the site's benchmarks) it lags behind by only a max of 6 fps (save for Deus EX).
__________________

The 7970 won't really flex unless you push it beyond 1080p, at 1080p a 670 makes more sense.

 

[RussianSensation]

I did some quick searching for a review that compared the 670 680 and 7970 in gaming to see how different they were and this is what I found:The 7970 won't really flex unless you push it beyond 1080p, at 1080p a 670 makes more sense.

That review is from May 2012 and thus using outdated drivers. It also doesn't use that many games. With latest Cats 12.7B drivers, with more games tested to get a better average, HD7970 pulls away even from the 670 and once overclocked to 1.15-1.2ghz, it's going to pull away even from an overclocked 670.

How about a more recent review at 1080P

Newegg has HD7970 1100mhz for $450. That's faster than the 680, not just the 670. AMD's partners have also launched factory after market 7970 GE cards such as the Sapphire Vapor-X $450:
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=AT-7970GHZ

In the same time, we've seen sales on HD7950 for $310-315. GTX670 for $400 doesn't look so hot anymore between those 2 options.

 

[guskline]

Greenlepricon, what are the present specs for your computer? What budget do you have? What size monitor and resolution?

No sense spending tons of $$ on a new video card if the rest of your system is older. Or better yet, why buy a Radeon 7970 or GTX 680 if your max monitor resolution is 1680 x 1050?

 

[RussianSensation]

Greenlepricon, what are the present specs for your computer? What budget do you have? What size monitor and resolution?

No sense spending tons of $$ on a new video card if the rest of your system is older. Or better yet, why buy a Radeon 7970 or GTX 680 if your max monitor resolution is 1680 x 1050?

See below why we didn't recommend HD7850.

The Witcher 2, Battlefield 3, and Metro are the games I have that will stress it out the most right now.

Very demanding games at 1080P.

I only game at 1080p right now. I might decide to get a second monitor some time from now, so I'm not sure these could handle that. Still debating on that one. Any advice?

 

[Arkaign]

I understand that for now most of the differences are with resolutions above 1080p for the 7970 to flex it's muscle. I hypothesize that as games get more graphically intense (new gen of consoles coming to have poorly coded ports of, lol), the 3GB and stronger GPU speed will come into play even at lower resolutions.

I know that's just a guess, but the 2560 scores show a 20% boost already, that means that when the ram and GPU are pushed to their limits, that the 7970 has the guts to keep going when the 670 2GB falls behind. I think generally newer games just tend to use more VRAM even at the lower resolutions.

Long story short : 7970 not much more expensive than 670 w/680 PCB, more capable long term imho, why not. Besides, nothing stopping OP from jumping on a Catleap 2560x1440 monitor for cheap and dumping old 1080p.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

For the games mentioned by the thread starter, and at 1080dpi I recommend one of these cards:

Go for MSI TwinFrozr HD7950 (Cheaper VS GTX 670, and can be overclocked pretty far I believe) or a custom GTX 670 like: MSI GTX 670 PE, ASUS GTX 670 DC II or Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce 3x.

Or wait until the 660Ti is launched to see what happens to prices on other cards.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

It is either 7950 oc or 7970 oc without a shadow of doubt

 

[BlockheadBrown]

Personally I missed being able to get a 7950 yesterday at $316 shipped because I hesitated. I've considered holding off for a year because I believe the 560 I have now should retain its value somewhere between $70-$90 or so. I can live with that. Holding off allows me to consider the 8000 series at release next year or the assumed 700 series from Nvidia.

However... In a mere 2 weeks, I might be able to get a 7950 for under 300. If that's the case, I don't know that I'd hold back.

 

[Greenlepricon]

Besides, nothing stopping OP from jumping on a Catleap 2560x1440 monitor for cheap and dumping old 1080p.

Actually I was considering this hehe. It sounds like there is a lot of love for the 7950/70 in this resolution. I've heard that the 2gb vs 3gb won't matter too much right now for this, but amd does better for some reason anyway.

For the games mentioned by the thread starter, and at 1080dpi I recommend one of these cards:

Go for MSI TwinFrozr HD7950 (Cheaper VS GTX 670, and can be overclocked pretty far I believe) or a custom GTX 670 like: MSI GTX 670 PE, ASUS GTX 670 DC II or Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce 3x.

Or wait until the 660Ti is launched to see what happens to prices on other cards.

I really wanted that msi7950 but I missed the awesome deal for $330+rebate, which led me to post in here. I had the option of upgrading my video card or my motherboard+cpu last month, and I chose the latter. Kinda regretting it now because of prices. I upgraded from a phenom II 965 to a FX8120 (was curious about it, but this thing has made me happy and is ridiculously easy to oc) and added an ssd boot drive. I'll probably change to an intel build next time since I've never built with one of their chips, but want to transfer over this video card when I do.

 

[RussianSensation]

Personally I missed being able to get a 7950 yesterday at $316 shipped because I hesitated.

I really wanted that msi7950 but I missed the awesome deal for $330+rebate, which led me to post in here.

Not yet. I found that deal again for $316. Apparently the MSI Rebate is a General August Promotion rebate for All Resellers. It doesn't matter if you buy it from Amazon or Newegg or Superbiiz. Check out the thread I made:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2261626

The rebate says All Resellers are valid for $20 off: http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/00/00/24/97/81/20/2497812030._V392547039_.pdf

 

[Silverforce11]

@Russian, man AMD should send u a free GPU next round for free, you are helping their sales much more than their entire crap marketting department.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Maybe RussianSensation works for AMD?

Anyway, I get to play some with my 5770's when I get my crossfirebridge. So I don't need to be a pure Nvidia fanboy anymore Looking forward to testing how well crossfire works and checking out the Catalyst drivers again.

 

[Greenlepricon]

Oh man Russian you are awesome! I've never found anything on superbiiz until now. Now I've got to ask your advice one more time. Is it worth buying asap or waiting and seeing if prices drop somewhere else? I really don't think the 660ti is going to do much for a while since prices dropped for amd a couple weeks ago and nvidia hates cutting prices until they're preparing for their next release. It seems like I should just jump on this soon.