AMD HD 6950 -> 7970 Ghz Ed. Worth it?

[aaksheytalwar]

c3 is origin only, not on steam

 

[dagamer34]

People who want to talk about bitcoin mining, please go to another thread... :|

Anyway, it looks like I should just get a 7950 and OC the crap out of it. Thanks.

 

[RussianSensation]

I've been away from this subforum for a while and was curious why you are now known as an AMD shill/fanboy. I'm not curious anymore.

I am amused. Any more personal attacks you have in store? You might want to subscribe to ABT if you already haven't done so. They would love your conspiracy theories over there. Last month I got a GT620 for my secondary rig because it offered more features than competing AMD cards for that computer's intended use. Of course you can't comprehend the idea that I would buy an NV card because I am obviously a paid AMD shill....Thanks for the joke.

Also get ready to stick a foot in your mouth every time I recommend NV cards based on price/performance, overclocking, features and ultimately end up purchasing one again for myself as inevitably a time will come when NV will beat AMD in those metrics. Do you ever notice Keysplayer recommending AMD cards? You think if I worked for AMD they would let me publicly post that I buy NV cards for myself, and let me recommend NV cards on public forums? You should moonlight in stand-up comedy clubs. It's pretty evident you have already formed an opinion about me and you continue to twist and turn facts and statements I make. You obviously don't see any posts where I recommended NV cards over the years to many people, including me pushing the price/performance and overclocking on cards like Gigabyte Windforce 3x 670 early last spring. For the OP in this thread, I never recommended that he buy an HD7900 card for the sole purpose of paying them off with BTC. Did you even pay attention to all the other things mentioned in this thread, like overclocking, price/performance and his upgrade path?

While at it, also feel free to put a foot in your mouth for attacking me non-stop in that 1 thread where a user specifically asked to purchase a GPU for gaming at 1080P over the next 3 years. I recommended a GTX670 because the user wanted to keep the card for 3+ years and was specifically concerned about Crysis 3. You kept insisting that HD7850 was the better buy and getting GTX670 for Crysis 3 was a waste of time for that person, even though his budget was flexible, despite me telling you that HD7850 will be very underpowered for that title.

/end rant

 

[richprice79]

That's too bad, I hate having two different places to access games although steam does now allow you to add custom grid artwork to non steam games.

 

[RussianSensation]

So what can you count on if you buy a 7970 today, maybe like $50 at best over the next month or so until the profits simply aren't there? But NVDA cards are more power-efficient

To get superior efficiency with NV, you either have to pay more $ upfront ($360 GTX670 vs. $280-290 HD7950, $440-450 GTX680 vs. $380 1Ghz HD7970GE) or you have to sacrifice performance or you have to overclock which negates the initial performance/watt advantage.

It takes a 1250mhz GTX670 to match a stock HD7970GE in games. At that level of overclock for the 670, the power consumption is more or less identical to a stock HD7970GE. Since 1Ghz HD7970 with Crysis 3 and Bioshock is $380 on Newegg, that makes GTX670 overpriced and slower.

Source

Similarly, a 925-950mhz HD7950 uses less power a GTX680 and its performance is actually pretty close.

At 1175mhz, an HD7950 would draw about 246W at 1.225Vcore. Thing is a lot of excellent after-market HD7950 cards like the Sapphire Dual-X or MSI TF3 7950 can hit 1100mhz on much lower voltage, often at just stock Tahiti voltage of 1.175V. At that speed already the $280-290 7950 is trading blows with a $450 GTX680. If there is a card in NV's stable that can do this at this price, please point it out instead of accusing me of being an AMD shill...

Grooveriding just purchased an MSI TF3 7950 and it hit 1200mhz on 1.125V.

This member hit 1200mhz on stock voltage.

There is a massive thread on our forum with HD7950 owners hitting 1100-1200mhz since late last year. Sapphire Dual-X, Sapphire Vapor-X, MSI Twin-Frozr III have been doing this consistently.

So what's that you were saying that you can save $ on NV cards over time by saving power, completely ignoring the upfront cost to buy a similarly performing NV card?

Feel free to provide a mathematical analysis for the OP why buying the more expensive GTX670/680 cards would make sense here. With or without BTC, the choices I recommended still stand.

If you can provide us with the actual amount of $ the OP can save from electricity on going with NV's GTX600 series, please do so and quantify why it's better than getting an HD7950 and overclocking it, even if it uses 250W of power at 1175mhz. Bring facts to the table if you don't agree with what I post, don't attack me.

 

[blastingcap]

OP stated he didn't want people talking about mining anymore. Please respect that. Sorry if you feel personally attacked, but I didn't say you were a shill. I said that I am no longer curious why people think that. In your angry reply it seems that you didn't see the distinction.

Your response is telling, though. Per HardOCP: "For full load power and temperature testing we used real gaming and recorded the highest value in each game." That info is good for determining PSU sizing, but what you really want is average load, not peak load. In your hurry to respond you don't seem to have cared about the distinction.

Nor is the rest of your rant on point. I wasn't saying anything about upfront costs. I have repeatedly stated that even without considering bundles or mining the 79xx pricing puts it ahead. There is no disagreement or issue there. I was taking issue with your going to great lengths to promote mining numbers as if it were still 2012, but you don't say nary a word about any offsetting factors like efficiency or PhysX or smoothness, is why I said I am no longer curious why you have a pro-AMD reputation among some people here. Due to your sometimes-criticized text-walls, I would add "argumentative" to that reputation, but that label applies to me as well.