Are 7970 and GTX 680 fairly euqal cards for gaming?

[nine9s]

I want to build a new IvyBridge pc but now waiting on GTX 680 to be available again. Is the 7970 a fairly equal card for gaming?

 

[spinejam]

yep.

 

[nine9s]

Thanks. I have not been following the 7970s as much. Any common or major problems with them?

 

[3DVagabond]

You need to look at what games you are playing. Some games are better on one card than the other.

You need to know if you are going to overclock or not. At stock clocks the 680 is faster. You can buy O/C'd 7970's that will keep up, but the reference 7970 is clocked way below it's potential. Also the 7970 is more O/C friendly. You can't adjust voltage on the 680 and it's own "GPU boost" complicates things.

What resolution are you going to be gaming at? Single monitor, Surround/Eyefinity, 3D? As resolution increases the 7970 stretches it's legs more. Eyefinity is better supported than surround. Rarely do you see reviewers mention it, but when they do they always say Eyefinity was easier. nVidia has better 3D support. You have to buy their 3D hardware, but they offer support for it while AMD virtually doesn't, leaving it to 3rd party vendors of the 3D software.

Are you going to do anything that is GPU intensive other than gaming? The two cards have different strengths outside of gaming. Typically the 7970 is a "better rounded" performer outside of gaming. nVidia though has CUDA.

How long do you typically hang on to hardware. It could be argued that the 7970 is more "future proof".

The 680 uses less power.

The 7970 is more readily available with better choices of vendors and models.

The 7970 is less expensive.

 

[lavaheadache]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2242599

I made this thread for you. =)

 

[Silverforce11]

7970 is only equal if you manually overclock it. Get around 1050mhz (easy to do) on the core should equalize overall, obviously some games favor one brand over the other.

It should be cheaper, but it uses more power than the gtx680, in the long run it should equate to be about the same.

 

[dynaboom]

Yes, roughly equal. But I would look at the games and resolution that you run to see which is better. Also, you may have trouble finding a 680 in stock at retail price right now. If you are into overclocking also consider a 7950 which can match the other two at stock speeds when overclocked. Much cheaper for 7950 of course.

 

[Don Karnage]

Depends on the game. In BF3 the 680 beats down the 7970

 

[3DVagabond]

Depends on the game. In BF3 the 680 beats down the 7970

Depends on settings. They are actually pretty comparable on recent drivers at higher res and settings. Equalize the clocks and you won't see a difference.

 

[blastingcap]

Short answer: yes they are basically even for single-GPU. For single GPU they are basically tied once you overclock both to their maximums. At stock the 7970 is slightly slower (10%).

For multi GPU get the gtx 680. NV SLI is better supported.

Long answer: The gtx 680 is more efficient at load and feature rich, such as cuda, physx, adaptive vsync, etc. 7970 has more VRAM but that won't matter for most resolutions. If they were equally priced and you just wanted to game with them, the gtx 680 would almost certainly be the better choice... but now that the 7970 is cheaper it's not as clear which is the better buy.

And yes the 7950 is a good buy if you get one that can clock as high as 7970s can. There is a higher chance that it won't, though, if it was one that didn't make the cut due to clocks. Also the 7970 PCBs are probably higher quality. Just a guess, based on where it sits in the stack. So it can handle power/heat better in all likelihood.

The main selling point to me for the 7970? It came with a single-link active mini DP -> DVI adapter. I know, I know, I am weird.

 

[joliver]

I had a Sapphire 7970 OC card for a few days and saw a ton of potential there. It was bargain priced ($431.99 shipped from Newegg Business), the cooler was amazing (couldn't get it to break 64C even at 1100+ while being very quiet), and seemed to drive my U3011 wonderfully. Was so much smoother than the unlocked 6950 crossfire setup I had before...

I ended up returning it due to the crazy noises it made, however. It also had a few issues with random full screen color flashes which I couldn't seem to isolate.

I have an ASUS GTX 680 off Amazon incoming, but it cost me 80 more dollars ($509 shipped). I didn't feel like gambling with an exchange on that particular Sapphire when return shipping costs as much as it does and the problem seems to be so widespread. I honestly don't think it is worth that much more than a 7970 and I think I mainly ordered it as I was shocked to find one in stock.

I'd just buy whatever you REALLY want. Cheaper to get it right the first time!

 

[Zebo]

Even stock you won't notice difference according to "gameplay" review I saw at hard but gtx 680 is faster. Clocked the same they trade in canned benchmarks. You get get more power savings with GTX 680. I bought 680 because I favor nV and always buy nV but AMD seems like they got a competitive product.

If you want to save a few bucks get the 7950. It's massively underclocked @ 800Mhz and has 7970 potential when clocked the same.

 

[Zebo]

Thanks. I have not been following the 7970s as much. Any common or major problems with them?

Crossfire drivers mainly.

 

[blastingcap]

If you want to save a few bucks get the 7950. It's massively underclocked @ 800Mhz and has 7970 potential when clocked the same.

Or wait a week and buy the gtx670

 

[Tempered81]

Clock for clock, GK104s about 2-3% faster than TahitiXT. Both the 7970 and 680 goto 1200-1300mhz core range, 1300mv on the TahitiXT & 1175mv on the GK104. GK104 has 256bit bandwidth, and TahitiXT has 384bit. The lower the resolution the larger lead the 680 will enjoy. 7970 has 3gb/6gb and 680 has 2gb/4gb. Finally, 680 = OOS @ $520 and 7970 = $480. Consider NVCP > CCC and Nvidia generally has better game support. Crysis, Metro, Deus the 7970 will win. BF3, Skyrim, Hawx the 680 will win. 680 supports Physx and better 3D vision. Tahiti has more DP & Compute power.

They're both a rip-off.

Meh

 

[Zebo]

Or wait a week and buy the gtx670

Good advice on waiting. We shall see what they allow from that card. Stock it will be faster than 7950 however will they let you unleash it and how far will it go? I've never seen a 7950 that can't do 300Mhz OC so it may catch up and past it.

 

[blastingcap]

Clock for clock, GK104s about 2-3% faster than TahitiXT. Both the 7970 and 680 goto 1200-1300mhz core range, 1300mv on the TahitiXT & 1175mv on the GK104. GK104 has 256bit bandwidth, and TahitiXT has 384bit. The lower the resolution the larger lead the 680 will enjoy. 7970 has 3gb/6gb and 680 has 2gb/4gb. Finally, 680 = OOS @ $520 and 7970 = $480. Consider NVCP > CCC and Nvidia generally has better game support. Crysis, Metro, Deus the 7970 will win. BF3, Skyrim, Hawx the 680 will win. 680 supports Physx and better 3D vision. Tahiti has more DP & Compute power.

They're both a rip-off.

Meh

gtx 670 ftw

 

[Zebo]

Clock for clock, GK104s about 2-3% faster than TahitiXT. Both the 7970 and 680 goto 1200-1300mhz core range, 1300mv on the TahitiXT & 1175mv on the GK104. GK104 has 256bit bandwidth, and TahitiXT has 384bit. The lower the resolution the larger lead the 680 will enjoy. 7970 has 3gb/6gb and 680 has 2gb/4gb. Finally, 680 = OOS @ $520 and 7970 = $480. Consider NVCP > CCC and Nvidia generally has better game support. Crysis, Metro, Deus the 7970 will win. BF3, Skyrim, Hawx the 680 will win. 680 supports Physx and better 3D vision. Tahiti has more DP & Compute power.

They're both a rip-off.

Meh

Top cards always are - never scale properly with 200 cards. Not as bad as extreme edition processors but you get the idea.

 

[lavaheadache]

Clock for clock, GK104s about 2-3% faster than TahitiXT. Both the 7970 and 680 goto 1200-1300mhz core range, 1300mv on the TahitiXT & 1175mv on the GK104. GK104 has 256bit bandwidth, and TahitiXT has 384bit. The lower the resolution the larger lead the 680 will enjoy. 7970 has 3gb/6gb and 680 has 2gb/4gb. Finally, 680 = OOS @ $520 and 7970 = $480. Consider NVCP > CCC and Nvidia generally has better game support. Crysis, Metro, Deus the 7970 will win. BF3, Skyrim, Hawx the 680 will win. 680 supports Physx and better 3D vision. Tahiti has more DP & Compute power.

They're both a rip-off.

Meh

:thumbsup:

pretty good summary however I personally disagree with the rip off comment.


Latest and greatest = pay to play Always has always will

 

[dennilfloss]

If your game has high-res texture mods or uses a lot of VRAM, the 7970 also has 3GB RAM whereas the 680 only has 2GB.

 

[guskline]

Was just playing Crysis2 with my new Pny 680 GTX on 3-24" 1920x1080 monitors set in surround for a 5760x1080 resolution. Game play on a single card is incredible for 3 monitors. Very smooth.

 

[Jaydip]

680 is better but u can only notice the difference if u look hard enough.Buy what u like and game on

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Both practically tie

 

[Upgrade_Itch]

Depends on the game. In BF3 the 680 beats down the 7970

Battlefield, Batman games and a few others game developers worked with Nvidia engineers to make sure the game code was optimized for Nvidias gpu.

Raw power, computational power, and design is clearly won by AMD.

AMD just needs more people working on their drivers, there is room to improve there.

 

[toyota]

why does this question even have to be asked? if you even know what gtx680 or 7970 are then how hard would it be to google reviews? heck if you can be a member of the anandtech forums for two years then why not just look at reviews right from the very site you are on?