Bonus is in soooo a GTX 680 or an AMD 7970?

[Yuriman]

For the games you listed, you're best off buying a last generation NV card used for about $150, you'll be very happy with the performance.

The 680 is the card to get if you want to still be maxing games in 4 years, but it's way overkill for now

The 7970 is still a candidate under the conditions that a) the 680 is not in stock (true), and b) the 7970 can be picked up for less than the 680 used (also true).

 

[slayernine]

Tis' a sad day for AMD, but even I would say GTX 680 is the only way to go right now if you have the money.

 

[taltamir]

It's been clear from all reviews and even nvidia themselves that they sacrificed non-gaming performance to make the 680 a great gaming card. So I wouldn't expect it's folding performance to be nearly as high as a 7970.

funny thing. When the 79xx came out I said I was surprised at how fermi like it was (in terms of architecture, in terms of being designed for massive compute... not heat or noise). And that I was hoping nvidia would back off from fermi for gamers with a gamer line for gaming and a business line for computer.
I am shocked and amazed that they actually did that. This is pretty cool...

Well, except for folders, they must hate it.

 

[BoFox]

It may look close, but really it's NOT.

PERFORMANCE: GTX 680 is a faster card.

It's faster at 1080p, a tad faster at 2560, and at multimonitor resolution.
Overclocking is a luck-based attempt, which generally closes the gap , but then you are left with not so stellar perf/W and the jet-like noise from 7970.

7970 is faster card only in cases where bandwidth _is_ an issue for 680,
where there are no CPU bottlenecks whatsoever, and CPU is largely irrelevant - Metro 2033*** being the perfect example.
So right away you can say that 680 will rule the day in any reasonably well coded multiplayer,
because of clients overhead, and 680's graphic workload optimized scheduler.

(***BEWARE: developer's beta of Metro: Last Light has already been seen running on Nvidia hardware and featuring some impressive PhysX/Apex Clothing effects)

PRICE: Wash!

GTX 680 is $50 cheaper, but 7970 comes with 1GB of VRAM, 1 VRM phase more, is sturdier built, has better PCB, and larger bill of materials.

POWER CONSUMPTION: 680 wins again. It depends on a game, but on average 680 will consume something in between of Tahiti Pro/XT.
They are pretty much the same on Desktop, with 7970 winning the day if you tend to leave your PC idling.

NOISE: Nvidia has far mor experience with fighting the heat, and this shows on cooler design.

10db of load difference as measured by Techreport is already a double of GTX 680's perceived loudness.
Imagine what happens when you overclock your Tahiti...

SLI/CF: 680 edges once again.

Nvidia has far better multi GPU support. It won't work always, but it's supported in bigger number of titles then CF.
Also, subsequent drivers do not tend to brake what's already working.

Automatic profiles downloading, and Frame Metering simply do not exist on AMD.
So even in cases when Crossfire scales better, you will be left with choppier game-play (BF3 @ [H])

FEATURES: No contest. 680 hands down!
A quick rundown on the Nvidia's exclusive bag of goodies which is getting heavier by the day:

PhysX, CUDA, GPU Boost aka overclocking for the dummies, hw acceleration in large number of applications, active sensor based TDP/OVP protection (as opposed to AMD empiric TDP limiting)
hardware-based H.264 video encoder, Ambient Occlusion, Nvidia Inspector, temperature and FPS limitter, far more robust anti-aliasing, compatibility bits, superior Full-screen antialiasing support, downsampling, improved driver FXAA, TXAA (soon to rule like the boss!), infinitely better 3D support, automatic profiles downlading, nearly shimmer-free industry leading anisotropic filtering(yeah that includes better ingame image quality - 7970 masks the AF problem via image blurring).... a working Forum, Driver Feedback and Support

Feature list is a main reason why I can't even consider buying AMD at this point in time.

I will also mention far better OpenGL support, traditionally better driver team, faster problem tackling, and a much closer relations with number of developers.

Having 3 distinct architectures in a very short period of time (VLIW4, VLIW5 and GCN), and having an imperative to support all three,
means some tough times are ahead for both AMD driver team and their user base.

In my opinion 7970 should be bought only if you can't find GTX 680, you can't live without OpenCL, or just want to make a statement.

Whoa, this sums it up very nicely here! Those who refrained from voting here.. come on, reveal your true colors.. hehe! It's ok to vote for what you have been fighting for so long here on ATF - refraining from voting does not really hide anything. :biggrin: LOLOLOL..

Well, I'd like to add to the quoted parts in red:
1) GTX 680 still has stellar perf/W when overclocked (increasing by only 20-30W or so according to some reviews). An oc'ed 7970 to past 1150MHz (which usually requires manual increase in voltage) can increase by more than 100W.
Also, when both are oc'ed, the gap does not close. GTX 680 still beats HD 7970 by roughly 5% overall when both are oc'ed, on average.

2) Only the engineers/manufacturers would really know if the PCB for GTX 680 is better or not, and if it's sturdier built or not. Reliability/quality of components also comes into question. No need to express undue modesty here - $50 cheaper is simply a $50 win in the Price category. ^_^

3) HD 7970 loses out when idling with 3 monitors:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/37253-three-screen-geforce-gtx-680-vs-radeon-hd-7970/?page=8
Plus the cost of the difference in consumption for a single monitor is practically pennies each month when the computer with the 7970 goes into standby mode.



:awe:

 

[taltamir]

2) Only the engineers/manufacturers would really know if the PCB for GTX 680 is better or not, and if it's sturdier built or not.

If you reread what he said

1 VRM phase more, is sturdier built, has better PCB, and larger bill of materials.

He is saying there are the following differences
1. 1GB of VRAM difference
2. 1 extra VRM phase difference
3. Sturdier is not referring to the PCB, it is referring to the card itself, which anyone can make a judgement call when examining the connectors & components used on the HSF and casing.
4. Better PCB - I don't believe he is referring to an arbitrary "better quality" but to something knowable and tangible the quantity of layers
5. Items 1 through 4 translate to a bigger bill.

 

[BoFox]

If you reread what he said


He is saying there are the following differences
1. 1GB of VRAM difference
2. 1 extra VRM phase difference
3. Sturdier is not referring to the PCB, it is referring to the card itself, which anyone can make a judgement call when examining the connectors & components used on the HSF and casing.
4. Better PCB - I don't believe he is referring to an arbitrary "better quality" but to something knowable and tangible the quantity of layers
5. Items 1 through 4 translate to a bigger bill.

Seems like you missed my point - I didn't disagree with him on these points. It was just to say that unless you're an engineer/manufacturer who carefully examined both cards, you cannot know for sure.

A bigger bill means squat if the card is just as reliable for $50 cheaper (and also faster). Since the power consumption is lower, and also much cooler when oc'ed, if you worry about increasing the voltage as a tradeoff for hardware longevity... well you get the point. A smaller bill is a plus for Nvidia, which is better suited to pass the savings to customers in event of a price war.

 

[taltamir]

Fair enough, I agree that the GTX680 has a lot going for it.

I said earlier that it is a given that it will be faster at stock due to being released later and being released by nvidia.
The question was whether it would have to be pushed to the brink in terms of thermals and noise to achieve that. The answer is no, it actually quite surprisingly has lower power consumption

Now lets see if the second half of my prediction comes true (amd releasing a 7990 which is basically a factory overclocked 7970 which beats the GTX680 at "stock" vs stock)

 

[3DVagabond]

Both the 680 and the 7970 are terrible values. I wouldn't reward either company by buying them.

If you are truly interested in F@H, buy a 500 series card at a deal. That, or wait until prices drop.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

The GTX 680, but you can't buy one currently since they're sold out everywhere.

If you were planning on overclocking both to max on stock voltage, then the 7970 will be comparable.

As far as Folding@home goes, GK104 is probably a horrible architecture for compute, so I'd just forget about it. The HD 7970 is around 2-4x better in compute, but there's almost no compute programs to exploit its performance.

 

[Will Robinson]

The GTX 680, but you can't buy one currently since they're sold out everywhere.

If you were planning on overclocking both to max on stock voltage, then the 7970 will be comparable.

As far as Folding@home goes, GK104 is probably a horrible architecture for compute, so I'd just forget about it. The HD 7970 is around 2-4x better in compute, but there's almost no compute programs to exploit its performance.

Sold out?...like the GTX7800 512MB(vaporware) or just plain unavailable?

 

[nOOky]

I voted GTX680, but if you like AMD get the HD7970, if nvidia then the GTX680. If it's doable why even buy a cheaper card, go big or go home!

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Sold out?...like the GTX7800 512MB(vaporware) or just plain unavailable?

It's just sold out for now. In two or three weeks availability should rise again.

 

[Vengor]

ARRGGGGG in stock e-mail gets sent to me just a few minutes after I leave work and by the time I get home it is out of stock AGAIN!!!

 

[Ferzerp]

Sold out?...like the GTX7800 512MB(vaporware) or just plain unavailable?

The one plugged in to my desktop at home shows it isn't vaporware.

Expect supplies to not meet demand for a bit because there was a lot of pent up demand for people wanting to see both flavors before they bought a card this generation, and since the green one is faster and cheaper, all those hold outs went that direction. If it had been slower than the red one, chances are that those could have seen stock issues right now too.

 

[chimaxi83]

Gigabyte is in stock at the moment if any of you dudes are still looking :thumbup:

aaaand they're gone, sorry :'(

 

[Ferzerp]

Amazon is also accepting out of stock orders for the evga flavor right now.

 

[Vengor]

I would rather order through Newegg.

 

[Lepton87]

That's not a logical conclusion because you have automatically assumed that compute performance = Double precision performance. Fol.

Cutting DP performance was far from the only sacrifice in compute performance. GTX680 goes back to static scheduling just like 6970, which is a HUGE disadvantage in compute. The addition of dynamic scheduling was the main reason for increased compute performance of tahiti over cayman.

 

[bleucharm28]

So....ummm last week or so, i said i wasn't interested in GTX 680 because I have a GTX 580 FTW HC2. I received an email from EVGA that they have GTX 680 SC w/BP in stock. Well...i bought 2 >.<

Time to ebay my GTX 580 HC2

 

[RussianSensation]

Cutting DP performance was far from the only sacrifice in compute performance. GTX680 goes back to static scheduling just like 6970, which is a HUGE disadvantage in compute. The addition of dynamic scheduling was the main reason for increased compute performance of tahiti over cayman.

Given the huge advantage NV cards have held all these years in F@H, it's not logical to automatically assume that GTX680 will be worse than HD7970 in this particular application. It's possible that 680 may be not as good as a GTX580 but based on F@H benchmarks, it seems this program primarily benefits from many fast shaders (i.e., CUDA cores). GTX680 has them in spades. Maybe it'll actually be very good at this application once a Kepler optimized update is provided. Also, the compute increase in performance of HD7970 over the 6970 mostly comes from higher operating clocks and 40% more shader performance. It's not much more faster than HD6970 in distributed computing projects, certainly not by 2-3x. So the dynamic scheduler doesn't appear to give HD7970 any significant advantage over the 6970 in real world compute work. Perhaps if you are discussing specific OpenCL compute, then sure.

Also, if F@H was so critical, the OP would be better off getting 2x GTX570s over a single 7970. At stock speeds, GTX680 is a solid 15-20% faster at 1080P in popular recent games over a stock 7970. That's a lot considering it also consumes less power, costs less and has a quieter stock fan. It's really hard to recommend HD7970 in US right now for anyone outside of bitcoin miners, people who specifically need double precision performance, or people who are running multiple monitors with Cross fire where 3GB of VRAM will help. Of course if one can't wait, because of low availability of 680s, HD7970 is a winner 99% of the time.

 

[Haserath]

The 680 can calculate 1024-1536 threads at once, depends on ILP.

Compare that with the 580, which does 512 at once.

Clocks of 1006 for the 680 and 1544 for the 580.

Even at its worst, the 680 is theoretically much faster than the 580. Inter-core bandwidth and cache hasn't kept up with the compute power, so who knows which way that can go for F@H. Nvidia is working closely with Stanford on this, so they'll probably come up with a highly optimized core.
---
I'm seeing Newegg has the GTX 680 on the rise in prices and the HD 7970 coming down in price. The highest 680 and the lowest 7970 are $5 apart(with the 7970 being cheaper!).

 

[blckgrffn]

Hopefully AMD takes the time to get an optimized core for GCN for F@H, and maybe works with at least one other high-profile DC project.

Right now saying GCN sucks at folding is nearly the same as saying Kepler is bad for folding, with the notable difference being that nvidia is at least attempting to fix that situation.

Bitcoin really helped get the message out that AMD was not worthless for compute, IMHO, and I think it would be foolish of them to ignore the enthusiast and academic community, where many people cut their teeth on GPU compute. Get with the program AMD

 

[Madpacket]

The thing is, even though the Geforce 680 is a slightly better gaming card, I've already paid off half of one of my 7970's from mining Bitcoins. At the current prices and mining speeds I'll likely even have both of my 7970's paid off before the end of this year so for me I have no regrets going with 7970's.

 

[Vengor]

WOOT Newegg has the Superclocked edition in stock this moment use the code EMCNGHJ22 to get free shipping. I got my order in. Not much of an OC and it was the only EVGA one listed as available so I spent a little extra to get it.

 

[Vengor]

BOOM and out of stock again. At least I got my order in and called to verify that I did indeed get it in time and it is being packed right this moment!!!