Buying a GTX 670 vs 7950

[KingFatty]

Could AMD have an ulterior motive for making the newer BIOS use such a high voltage? What if they were accumulating rejected (low ASIC quality?) chips, that turned out to work fine if you crank up the voltage, so now they can flood the market with tons of 7950B cards that come with the higher voltage?

 

[Piano Man]

I"ve love to see noise comparison between all of these aftermarket 7950s including the new VaporX.

 

[l2ez4m]

Here (hear) the main players
MSi TF3, Sapp OC, ASus CU2, PCS+

 

[ocre]

Could AMD have an ulterior motive for making the newer BIOS use such a high voltage? What if they were accumulating rejected (low ASIC quality?) chips, that turned out to work fine if you crank up the voltage, so now they can flood the market with tons of 7950B cards that come with the higher voltage?

its got to be something huh? they obviously wouldnt sabotage their own self so there has to be good reason for it. Perhaps the voltage people are using for their gaming overclocks arent fully stable, just stable enough for their current task.

What i can assure everyone: AMD knows more about their hardware than anyone pushing up sliders. Its kind of upsetting to see so many people come up with so much bull crap. Used to see deep intelligible conversations about hardware and now a days there is conspiracies and sabotage. Anyone with a tad of intelligence should know AMD wouldnt use those voltages unless their was good cause. They dont just randomly guess these things, there are real stability test in engineering labs. AMD needs their cards to run flawless, on everything you throw at it. They need them to run flawless for many years without stability degrading. Its silly to think AMD just picked a high voltage and dont know any better. They know a heck of a lot more than us who push the sliders.

We can have more meaningful conversations and debate this on a higher level. There are many things to consider. AMD deals in volume and individuals get a single card. If AMD uses such a voltage for the 7950b then we have to conclude that it must take this voltage to insure all the chips be stable for the lifetime of the GPU. The majority may not need such a voltage for specific task. This is to be expected though. Often we can lower voltages on hardware and it still work fine for the applications we use, its been this way for a very very long time. For CPUs and GPUs alike, we have been under-volting for the longest time. Never has attitudes been like they are now. Its strange to me. We have always known every chip is different. Its a per chip scenario. Every chip has its individual traits. Some under-volt more than others, some overclock better than others, some run hotter or cooler. Its all in the luck of the draw. This hasnt changed. AMD has to have every 7950 chip out there be fully stable at the new speeds and they concluded it would take 1.25 boost volts to achieve it. That is a given. If you got a 7950 that does it for less volts, so what.
You could buy just about any card out today and undervolt it to play the games you play. Its not unusual.

I will add one more thing. I used to game with a 460 overclocked to 900mhz with a set voltage. I could play every game i had no problem. I considered it 100% fully stable. Then i tried folding at home on it, crashed within minutes. I pushed the voltage up and it would still crash, and crash hard sometimes. I pushed the voltage so high my temps were scary and the card still wouldnt fold without crashing. My 900mhz overclock was not fully stable. It mattered little to me cause i still played my games at 900mhz, 24/7. It didnt matter to me, but for nvidia or AMD they need 100% full stability that will remain for the lifetime of the card. They dont test their voltages on games, they have very precise equipment that is millions of times more accurate than any stress test out on the market. They know their silicon better than anybody and they know what they are doing!

 

[FalconHorse]

Here (hear) the main players
MSi TF3, Sapp OC, ASus CU2, PCS+

Wow @ the DCII.

 

[RussianSensation]

If AMD uses such a voltage for the 7950b then we have to conclude that it must take this voltage to ensure all reference-based chips be stable for the lifetime of the GPU.

Fixed. 1.25V has 0 to do with after-market 7950 cards, of which there are 18-19 available on Newegg. You will see in the reviews below for the Sapphire Vapor-X it's extremely cool and quiet, in fact quieter than all of these cards, even when OCed:

PowerColor HD7970 PCS+ Vortex II
MSI HD7970 Lightning
GTX680 MSI Lightning
GTX660Ti Power Edition
MSI 560Ti 448 TwinFrozr
Sapphire HD7970 Vapor-X
MSI GTX680 TwinFrozr
MSI GTX670 Power Edition

Also,

HD7950 @ $300-330 competes with a $300-$330 GTX660Ti
GTX670 @ $400 competes with a $420 after-market 7970s.

Not seeing any point comparing a 7950 to a 670 in the first place. You keep talking about some 1.25V "B" bios which doesn't even apply to after-market 7950s, but missed the elephant in the room: A $400 Windforce 670 is a head-to-head competitor with a $420 Gigabyte Windforce 3x 7970 1000mhz.

I"ve love to see noise comparison between all of these aftermarket 7950s including the new VaporX.

The Vapor-X is a souped up 7950 card. It has 9 black diamond chokes for power delivery and identical cooler from the 7970 TOXIC. With the 2nd BIOS, it automatically goes to 950mhz. Gigabyte has nothing on this in terms of construction/materials quality (the Windforce 3x 670 is still a solid card, but it doesn't use components from a $700 high-end flagship 680). The actual components on the 670 Windforce are straight from the 680, with an 1 extra VRM. The power connector has been upgraded to 6+8 pin from a regular 6+6 on reference 670. The Gigabyte Windforce 670 3x has proven to be a great card, solid overclocker.

GTX670 Windforce 3x PCB/components. No fancy components here, but it's still a solid card.

Nice cooler

vs. 7950 Vapor-X

At KitGuru, it overclocked to 1158mhz on the core.

At that speed, 3dMark11 exceeds HD7970 Ghz Edition.

While 3dMark11 is useless for comparing NV vs. AMD, it's OK for comparing cards within the same brand family. That shows right there 7950 @ 1158mhz > HD7970 Ghz. We know 7970 Ghz edition > GTX680 in games. That Gigabyte windforce card is also as fast as the 680 because it's factory preoverclocked, but it costs $70 more.

These charts are telling. At 3x 1080P monitors, a GTX680 cannot beat a Vapor-X 950mhz 7950 in BF3. That tells me an 1150mhz 7950 would do just fine against a GTX670 OC for future games while costing $70 less. It's actually remarkable how a $330 card isn't that far behind $500-600 cards in that chart.

Tweaktown has a chart for 7950 Vapor-X OCed and it's very quiet among the flagship cards and runs at 60*C (just like @ KitGuru).

HD7950 running hot and loud is a myth. It mainly applies to reference cards or 1200mhz OCed 7950 cards with less than stellar coolers. However, the Vapor-X cooler handles HD7970 TOXIC @ 1200mhz under 70*C. It should have no problem at all keeping 1150mhz 7950 Vapor-X under 70*C either.

Personally, I'd get the 670 if my main games were WOW, BF3, Project Cars, World of Planes, I wanted PhysX in Borderlands 2 and other games that use it, and I had no intention of overclocking. OTOH, at 1150mhz overclock, the 7950 Vapor-X for $330 sounds like a better value to me. The Vapor-X cooler is better than the Windforce 3x cooler, and the components on the Vapor-X 7950 are far more premium. I know the 7950 @ 1150mhz would beat the 670 OC in a lot of games, Batman AC 8xMSAA / SKyrim + mods + 8xMSAAA, Crysis 1/Warhead, Metro, Anno 2070, Arma II, Risen 2, Alan Wake, etc. OTOH, 670 would win in the games listed above. In the end it comes down to the games a person plays and how much MSAA one likes and if specific NV features are important: Ambient Occlusion in the drivers, Adaptive Vsync, TXAA, PhysX, etc.

Still, even excluding Sniper Elite 2, Dirt Showdown, Sleeping Dogs, NV cards can't seem to win much in new games lately. Not even in Darksiders 2, Guild Wars 2 etc.

GTX670 costs $400 vs. $330 for the Vapor-X, but OCed vs. OCed cannot win. So why pay $70 extra? I am not seeing the point. Basically out of the box 7950 950mhz < GTX670 Windforce. OCed vs. OCed, it's going to come down to which games a person plays. Without OCing, 670 is great, but I think 670 is a good value at $350, not at $400.

And that's precisely the problem with a $400 GTX670. It can't beat a much cheaper OCed 7950 and at the same time it's slower than a $20-30 more expensive after-market Gigabyte Windforce 3x 7970 / 7970 GE cards that also happen to have nice overclocking headroom and even give a $580+ MSI GTX680 Lightning OC a run for the $$$. You can now even get a very quiet HIS IceQ 7970 for $395 on Newegg and I am sure that card will overclock to 1150mhz and also beat a $400 GTX670 no problem. GTX670 needs to be around $350-360 to make sense. At $400 it's competing against 1000-1050mhz 7970s, which makes no sense after the driver updates that put 7970 GE above 680s.

Since HD7900 series cards also handle mods and 8xMSAA much better and HD7970 OC > GTX670 OC, I can't possibly recommend a $400 Windforce 670 when for $20 more one can buy a Windforce 3x 1000mhz 7970.

 

[Piano Man]

Here (hear) the main players
MSi TF3, Sapp OC, ASus CU2, PCS+

Interesting, The CU2 is the quietest, but in the videos, I find that its sound is more unpleasant than the PCS+. I think I'm hearing some sort of whine or something.

The MSI and HIS are unacceptable to me. The Sapphire is borderline unacceptable. Would love to get a listen of the VaporX to see if it improves.

 

[Piano Man]

Fixed. 1.25V has 0 to do with after-market 7950 cards, of which there are 18-19 available on Newegg. You will see in the reviews below for the Sapphire Vapor-X it's extremely cool and quiet, in fact quieter than all of these cards, even when OCed:

PowerColor HD7970 PCS+ Vortex II
MSI HD7970 Lightning
GTX680 MSI Lightning
GTX660Ti Power Edition
MSI 560Ti 448 TwinFrozr
Sapphire HD7970 Vapor-X
MSI GTX680 TwinFrozr
MSI GTX670 Power Edition

Also,

HD7950 @ $300-330 competes with a $300-$330 GTX660Ti
GTX670 @ $400 competes with a $420 after-market 7970s.

Not seeing any point comparing a 7950 to a 670 in the first place. You keep talking about some 1.25V "B" bios which doesn't even apply to after-market 7950s, but missed the elephant in the room: A $400 Windforce 670 is a head-to-head competitor with a $420 Gigabyte Windforce 3x 7970 1000mhz.




The Vapor-X is a souped up 7950 card. It has 9 black diamond chokes for power delivery and identical cooler from the 7970 TOXIC. With the 2nd BIOS, it automatically goes to 950mhz. Gigabyte has nothing on this in terms of construction/materials quality (the Windforce 3x 670 is still a solid card, but it doesn't use components from a $700 high-end flagship 680). The actual components on the 670 Windforce are straight from the 680, with an 1 extra VRM. The power connector has been upgraded to 6+8 pin from a regular 6+6 on reference 670. The Gigabyte Windforce 670 3x has proven to be a great card, solid overclocker.

GTX670 Windforce 3x PCB/components. No fancy components here, but it's still a solid card.


Nice cooler


vs. 7950 Vapor-X



At KitGuru, it overclocked to 1158mhz on the core.

At that speed, 3dMark11 exceeds HD7970 Ghz Edition.


While 3dMark11 is useless for comparing NV vs. AMD, it's OK for comparing cards within the same brand family. That shows right there 7950 @ 1158mhz > HD7970 Ghz. We know 7970 Ghz edition > GTX680 in games. That Gigabyte windforce card is also as fast as the 680 because it's factory preoverclocked, but it costs $70 more.

These charts are telling. At 3x 1080P monitors, a GTX680 cannot beat a Vapor-X 950mhz 7950 in BF3. That tells me an 1150mhz 7950 would do just fine against a GTX670 OC for future games while costing $70 less. It's actually remarkable how a $330 card isn't that far behind $500-600 cards in that chart.



Tweaktown has a chart for 7950 Vapor-X OCed and it's very quiet among the flagship cards and runs at 60*C (just like @ KitGuru).

HD7950 running hot and loud is a myth. It mainly applies to reference cards or 1200mhz OCed 7950 cards with less than stellar coolers. However, the Vapor-X cooler handles HD7970 TOXIC @ 1200mhz under 70*C. It should have no problem at all keeping 1150mhz 7950 Vapor-X under 70*C either.


Personally, I'd get the 670 if my main games were WOW, BF3, Project Cars, World of Planes, I wanted PhysX in Borderlands 2 and other games that use it, and I had no intention of overclocking. OTOH, at 1150mhz overclock, the 7950 Vapor-X for $330 sounds like a better value to me. The Vapor-X cooler is better than the Windforce 3x cooler, and the components on the Vapor-X 7950 are far more premium. I know the 7950 @ 1150mhz would beat the 670 OC in a lot of games, Batman AC 8xMSAA / SKyrim + mods + 8xMSAAA, Crysis 1/Warhead, Metro, Anno 2070, Arma II, Risen 2, Alan Wake, etc. OTOH, 670 would win in the games listed above. In the end it comes down to the games a person plays and how much MSAA one likes and if specific NV features are important: Ambient Occlusion in the drivers, Adaptive Vsync, TXAA, PhysX, etc.

Still, even excluding Sniper Elite 2, Dirt Showdown, Sleeping Dogs, NV cards can't seem to win much in new games lately. Not even in Darksiders 2, Guild Wars 2 etc.

GTX670 costs $400 vs. $330 for the Vapor-X, but OCed vs. OCed cannot win. So why pay $70 extra? I am not seeing the point. Basically out of the box 7950 950mhz < GTX670 Windforce. OCed vs. OCed, it's going to come down to which games a person plays. Without OCing, 670 is great, but I think 670 is a good value at $350, not at $400.

And that's precisely the problem with a $400 GTX670. It can't beat a much cheaper OCed 7950 and at the same time it's slower than a $20-30 more expensive after-market Gigabyte Windforce 3x 7970 / 7970 GE cards that also happen to have nice overclocking headroom and even give a $580+ MSI GTX680 Lightning OC a run for the $$$. You can now even get a very quiet HIS IceQ 7970 for $395 on Newegg and I am sure that card will overclock to 1150mhz and also beat a $400 GTX670 no problem. GTX670 needs to be around $350-360 to make sense. At $400 it's competing against 1000-1050mhz 7970s, which makes no sense after the driver updates.

Since HD7900 series cards also handle mods and 8xMSAA much better and HD7970 OC > GTX670 OC, I can't possibly recommend a $400 Windforce 670 when for $20 more one can buy a Windforce 3x 1000mhz 7970.

Good stuff. But, I know you said you would still get the 670 if WoW was your main game. WoW is my main game, but at what point does it matter when it comes to the 7950 vs 670? I want to play WoW at 1200p with all the goodies. If the 7950 can keep minimums above 50-60, I guess then its more than fine for me. However, if I don't know if thats the case.

You seem to be the GPU encyclopedia here. Do you know if there are Mists of Pandaria GPU tests with the 7950 and 670? Would love to see that.

The one thing so far that attracts me to the 670 is that I know from a friend that the Asus CUII 670 is dead quiet, even at load. That has a lot of appeal for me. I'm really curious if I could get that in a 7950@1150Mhz. If I could, I think my decision would be very simple.

 

[Majcric]

A lot of those benchmarks were above 1080p and if I read the OP correct the user is looking to go with 1080/1200p. For the most part Nvidia still has the edge at 1080p, at least IMO.

OP, in your case I'd get the 670. But if you're thinking about a future catleap purchase the AMD cards 7950/7970 are the better choice for that rez.

 

[RussianSensation]

Interesting, The CU2 is the quietest, but in the videos, I find that its sound is more unpleasant than the PCS+. I think I'm hearing some sort of whine or something.

The MSI and HIS are unacceptable to me. The Sapphire is borderline unacceptable. Would love to get a listen of the VaporX to see if it improves.

I think the PowerColor PCS+ 7950 is the quietest 7950 card. A lot of that may have to do with its fan profile. If you take a VaporX and manually set up the fan speed in MSI AFterburner, I bet you can get it just as quiet simply because the cooler is much beefier than it is on the PCS+. The other thing is the Asus DCUII 670 is $420. That's way too much for a 670 card since its nudging right against 1000-1050mhz 7970s with high overclocking headroom. If that Asus DCUII was $350, it would be a great buy.

 

[cmdrdredd]

A lot of those benchmarks were above 1080p and if I read the OP correct the user is looking to go with 1080/1200p. For the most part Nvidia still has the edge at 1080p, at least IMO.

OP, in your case I'd get the 670. But if you're thinking about a future catleap purchase the AMD cards are the better choice for that rez.

Depends, are you going to use a lot of AA and in what titles? That's the question to ask.

 

[RussianSensation]

A lot of those benchmarks were above 1080p and if I read the OP correct the user is looking to go with 1080/1200p. For the most part Nvidia still has the edge at 1080p, at least IMO.

$400 GTX670 competes against a $420 HD7970 of which there are 1000mhz after-market versions, like the Gigabyte Windforce 3x OC 7970 I mentioned already. Using this comparison, the 670 OC has no notable advantage at 1080P. Not sure how comparing a $330 7950 vs. a $400 GTX670 is even valid. If anything it puts the 670 in worse light since 7950 OC delivers 670 OC performance level for $70 less.

Since 7970 GE is faster than a GTX680 at 1080P, a 1000mhz 7970 would be at least as fast as the Windforce 3x 670. And that's not even taking into account that a 1000mhz 7970 can overclock to 1150mhz on stock 1.175V. And there is a huge laundry list of games now where 7970 1000mhz would beat a 670 no problem and almost no games left where the 670 will beat the AMD card after 12.7 Betas. Where I think NV still has an advantage is GTX670/680 SLI for single monitors due to SLI being the smoother choice from what many gamers keep mentioning. For single-GPUs, 670 OC vs. 7970 1.0ghz, it's more like they are tied (i..e, the performance is within 5-10% in popular games), and when AMD 7970 is leading, it'll be faster by more like 20-25%. Unless you start linking BF3 with FXAA only, there aren't many games where the 670 would have a serious advantage.

WoW is my main game, but at what point does it matter when it comes to the 7950 vs 670? I want to play WoW at 1200p with all the goodies. If the 7950 can keep minimums above 50-60, I guess then its more than fine for me. However, if I don't know if thats the case. Do you know if there are Mists of Pandaria GPU tests with the 7950 and 670? Would love to see that.

I can't find it right now but I'll look. For WOW, NV has been doing great for a while. I can't see this changing for the expansions. Also, I don't play this game so I am not sure how much CPU dependence there is for dropping to 50-60 fps vs. GPU dependence. I am guessing when you raid with a lot of people, that might be very taxing on the CPU and not just the GPU.

Looking at Cataclysm, NV is a safe bet for WOW.

In your case, just wait for a deal on a quiet 670. I am actually surprised your HD5850 isn't fast enough for your need. Try this, OC your 5850 to 850-860mhz and see if you see any increase in frame rates. At least that would tell you if you are GPU limited right now. GTX670 looks very solid for WOW.

 

[KingFatty]

... If AMD uses such a voltage for the 7950b then we have to conclude that it must take this voltage to insure all the chips be stable for the lifetime of the GPU.
...
AMD has to have every 7950 chip out there be fully stable at the new speeds and they concluded it would take 1.25 boost volts to achieve it. That is a given.
...
They know their silicon better than anybody and they know what they are doing!

I agree with what you said, but my point is that, and I think you support it, is what does "all the chips" mean? Does AMD use every single chip that is produced, even if it is, say, 5% ASIC quality?

I think it's a pretty predictable relationship between what voltages are required and what quality the ASIC is, or however you want to evaluate the purity/perfection of a silicon crystal and all the other factors that make it work.

Because of that hard-wired law of physics type of relationship, it seems plausible that when you see smoke, perhaps there is fire? When you see raised voltages hard-coded into BIOS, perhaps that enables use of lower quality of ASICS that will run fine at that higher voltage?

Put another way, is it possible that AMD has some flexibility on what ASIC quality is the cutoff point? Maybe with the higher voltage in BIOS, they can relax the quality requirement just a bit?

I'd love it if that were true, because more supply means lower prices for all. And I have AMD and NVidia video cards both, I'm not an anti-AMD (or anti-NVidia) fanboi.

 

[SickBeast]

OP when it comes down to it you need to choose which brand you like better. Both cards will give you a good experience IMO. AMD has bitcoins and nVidia has CUDA and physx. You will also have a cooler and more efficient card with the 670.

 

[Sarasvati]

Does anybody have good RMA experience with Sapphire or Gigabyte. I've been so used to good support from EVGA that I can't imagine getting a card, using it for about 2 months and poof it stops working, then shoddy RMA support refuses replacements or takes forever (months). Sapphire has gotten a bad rep from what I've seen and it only has a 2 year warranty which to me suggests they don't back their products as long as others.

If the Sapphire Vapor-X was as good a card that ran cool and quiet (as Gigabyte's apparently does) during games and could clock decently (I don't see a point past 1100mhz) I would definitely end up going with that.

 

[RussianSensation]

If the Sapphire Vapor-X was as good a card that ran cool and quiet (as Gigabyte's apparently does) during games and could clock decently (I don't see a point past 1100mhz) I would definitely end up going with that.

The Vapor-X will for sure run cool and quiet. It has a cooler that's capable of keeping an HD7970 1200mhz under 70*C.

I still don't quite understand why you aren't comparing a $420 HD7970 OC Gigabyte Windforce 3x against a $400 GTX670 Windforce 3x?

Can you actually list the games you intend to play? Do you care for PhysX? Do you like using SSAA/MSAA or you are fine with FXAA? Do you like using mods? Do you intend to keep this card for longer than 3 years? Name 3 games that you spend the most of the time playing right now.

 

[Sarasvati]

The Vapor-X will for sure run cool and quiet. It has a cooler that's capable of keeping an HD7970 1200mhz under 70*C.

I still don't quite understand why you aren't comparing a $420 HD7970 OC Gigabyte Windforce 3x against a $400 GTX670 Windforce 3x?

Can you actually list the games you intend to play? Do you care for PhysX? Do you like using SSAA/MSAA or you are fine with FXAA? Do you like using mods? Do you intend to keep this card for longer than 3 years? Name 3 games that you spend the most of the time playing right now.

Power usage and current power supply would be cutting it close if I ever wanted to overclock. Also, the size of the card makes it barely fit in my case (CM 690). Like I said I don't want to feel as though I'm living in a furnace while playing some benchmark game. Nor do I wish to play with a 70%-100% fan speed during it.

Edit: I lost interest in this; hard to choose something when someone says your choice is flawed at every post. :/ Thanks anyways.

 

[RussianSensation]

Edit: I lost interest in this; hard to choose something when someone says your choice is flawed at every post. :/ Thanks anyways.

So just get a GTX670. Your initial comparison was odd. A $400 GTX670 doesn't compete against a 7950. Why would you compare a $330 card to a $400 card? Someone who is looking for price/performance would look at the $300-330 price level and someone who is looking for flagship performance would be looking at GTX670/7970 at $400-420. Then you asked if Vapor-X 7950 was cool and quiet and the answer was yes to both of those. If you are not seeing any value in OCing the 7950, and you favour power consumption, then just get the 670 over the 7970. The power consumption, temperatures and noise levels between 7970 Windforce 3x and 670 Windforce 3x are nothing major to talk about. The 670 WF3x uses 170W at peak, while the 7970 OC uses 201W. Both use identical cooler, so the noise levels will be very similar (40 vs. 41 dB).

If your PSU can't handle a 200W 7970, it won't be able to cope with a 170W GTX670 OC either. All I did was ask you simple questions on what games you play to help you narrow the choice. If you want the best performance/watt for gaming and you are willing to spend $400, just get the Windforce 670. If you want the best price/performance and don't mind OCing, you get the Sapphire Vapor-X. If you want the best high-end performance and still quiet noise levels you get the $420 7970 OC. It's really simple. The price difference between them is $70 and $20, respectively. I don't understand what else you are looking for since you won't tell us anything about the games you play or settings you use. You keep repeating the same thing that you don't want a furnace in your room but in the context of these cards, that statement makes no sense since all these cards consume very similar amount of power in a system that will already use > 300W of power + a monitor to begin with, +/- 30W won't make any difference to the heat in your room. You should look at features of each brand and gaming performance in specific games you play instead imo because that's why you are buying a videocard in the first place for.

 

[Sarasvati]

Yeah, I guess I wasn't being fair there, sorry about that. Everybody says the 670 is vastly more efficient and from what I've seen it's not true. Anyways here's my PSU

Currently using an i5 2500k @ 4.5Ghz with an ASRock Extreme 4 Gen3, GTX 460 SC OC'ed to 850core/1050memory, 8GB Ram, two mechanical hdd's, Samsung 830, and six fans. From what I can see in that gigabyte 7970 video it's actually more like 10.75 inches unlike the specs saying 11.4. I could use a bigger case but 11.4 would've been almost no room.

As far as games I'd play: Sleeping Dogs, Borderlands 1/2, Darksiders 2, maybe some Skyrim with mods, The Witcher 1/2 (part of the reason I'm upgrading) and WoW is on the back burner until MoP, though i'm burnt out on the game. I've been able to raid with mostly 60 FPS anyways since the game isn't exactly taxing on a GPU at 1080p.

7970 lacks the game combo, so to me that's actually like 32 dollars (greenmangaming price) more than the listed 427.5 with shipping. GTX 670 is currently 400 with free shipping and a 40 dollar game, so I didn't really think to put them in the same category. The 670 was my initial buy a week or two ago before they put the 7950 at 330 or less and now with a game bundle. It's not really that fair to put them in the same category, but to me performance wise they're both pretty equal cards since I don't intend on going past the 1050Mhz on air with the 7950. The 670 was pretty much my upper limit in spending that's all.

I'm pretty concerned with the stories of Sapphire's RMA service since I've had to RMA a GPU past its 30 day return and it was a smooth one week ordeal. I've heard differently about Sapphire and I'm not too certain if those are just more outliers or if they are really bad. Either way I appreciate the help, just gets frustrating to see new deals pop up and feel as though another price drop could happen again even though I know nVidia won't budge.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Just buy a video card and get it over with, you act like you're selecting an organ for transplant. :hmm:

 

[Sarasvati]

Just buy a video card and get it over with, you act like you're selecting an organ for transplant. :hmm:

Sorry that I like to research things instead of just impulse buying everything

 

[RussianSensation]

Yeah, I guess I wasn't being fair there, sorry about that. Everybody says the 670 is vastly more efficient and from what I've seen it's not true. Anyways here's my PSU

That PSU is very good. It's rated at 610W of power continuous. That means it'll be able to power your CPU + a 300W GPU no problem. Nothing to worry about there.

From what I can see in that gigabyte 7970 video it's actually more like 10.75 inches unlike the specs saying 11.4. I could use a bigger case but 11.4 would've been almost no room.

The cooler on the 670 Windforce 3x cards is basically the same. I can't see how the 2 cards are different in length.

7970 Windforce 3x. The 7970's PCB is 10.5 inches in length. Can't see how this card is 11.4 inches long.

"The card measures 285x126x38 millimeters, which is a mere 7 millimeters longer than the reference Radeon HD 7970." ~ Xbitlabs Review (285 mm ~ 11.22 inches)

670 Windforce 3x - looks the same to me as the 7950/7970 Windforce 3x cards, if anything at the end the plastic shroud seems to protrude slightly more.

As far as games I'd play: Sleeping Dogs, Borderlands 1/2, Darksiders 2, maybe some Skyrim with mods, The Witcher 1/2 (part of the reason I'm upgrading) and WoW is on the back burner until MoP, though i'm burnt out on the game. I've been able to raid with mostly 60 FPS anyways since the game isn't exactly taxing on a GPU at 1080p.

AMD is faster in Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders 2 (but the framerates here are ridiculous already). Even a 925mhz 7950 (V2) is as fast as a GTX680 in Skyrim with mods. I don't know about BL2, but it'll have PhysX which is something you can't use on AMD. In Witcher 2, a 1Ghz 7970 will be at least as fast as 670 OC. In WOW, NV is faster.

What about 900mhz factory pre-overclocked WT3 7950 with Sleeping Dogs and save $80?

 

[cmdrdredd]

This thread reminds me of the people who say "oh i'll wait 6 months and then a new model of TV will come out and these will be cheap." and 6 months later "oh I know next year there will be new models and these will drop in price"

Never to buy anything.

 

[Sarasvati]

This thread reminds me of the people who say "oh i'll wait 6 months and then a new model of TV will come out and these will be cheap." and 6 months later "oh I know next year there will be new models and these will drop in price"

Never to buy anything.

I've bought plenty of things that were expensive, but it was generally an easy buy. To some people simply buying whatever is the highest overclocker determines their buy. Anyways, I wasn't actually planning on buying a GPU until I looked over the price drops and felt that I would like to play with higher than low/medium settings in some of the newer games. I bought this card for 100 dollars last year around February to replace a faulty 9800gtx+ after 2.5 years and saw that deal. $300-$400 isn't cheap, so I just figured I'd like to see which is the best for that price point in regards to more than just overclocking performance.

What about 900mhz factory pre-overclocked WT3 7950 with Sleeping Dogs and save $80?

I saw that and noticed the mini display ports, which would mean I'd spend the difference buying an adapter for it. I usually hook up a TV through HDMI, while having the second monitor hooked up through dvi. The Vapor-X seems to have a good selection as well as the 670 in slots.

 

[RussianSensation]

I saw that and noticed the mini display ports, which would mean I'd spend the difference buying an adapter for it. I usually hook up a TV through HDMI, while having the second monitor hooked up through dvi. The Vapor-X seems to have a good selection as well as the 670 in slots.

Both the Vapor-X and Gigabyte Windforce 3x cards have an HDMI port and a DVI slot. So I don't see how it would be different. Have you thought about a GTX660Ti? If you lay off the MSAA, then it's $100 less than that gigabyte windforce 670 you were looking at, $20 less than the Gigabyte Windforce 7950 and $38 less than the Vapor-X with shipping.

The part I've been trying to tell you that power consumption isn't that big of a deal if you have a 4.5 ghz Core i5 2500K. That's probably using 40-50W more already than a stock 2500K. So I don't see why you don't want to overclock the HD7950 to 1100mhz in the first place?

Considering the Windforce 3x and other GTX670s came out on May 10 for $399, and it's still going for $400 now, that tells me it's already 'overpriced'. GPUs should slowly drop in price and 670 hasn't really budged much. There have been deals such as the Galaxy GTX670 OC for $331 on Amazon and Newegg. That also tells me $400 for a 670 is way too much. The irony is that people who bought the 670 around launch at $400 or so have been enjoying it all this time. Waiting 4 months barely reduced prices of 670 cards, but that's 4 months of gaming with a very slow card for those who waited to upgrade. I bet when 670 drops to $300, it'll be October-November but by then that's not far away from HD8000/GTX7000 series. The cycle never stops.