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Gigabyte WF3 - GTX 670 vs. 7970?

S

Supra

Junior Member
Hey guys, this is actually my first post but I've been lurking around here as a guest for a while now.

Anyways, I'm looking to do a build soon and I've finalized everything about it apart from what graphics card to get. I think I've nailed it down to a WF3 card from Gigabyte, but I'm stuck between a 670 and a 7970.

Considerations:

- My budget is roughly $400
- I need the card for gaming (BF3, BF4, SC2:HotS, FC3, CS:GO, Rome 2: Total War, etc...)
- It's very likely that I will pick up another card 2-3 months down the road for SLI/CFX
- I might get a new monitor with a 2560 x 1440 resolution
- Silence and aesthetics are almost as important to me as performance

Given these considerations, what WF3 card do you think will serve me the best? Or is there a big reason why I should consider other vendors?

Thanks 🙂
 
If you plan to go multiple cards, then SLI is currently working much better atm, unless you use a FPS limiter, or maybe v-sync. The FPS limiter option obviously loses out on performance. So I'd recommend SLI, unless you always use v-sync, and even then I'm not sure about CF.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...ils-Capture-based-Graphics-Performance-Test-4

And if you want subjective thoughts: http://hardocp.com/article/2012/12/04/gtx_680_vs_radeon_hd_7970_multidisplay_showdown/7#.UWzW98qTltB
Per usual, there is more than just performance, i.e. framerates, when determining the "best" platform for gaming. We of course speak about the real-world "feel" of gaming between SLI and CrossFireX on a multi-display setup. There is no question that SLI feels smoother, thanks to the added technology that NVIDIA employs to address this very topic. That said, you can still have a good experience with AMD CrossFireX in Eyefinity given enough framerates. In those terms, this is where AMD CrossFireX has excelled today in our testing.
Click to expand...

AMD is looking to fix the issue sometime in the summer, but until they can show a fix, I'd avoid CrossfireX.
 
The WF3 7970 is hardware voltage locked.
The WF3 670 is NOT hardware voltage locked.

This generation, cards using PCBs other than reference PCBs, excluding MSI, are objectively worse than ones using reference PCBs for a variety of reasons.
Nvidia has dictated that their 6xx series cards from manufacturers are not allowed to use worse PCBs than reference PCBs.
This is after Nvidia got burned by card manufacturers in the 5xx series and gave Nvidia a bad rap because of the catastrophic component failure rates from card manufacturers using inferior to reference PCBs.

AMD has not issued such an edict and that leaves us in the horrid situation we are in today of almost every MSRP or lower priced not sold out 7970 and 7950 card being vastly inferior in one way or another to reference PCBs.

If you are going to do 2x either of these soon anyways then just get a titan.
 
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For a single card the 7970 is clearly superior.

For multiple cards it is a different matter. If it's just a single monitor I'd say get SLI 660s, can get both cards for $400 then 🙂
 
A single 7970 will nearly max out any game on a 1080p monitor. You don't need to be specific about getting a Gigabyte brand card, there are other (better) manufactures out there such as Sapphire. Even that one has a flip switch bios, to instantly turn into a GHz edition card. No reason to go out and spend the $450 for one, when a $379 standard 7970 will do it and then some. This is the area where AMD squashes Nvidia's Kepler cards, the 7970 GHz edition cards are faster in game benchmarks than a GTX 680. While 680's cost nearly $500, you can get a 7970 for $379 that beats it.

7970 vs 670
7970 GHz Edition vs 670 (achievable on reference 7970's)
 
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If you plan multi-GPU for the future and are going from scratch (ie no current AMD HD7xx0 card) then steer clear of Crossfire. It can work well if you are prepared to tweak settings but simply is a horrible experience out of the box.

AMD claim they will fix the issue in a few months but I wouldn't take that as a guarantee. HD 7970 is a faster card than a GTX670 by a decent margin but if you overclock (and get a good overclocker) the GTX670 and HD 7970 will be so close as to be indistinguishable in performance.

If multi-GPU was not an option then I would recommend a 7970 but not with CF.
 
Communism said:
The WF3 7970 is hardware voltage locked.
The WF3 670 is NOT hardware voltage locked.

This generation, cards using PCBs other than reference PCBs, excluding MSI, are objectively worse than ones using reference PCBs for a variety of reasons.
Nvidia has dictated that their 6xx series cards from manufacturers are not allowed to use worse PCBs than reference PCBs.
This is after Nvidia got burned by card manufacturers in the 5xx series and gave Nvidia a bad rap because of the catastrophic component failure rates from card manufacturers using inferior to reference PCBs.

AMD has not issued such an edict and that leaves us in the horrid situation we are in today of almost every MSRP or lower priced not sold out 7970 and 7950 card being vastly inferior in one way or another to reference PCBs.

If you are going to do 2x either of these soon anyways then just get a titan.
Click to expand...

Most of this is just wrong. MSI (Lightning, PE), Asus (DCUII and Matrix), HIS (7970 X Turbo), and Sapphire (Vapor-X, Toxic) all offer non reference PCB's that are superior to the reference models. While it was in fact Fermi 570 and 590 reference models that were the ones that had issues when O/Volted. The Sapphire 7970's that are the best prices do actually use reference boards. There are 2 reference boards, the original and the V2. I prefer the original because it has better connectivity, but I've seen nothing that documents the V2 being worse performing in any way. So, it's just my personal preference having 2xDP instead of 2xDVI (1single link+1dual link). Also, unless nVidia has made a 180° turn recently that I haven't heard about, all Keplers are voltage locked.
 
Thanks for all the input guys!

I think I am going to go for one 7970 for now. It seems like it's the better card and free games are always nice! Hopefully AMD can figure out their CFX issues so I can pick up another one soon 😛. I'm going to stick with Gigabyte because I can get a 7970 for under $400 CAD whereas the ones from Sapphire are closer to $480... crazy.
 
ICDP said:
If you plan multi-GPU for the future and are going from scratch (ie no current AMD HD7xx0 card) then steer clear of Crossfire. It can work well if you are prepared to tweak settings but simply is a horrible experience out of the box.

AMD claim they will fix the issue in a few months but I wouldn't take that as a guarantee. HD 7970 is a faster card than a GTX670 by a decent margin but if you overclock (and get a good overclocker) the GTX670 and HD 7970 will be so close as to be indistinguishable in performance.

If multi-GPU was not an option then I would recommend a 7970 but not with CF.
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This is wrong.

At stock, 7970 is a lot faster. The 7970 overclocks more and scales better with overclocking. So once both are overclocked, the lead becomes even more, it doesn't become less with overclocking.
 
aaksheytalwar said:
This is wrong.

At stock, 7970 is a lot faster. The 7970 overclocks more and scales better with overclocking. So once both are overclocked, the lead becomes even more, it doesn't become less with overclocking.
Click to expand...

Well that's good to hear! 🙂

I'm most likely going to overclock but I want to see how loud the WF cooler is first. It's going to be in the SilverStone FT02 case so I'm hoping the fan won't need to ramp up too much under load.
 
aaksheytalwar said:
This is wrong.

At stock, 7970 is a lot faster. The 7970 overclocks more and scales better with overclocking. So once both are overclocked, the lead becomes even more, it doesn't become less with overclocking.
Click to expand...

I already stated that a 7970 is faster by a decent margin at stock. My claim re overclocking was NOT that they would both have identical performance but that if he got a good overclocking GTX670 the performance would so close that you couldn't tell them apart during gaming. It is impossible for me to recommend HD 7970 based on the simple premise that the OP plans multi-GPU. HD 7970 Crossfire is an horrendous experience unless you are prepared to do a lot of tweaking.
 
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If you can't differentiate btw a 670 and 7970 once both are oced then you can't differentiate btw 7970ghz and Titan when both are at stock.
 
aaksheytalwar said:
If you can't differentiate btw a 670 and 7970 once both are oced then you can't differentiate btw 7970ghz and Titan when both are at stock.
Click to expand...

Are you seriously going to try to claim a GTX670 is ~27% slower than a HD 7970 when both are overclocked? Are you making that as a general claim, or basing it on golden samples only?

Read my post again, I never claimed the GTX 670 was as fast as a HD 7970 I said it was close enough that overall it would be hard to tell the difference. Yes a HD 7970 is faster and even widens the gap with OC, but it is not worth getting if multi-GPU is even remotely on the horizon. When we factor in that the OP wants to go multi-GPU and 1440p in the future then GTX670 SLI is a far better proposition at that res.

I have HD 7950 Crossfire and while it is very good as long as I tweak using RadeonPro, it is absolute total and utter crap out of the box. I simply cannot defend CF out of the box for one single second. FPS tells me 80 but eyes tell me 15 when I don't use FPS caps or vsync.

That is why I recommend the OP goes SLI.
 
Supra do you typically play with Vsync on or off? If its on then don't worry too much about crossfire, you are already used to a lot of latency and the issues it causes so the extra frame that crossfire introduces wont cause you too many problems and vsync will meter the problems that crossfire has.
 
At 1440p a 670 oc is easily 20-30% slower than a 7970oc. Easily. Considering max oc to max oc 7970s beat 680s by 10-15% at that rez, and the 670 is a further 10% or so slower than a 680.

I am assuming 670 is at 1150-1200 and so is the 7970 at 1150-1200. At the same clock at 1440p the difference is easily 15-25% or so and sometimes more/less.
 
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-geforce-gtx-670-680-roundup/9/

1. Those drivers are older. Both cards are faster today, but amd 7xxx has witnessed faster improvements compared to nvidia.

2. I compared a 7970ghz to 670 because a 7970 has more headroom and scales better. A 7970 oced is the same as a 7970ghz oced. But a 670 oced won't gain as much from oc in terms of scaling. So a 7970ghz is already 85% of its full potential like a 670 making it a more suitable match.

3. This is the avg at 1440.

4. 7970ghz is 18% faster than a 670. Once both are oced to the max, this difference is still likely to be around 15% or so. Assuming both are oced to 1200mhz or so, or nearly that much at least.

5. 15-20% difference isn't that much. Even a titan is often just 20-25% faster in many situations with the avg being 25-30%. So if a 20% difference can't be felt, than a 30% difference can't be called an upgrade either.

And these are with very old drivers where a 670 equalled a stock 7970 which is no longer the case. Today a stock 7970 is always 10-15% faster than a stock 670 regardless, at the bare minimum.
 
aaksheytalwar said:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-geforce-gtx-670-680-roundup/9/

1. Those drivers are older. Both cards are faster today, but amd 7xxx has witnessed faster improvements compared to nvidia.

2. I compared a 7970ghz to 670 because a 7970 has more headroom and scales better. A 7970 oced is the same as a 7970ghz oced. But a 670 oced won't gain as much from oc in terms of scaling. So a 7970ghz is already 85% of its full potential like a 670 making it a more suitable match.

3. This is the avg at 1440.

4. 7970ghz is 18% faster than a 670. Once both are oced to the max, this difference is still likely to be around 15% or so. Assuming both are oced to 1200mhz or so, or nearly that much at least.

5. 15-20% difference isn't that much. Even a titan is often just 20-25% faster in many situations with the avg being 25-30%. So if a 20% difference can't be felt, than a 30% difference can't be called an upgrade either.

And these are with very old drivers where a 670 equalled a stock 7970 which is no longer the case. Today a stock 7970 is always 10-15% faster than a stock 670 regardless, at the bare minimum.
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Where did I say the GTX670 was as fast as a HD 7970? You keep assuming I am saying something I'm not. My entire reason for recommending the GTX670 is because in single GPU performance that he won't really notice the difference at his current 1080p. On the other hand when he goes multi-GPU and 1440p (as he suggested in this 1st post) the GTX670 SLI will be a far better proposition than 7970 CF.
 
ICDP said:
Where did I say the GTX670 was as fast as a HD 7970? You keep assuming I am saying something I'm not. My entire reason for recommending the GTX670 is because in single GPU performance that he won't really notice the difference at his current 1080p. On the other hand when he goes multi-GPU and 1440p (as he suggested in this 1st post) the GTX670 SLI will be a far better proposition than 7970 CF.
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15-20% is the difference from 39-48 fps and 48-60 . you will definitely feel that
 
Clearly the people recommending a 7970 didn't read the part where the OP stated he was most likely going to go multi GPU in the near future. If the OP was not planning multi-GPU then the 7970 is a far better choice but he is.

CF sucks balls unless you are prepared to tweak and mess with profiles. Yes it works great once you get the profiles working but not out of the box. Short term ~10%-15% performance loss for a far better overall experience long term. SLI isn't perfect but right now CF isn't even a contest out of the box. I have no problem recommending CF if the person asking for advice already has an AMD HD 7xx0 card, but I would not recommend it if going from scratch.
 
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