- May 5, 2010
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The question: To go with a GTX680 (most likely EVGA), or a Sapphire 7970 OC and overclock it higher? I am not really looking to go with a watercooled solution, so will be air only (I have learned my lesson though and my next major build out will be all water cooled vs the CPU only sealed system I have now).
Currently I have a Sapphire 7950 OC that I have successfully boosted the overclock to a core clock of 1100Mhz with a Memory clock of 1450Mhz (5800Mhz effective). At those settings the best part about the card is how quiet it still is at load, Sapphire's cooler is outstanding on these cards. While I have been generally very happy with this card, I need to get a new card for updating my brothers gaming PC and due to our resolution differences while playing (he games at 1920x1200, while I am at 2560x1440) I figured this card would work great for him and I could step-up to one of the two in question to help the higher resolution I play at.
I had a EVGA Superclocked GTX580 before the 7950 and while the performance was good the noise at load really started to bother me while gaming, hence after Anand's review of the Sapphire 7950 OC I was impressed by the review numbers for noise and made the switch.
I have crossed the numbers between the 680 and 7970, and I know the 680 does beat it, and my a decent margin on a chunk of games, but I am worried that getting a new 680 is going to turn into another noise issue for me seeing as the current noise levels seem to match very close to the 580. With the luck in OC'ing the 7950, I am tempted to get the 7970 OC and try to clock it even higher. I suppose the other options also include waiting a little bit to see if the 7970 Toxic (or VaporX) comes out for even higher performance, or to see if a nice aftermarket cooler version of the 680 is released, but I have about 2 weeks before I have to make the purchase.
Generally I am playing mainly Blizzard games (D3 Beta, SC2, not so much WoW, along with LoL, with some shorter stints in Skyrim and/or the FPS of the month). I am generally a person that wants to max all visual settings possible with the extras (AA, AF, etc) and do not want to frames to drop or get stuttering in games. Believe it or not D3 can sometimes stutter before I OC'ed my current card with all settings maxed (and having a darker filter applied to the game).
Am I a bit nuts to go for the 7970 OC, and if not would waiting a couple of weeks to see if the Toxic/VaporX version is released be best? (I am just so spoiled now with Sapphire's DualX coolers, they really are great.) There have to be others that are still annoyed with how noisy some of these video cards can get. Again, thanks for any input or advise, I apologize for the long post.
Currently I have a Sapphire 7950 OC that I have successfully boosted the overclock to a core clock of 1100Mhz with a Memory clock of 1450Mhz (5800Mhz effective). At those settings the best part about the card is how quiet it still is at load, Sapphire's cooler is outstanding on these cards. While I have been generally very happy with this card, I need to get a new card for updating my brothers gaming PC and due to our resolution differences while playing (he games at 1920x1200, while I am at 2560x1440) I figured this card would work great for him and I could step-up to one of the two in question to help the higher resolution I play at.
I had a EVGA Superclocked GTX580 before the 7950 and while the performance was good the noise at load really started to bother me while gaming, hence after Anand's review of the Sapphire 7950 OC I was impressed by the review numbers for noise and made the switch.
I have crossed the numbers between the 680 and 7970, and I know the 680 does beat it, and my a decent margin on a chunk of games, but I am worried that getting a new 680 is going to turn into another noise issue for me seeing as the current noise levels seem to match very close to the 580. With the luck in OC'ing the 7950, I am tempted to get the 7970 OC and try to clock it even higher. I suppose the other options also include waiting a little bit to see if the 7970 Toxic (or VaporX) comes out for even higher performance, or to see if a nice aftermarket cooler version of the 680 is released, but I have about 2 weeks before I have to make the purchase.
Generally I am playing mainly Blizzard games (D3 Beta, SC2, not so much WoW, along with LoL, with some shorter stints in Skyrim and/or the FPS of the month). I am generally a person that wants to max all visual settings possible with the extras (AA, AF, etc) and do not want to frames to drop or get stuttering in games. Believe it or not D3 can sometimes stutter before I OC'ed my current card with all settings maxed (and having a darker filter applied to the game).
Am I a bit nuts to go for the 7970 OC, and if not would waiting a couple of weeks to see if the Toxic/VaporX version is released be best? (I am just so spoiled now with Sapphire's DualX coolers, they really are great.) There have to be others that are still annoyed with how noisy some of these video cards can get. Again, thanks for any input or advise, I apologize for the long post.