No, it's not. Stock performance is what you get out of the box. So if AMD rates HD7970 at 925 and MSI sells you a factory preoverclocked 7970 with 1070mhz overclock, should we test the MSI card downclocked to AMD factory defaults?
different situation. card is advertised as OC'd. we have no problems finding reference card benches at stock clocks for the 7970 anyways so its not at all the same situation. the only issue at hand is people taking [h]s cards at face 'stock card value'and trumpeting them any/everywhere. it happened alot in the thread here on it. It doesnt even matter to me as a consumer because well, I'm going water so I can expect above average clocks with low heat
You make it sound like there is some wild stock variation among GTX680s. It's 1058-1110mhz. Very rarely do they go above that. That's your margin of error. Anything else means someone tweaked the power settings or enabled a manual offset.
@ Computerbase, their factory 680 never even got to 1110mhz supporting this view.
You can check their review and you'll see 680 has a 20% lead in some games while HD7970 leads in other games. Like I said in games where 680 leads, a 1280mhz HD7970 has won't catch an overclocked 680. In games where 7970 leads, 680 has little chance to overcome the deficit.
Considering 680 has >2x the Tessellation performance and almost 2x the texture performance, if anything 680 will gain over 7970 in next generation games that become more texture and tessellation heavy. Not that this matters since most 680/7970 users will have upgraded anyway.
Even from future proofing perspective, it's still hard to recommend the 7970.
Then there is PhysX. Most people don't care for it. But if you can get a game to look better, why not right?
Borderlands 2 PhysX
Right now the 680 is:
- Cheaper
- Performs better out of the box / can still overclock another 8-13% to make it competitive against a massively overclocked 7970
- Consumes less power at stock and ~ 90-100W less in overclocked states vs. an overclocked 7970
- Has more features
- EVGA Warranty
The are 2 superior features that count on the 7970 right now:
- GPGPU double precision performance (MilkyWay, CollatzConjective, Bitcoin mining, etc.)
- Eyefinity that allows up to 6 displays in action
CPU boost is still factory defaults like GPU boost is. If GPU boost was 1.3ghz for one card and 1.1ghz for another card, it'd be worth talking about. As it stands, at stock speeds,
GTX680s boost to 1058 and at most 4 banks above that. Anything above that means the card was not ran at default power settings. This is because the 680 has 4 power boost banks @ 13mhz steps. Max speed is 1110mhz from the factory @ 100% power setting.
I suggest people read reviews in more detail because there is too much misunderstanding about how 680's boost works at stock 100% power band.
I do need to read up on it more, and hope to when I have more time. they are quite impressive cards nonetheless
That's impossible and unrealistic. You can't expect someone to dyno each vehicle and downrate. Cars are guaranteed to have the minimum amount of HP that they are rated at. Some cars will for sure produce more HP. This is done so that automakers do not get sued for not delivering enough HP. What you are arguing is the fact of life = there is always some small variation among most products. In CPUs its VIDs, in cars, its HP, right now its GPU Boost. The variation only matters if there is a material impact.
In this case, no one here has shown it to be such.
People are using HardOCP's one off example and ignoring 20-30 other reviews that still show GTX680 beating HD7970.
yes they are and its a problem, but how the reviews are being done is making the problem worse, not that its not a graet review, it is, I have merely this one issue
Here is
Hexus.net review where HD7970 was even overclocked to match GTX680's speeds and still lost.
Not factory 680s. I said a lot of reference 7970s do 1125-1175mhz while most 680s easily do 1200mhz with manual overclocking. So it's far rarer to get an HD7970 that can do 1250-1280mhz that it is to achieve a 1200+mhz overclock on a 680. Meaning you are playing an overclocking roulette when pretty much most 680s will do 1200mhz+ with a manual offset of 140-150mhz.
gotcha makes more sense with the clarification
It's 10% faster on average, sure. But in more popular recent games it's more like 15-20% faster. The only reason HD7970 even hangs in there is because of old games such as Metro 2033, AVP and Crysis 1 that offset the average in its favour. The fact that HD7970 costs $40-100 more and consumes more power while requiring a very high 1250+ overclock to beat an overclocked 680 makes it irrelevant right now.
At HardOCP,
70% of hardware enthusiast picked a reference 680 over a $100 more expensive MSI Lightning.
Our forum is the only forum that keeps having these debates. This is the first time in a long time where the choice couldn't be more clearer since it comes down to price and the games which you play.
Until HD7970 falls in price to $499 for after market versions, it's worse value for most people.
agree 100%
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