Is the 7950 or 670 truly faster

[Dark Shroud]

I decided to go with a GTX 670 because I had had enough of AMD's drivers being shit. Had a 5850 that wrote novels in my Event Viewer every time I played a game logging incessant useless warnings. It would flicker like crazy on dual monitors and when playing video due to the memory clocks changing constantly. It was a mess. Ran games fine at an acceptable fps, but the drivers were atrocious.

It sounds like that card was defective. And if you think AMD's drivers are garbage what are your feelings on Nvidia's drivers burning out their own cards?

Also, probably want to purchase a second GPU in like a year, and I hear Crossfire support is a stuttering mess compared to SLI. I always buy the "better deal", but chose to splurge on a very nice MSI GTX 670 PE OC for $370 about a month ago. Loving it so far. Hopefully in 6 months to a year prices come down enough so that I can pick up another.

Well good luck on the card. But the current prices and game bundle on 7950s are a very good deal, especially the factory OC models. Crossfire only had issues on a few games. AMD is has been fixing them at a decent pace, the betas show this.

It also seems that only a handful of people actually see the "stuttering" that several members never stop talking about even in non-crossfire situations.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I decided to go with a GTX 670 because I had had enough of AMD's drivers being shit. Had a 5850 that wrote novels in my Event Viewer every time I played a game logging incessant useless warnings. It would flicker like crazy on dual monitors and when playing video due to the memory clocks changing constantly. It was a mess. Ran games fine at an acceptable fps, but the drivers were atrocious.

Also, probably want to purchase a second GPU in like a year, and I hear Crossfire support is a stuttering mess compared to SLI. I always buy the "better deal", but chose to splurge on a very nice MSI GTX 670 PE OC for $370 about a month ago. Loving it so far. Hopefully in 6 months to a year prices come down enough so that I can pick up another.

The argument of drivers is old and has run its course. I've had both NVIDIA and AMD recently and have had issues with both (mainly "display driver stopped working" error when gaming, which were resolved by completely uninstalling drivers (Control Panel + Driver Fusion) and using the latest drivers for both. Either you didn't uninstall and install the drivers correctly or your card was defective.

 

[notty22]

The argument of drivers is old and has run its course. I've had both NVIDIA and AMD recently and have had issues with both (mainly "display driver stopped working" error when gaming, which were resolved by completely uninstalling drivers (Control Panel + Driver Fusion) and using the latest drivers for both. Either you didn't uninstall and install the drivers correctly or your card was defective.

Let's recap, you attack posters who note and cite published reviews, and now you are dismissing actual user/owner experiences. That does not really seem to be consistent or make any sense.

 

[Will Robinson]

I think there is to(sic) much fluff in peoples numbers. Everyone who has a o/c of around 1100 is telling others that 1250-1350 is POSSIBLE. Yeah, maybe the top 5% if that.
Yours doesn't?

Let's recap, you attack posters who note and cite published reviews, and now you are dismissing actual user/owner experiences. That does not really seem to be consistent or make any sense.

Kinda like you in this post huh LOL

 

[Muyoso]

It sounds like that card was defective. And if you think AMD's drivers are garbage what are your feelings on Nvidia's drivers burning out their own cards?



Well good luck on the card. But the current prices and game bundle on 7950s are a very good deal, especially the factory OC models. Crossfire only had issues on a few games. AMD is has been fixing them at a decent pace, the betas show this.

It also seems that only a handful of people actually see the "stuttering" that several members never stop talking about even in non-crossfire situations.

The card wasn't defective. AMD's drivers were. I was certainly not the only one with that issue. I have nothing against AMD, and I was seriously considering a 7950 for my new build, but essentially that would mean that its limited to 1 gpu for the life of the computer because almost everyone talks about how awful crossfire support is vs SLI.

 

[Muyoso]

The argument of drivers is old and has run its course. I've had both NVIDIA and AMD recently and have had issues with both (mainly "display driver stopped working" error when gaming, which were resolved by completely uninstalling drivers (Control Panel + Driver Fusion) and using the latest drivers for both. Either you didn't uninstall and install the drivers correctly or your card was defective.

The card was not defective and it was not an improperly installed driver issue. It was an issue that many people with 5850's had. And seeing as how the issue was hidden away in the event viewer which I'd guess 99% of users don't ever check, it was probably common. Nothing was wrong with the card and the events were not anything serious, but it was writing literally hundreds a second to the event viewer during a game or video playing. Also, it was embarrassingly bad operating 2 monitors and watching the screen flicker CONSTANTLY depending on what sort of web page I visited. That was a ridiculous driver issue having to do with the memory clock. Fixable, but I shouldn't have to go alter clock settings to make something as basic as 2 monitors work. . .

I have no idea how much AMD has improved on their drivers, but the common wisdom is to avoid Crossfire at all costs from everything I read. Apparently ridiculous stuttering as well as compatibility issues. That is why I decided against a 7950 personally. A GTX 670 offered an upgrade path in a year so that my PC can stay relevant for 3-4.

 

[ICDP]

I decided to go with a GTX 670 because I had had enough of AMD's drivers being shit. Had a 5850 that wrote novels in my Event Viewer every time I played a game logging incessant useless warnings. It would flicker like crazy on dual monitors and when playing video due to the memory clocks changing constantly. It was a mess. Ran games fine at an acceptable fps, but the drivers were atrocious.

Also, probably want to purchase a second GPU in like a year, and I hear Crossfire support is a stuttering mess compared to SLI. I always buy the "better deal", but chose to splurge on a very nice MSI GTX 670 PE OC for $370 about a month ago. Loving it so far. Hopefully in 6 months to a year prices come down enough so that I can pick up another.

Good luck with your new card, my own experience with AMD drivers has been fine apart from Crossfire. I can't recommend current AMD hardware if multi-GPU is an option.

 

[wand3r3r]

N/M

 

[psolord]

I think some benchmark results would actually help, it's better than some words on a forum

All taken using Heaven 3.0.

HD 7950 1230/1700

GTX 680 1228 core and +554 VRAM

HD 7970 1200/1550

Honestly, the difference in speed between a GTX 670, GTX680, HD 7970 and HD 7950 depends on the overclock and the game you are playing. The only reason I recommend AMD over Nvidia at this point in time is price. Similar speed, lower price, better games bundle.

That's good info. Thanks.

I find Valley's Extreme HD setting to highlight gpu differences nicely.

 

[Xarick]

The argument of drivers is old and has run its course. I've had both NVIDIA and AMD recently and have had issues with both (mainly "display driver stopped working" error when gaming, which were resolved by completely uninstalling drivers (Control Panel + Driver Fusion) and using the latest drivers for both. Either you didn't uninstall and install the drivers correctly or your card was defective.

It is not old. HardOCP recap of 2012 AMD drivers

http://hardocp.com/article/2013/02/18/2012_amd_video_card_driver_performance_review/6#.UTS631e0pI0

Where they state:
"AMD overall had a rough start with the Radeon HD 7970/7950 and drivers at the beginning of 2012. Thankfully, AMD pulled itself up out of the rut and delivered official drivers and CrossFire support, months after hardware release. Then, a change occurred, monthly driver releases were stopping. Thankfully AMD kept up with the gaming by releasing Beta drivers on or before game launch, providing official driver support and CrossFire profiles. The AMD driver situation in the second half of 2012 was a much different and a better situation than 1H12. "

So right now they look better, but have not had a consistent year of performance to back up your claims that it is old now. It isn't until ATI can go at least a full year of positive driver releases. Yes they can have a bad driver here or there, but right now they are battling years of poor development.

 

[ICDP]

It is not old. HardOCP recap of 2012 AMD drivers

http://hardocp.com/article/2013/02/18/2012_amd_video_card_driver_performance_review/6#.UTS631e0pI0

Where they state:
"AMD overall had a rough start with the Radeon HD 7970/7950 and drivers at the beginning of 2012. Thankfully, AMD pulled itself up out of the rut and delivered official drivers and CrossFire support, months after hardware release. Then, a change occurred, monthly driver releases were stopping. Thankfully AMD kept up with the gaming by releasing Beta drivers on or before game launch, providing official driver support and CrossFire profiles. The AMD driver situation in the second half of 2012 was a much different and a better situation than 1H12. "

So right now they look better, but have not had a consistent year of performance to back up your claims that it is old now. It isn't until ATI can go at least a full year of positive driver releases. Yes they can have a bad driver here or there, but right now they are battling years of poor development.

Did [H] mention the vsync stutter bug that plagued many users of GTX 680 and 670 for months? I almost gave up on my GTX 680 at that point, it took ~3 months before a fixed driver was released. Your choices were tearing or stutter (game dependent) for the first ~3 months of having a GTX 680. The thing is, the reviews didn't highlight the problem because they never use vsync.

AMD are not perfect when it comes to drivers but the Nvidia drivers have caused more than their fair share of problems. Hmm, so just like your quote above, it took Nvidia months to fix an issue, for shame. When AMD have a driver issue, everyone is all over it, "shock horror, AMD 7xx0 cards stutter... boo", you wouldn't get that from Nvidia of course.

Here is Nvidia's response to the vsync stutter bug problem.

We have received reports of an intermittent vsync stuttering issue from some of our customers. We’ve root caused the issue to a driver bug and identified a fix for it. The fix requires extensive testing though and will not be available until our next major driver release in June (post-R300). For users experiencing this issue, the interim workaround is to disable vsync via the NVIDIA Control Panel or in-game graphics settings menu.


Regards,

Manuel

NVIDIA Forums Technical Advisor


https://forums.geforce.com/default/...osts-will-be-deleted-vsync-stutter-discussi/1

 

[Termie]

I documented that vsync stutter bug as well. Definitely plenty of driver problems to go around.

Actually, it's pretty amazing that one company doesn't truly dominate the other either in performance or reliability. For a while, Nvidia dominated in price, now AMD is dominating, but that's a business choice rather than a product design or quality issue.

 

[ICDP]

I documented that vsync stutter bug as well. Definitely plenty of driver problems to go around.

It was a major problem for many who purchased a GTX 6x0 card and it took way too long for a fix to come out. Unfortunately it seems Nvidia driver issues are quickly forgotten on many forums. I had many problems with Nvidia and ATI/AMD over the years. The AMD CF stutter issue IMHO is becoming embarrassing for AMD, but for single card I find them to be fine.

Actually, it's pretty amazing that one company doesn't truly dominate the other either in performance or reliability. For a while, Nvidia dominated in price, now AMD is dominating, but that's a business choice rather than a product design or quality issue.

Titan is dominating at the moment, it is an amazing piece of hardware. Unfortunately it has a ridiculous price/perf ratio. So for all intents and purposes at normal prices it is AMD that hold the advantage right now.

 

[BrightCandle]

AMD has held price/performance this entire time. Its also had microstutter bugs since launch, and significantly more bugs all year. It also continues to have worse bugs today, many of which date back to the 7970 release. I don't disagree they both have bugs but its disingenuous to suggest they are at the same level of severity and impact, because they aren't. AMD has multiple bugs that cause a wide variety of games to be unplayable for a sizeable number who have their cards, Nvidia bugs so far are P3 annoying but can be worked around except the single BF3 bug.

Having made and maintained the list of known defects I am no doubt AMD still has severe problems in its drivers and it directly impacts on the cards quality. They have the superior hardware and price as they have in prior generations, but continue to have problems with their software. This time however AMD has outdone themselves with the microstutter issues. Prior to this generation this was a problem only seen on dual card setups. Now almost everyone knows the term and has heard about the problem on the 7950 in quite a few modern games. This saga of bad driver releases and cheated performance from AMD continues. I just can't recommend a company that shows this level of ineptitude in the engineering of their cards and its drivers.

 

[3DVagabond]

Wow! I wonder how all of these people here who have AMD cards manage to stand using their computers.

 

[NIGELG]

AMD has held price/performance this entire time. Its also had microstutter bugs since launch, and significantly more bugs all year. It also continues to have worse bugs today, many of which date back to the 7970 release. I don't disagree they both have bugs but its disingenuous to suggest they are at the same level of severity and impact, because they aren't. AMD has multiple bugs that cause a wide variety of games to be unplayable for a sizeable number who have their cards, Nvidia bugs so far are P3 annoying but can be worked around except the single BF3 bug.

Having made and maintained the list of known defects I am no doubt AMD still has severe problems in its drivers and it directly impacts on the cards quality. They have the superior hardware and price as they have in prior generations, but continue to have problems with their software. This time however AMD has outdone themselves with the microstutter issues. Prior to this generation this was a problem only seen on dual card setups. Now almost everyone knows the term and has heard about the problem on the 7950 in quite a few modern games. This saga of bad driver releases and cheated performance from AMD continues. I just can't recommend a company that shows this level of ineptitude in the engineering of their cards and its drivers.

I guess I should just throw my 7970 in the trash then.Even though I'm enjoying my card so far.You are the King of exaggeration it would seem.

 

[Grooveriding]

AMD has held price/performance this entire time. Its also had microstutter bugs since launch, and significantly more bugs all year. It also continues to have worse bugs today, many of which date back to the 7970 release. I don't disagree they both have bugs but its disingenuous to suggest they are at the same level of severity and impact, because they aren't. AMD has multiple bugs that cause a wide variety of games to be unplayable for a sizeable number who have their cards, Nvidia bugs so far are P3 annoying but can be worked around except the single BF3 bug.

Having made and maintained the list of known defects I am no doubt AMD still has severe problems in its drivers and it directly impacts on the cards quality. They have the superior hardware and price as they have in prior generations, but continue to have problems with their software. This time however AMD has outdone themselves with the microstutter issues. Prior to this generation this was a problem only seen on dual card setups. Now almost everyone knows the term and has heard about the problem on the 7950 in quite a few modern games. This saga of bad driver releases and cheated performance from AMD continues. I just can't recommend a company that shows this level of ineptitude in the engineering of their cards and its drivers.

I have a 7950 and any game I've played on it is perfectly smooth with none of this stutter you describe.

From the severity and enthusiasm with which you describe your issues, it sounds like something unrelated or a heavy case of PEBKAC. You may want to check your system for some other issues occurring.

Nothing like that for me on my end with my 7950.

 

[ICDP]

BrightCandle

You have had your issues with Crossfire and I agree (as do many AMD users) that CF needs a lot of work. The fact that I and many other AMD users see no such issues with single GPU setups seems lost on you. You state many of the Nvidia issues you found had easy workarounds. I found the same with my HD 79x0 card. A simple change to the flip queue (pre-render) size or an FPS cap worked wonders in many problematic games. My biggest issue though was the GTX680 vsync stutterbug for which there was no viable workaround over 3 months. Unless you consider serious tearing a workaround?

I'm not trying to understate the fact that you had issues with AMD this round. Having said that just because you found more issues with AMD over Nvidia does not mean someone else didn't have the opposite experience. As I stated above my experience has been that Nvidia have had more serious isuses with GTX 6x0 cards than AMD have had with HD 79x0 cards. It's all subjective isn't it.

 

[SlowSpyder]

AMD has held price/performance this entire time. Its also had microstutter bugs since launch, and significantly more bugs all year. It also continues to have worse bugs today, many of which date back to the 7970 release. I don't disagree they both have bugs but its disingenuous to suggest they are at the same level of severity and impact, because they aren't. AMD has multiple bugs that cause a wide variety of games to be unplayable for a sizeable number who have their cards, Nvidia bugs so far are P3 annoying but can be worked around except the single BF3 bug.

Having made and maintained the list of known defects I am no doubt AMD still has severe problems in its drivers and it directly impacts on the cards quality. They have the superior hardware and price as they have in prior generations, but continue to have problems with their software. This time however AMD has outdone themselves with the microstutter issues. Prior to this generation this was a problem only seen on dual card setups. Now almost everyone knows the term and has heard about the problem on the 7950 in quite a few modern games. This saga of bad driver releases and cheated performance from AMD continues. I just can't recommend a company that shows this level of ineptitude in the engineering of their cards and its drivers.

Tell me what games I cannot play, please... so I can avoid buying them in the future.

 

[Elfear]

Tell me what games I cannot play, please... so I can avoid buying them in the future.

Seriously. I had no idea my gaming experience was so lacking these past 13 months.

 

[Imouto]

I wish I had some HD79XX pain for myself.

 

[Firestorm007]

AMD has held price/performance this entire time. Its also had microstutter bugs since launch, and significantly more bugs all year. It also continues to have worse bugs today, many of which date back to the 7970 release. I don't disagree they both have bugs but its disingenuous to suggest they are at the same level of severity and impact, because they aren't. AMD has multiple bugs that cause a wide variety of games to be unplayable for a sizeable number who have their cards, Nvidia bugs so far are P3 annoying but can be worked around except the single BF3 bug.

Having made and maintained the list of known defects I am no doubt AMD still has severe problems in its drivers and it directly impacts on the cards quality. They have the superior hardware and price as they have in prior generations, but continue to have problems with their software. This time however AMD has outdone themselves with the microstutter issues. Prior to this generation this was a problem only seen on dual card setups. Now almost everyone knows the term and has heard about the problem on the 7950 in quite a few modern games. This saga of bad driver releases and cheated performance from AMD continues. I just can't recommend a company that shows this level of ineptitude in the engineering of their cards and its drivers.

What a load of malarkey. I have none of the issues you describe on a 7970. All my games play fine with the occasional hiccup that's either driver or game related; and if it's a major driver issue, AMD provides fixes in a timely manner. Consequently, on my 670 rig, it's the same. No serious issues to speak of. Both rigs run good. Maybe your system is borked, because I have no idea what you're talking about. I have a friend with a 7950 as well, and he doesn't exhibit any of these Area 51 alien anomolies on his card....

 

[Phynaz]

Tell me what games I cannot play, please... so I can avoid buying them in the future.

Yes please. Help a guy out so he doesn't spend money on a game that won't run on his PC.

 

[Tweak155]

Yes please. Help a guy out so he doesn't spend money on a game that won't run on his PC.

Boy, I'm sure glad I still have this Ge4 TI 4200... SUCKERS!!!

 

[raghu78]

AMD has held price/performance this entire time. Its also had microstutter bugs since launch, and significantly more bugs all year. It also continues to have worse bugs today, many of which date back to the 7970 release. I don't disagree they both have bugs but its disingenuous to suggest they are at the same level of severity and impact, because they aren't. AMD has multiple bugs that cause a wide variety of games to be unplayable for a sizeable number who have their cards, Nvidia bugs so far are P3 annoying but can be worked around except the single BF3 bug.

Having made and maintained the list of known defects I am no doubt AMD still has severe problems in its drivers and it directly impacts on the cards quality. They have the superior hardware and price as they have in prior generations, but continue to have problems with their software. This time however AMD has outdone themselves with the microstutter issues. Prior to this generation this was a problem only seen on dual card setups. Now almost everyone knows the term and has heard about the problem on the 7950 in quite a few modern games. This saga of bad driver releases and cheated performance from AMD continues. I just can't recommend a company that shows this level of ineptitude in the engineering of their cards and its drivers.

so Nvidia has no problems with frametimes and is far superior . is it ?

http://techreport.com/review/24381/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-reviewed/7

GTX 680 has quite a few frames take more than 50 ms . that is microstuttering :whiste:

http://techreport.com/review/24381/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-reviewed/9

Even Titan has more time spent beyond 50ms (long frametimes aka microstuttering)

http://techreport.com/review/24381/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-reviewed/9

BF3 medium on GTX 680 is a microstutterfest. :whiste: even ultra is smoother on AMD.

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/399...force-gtx-680-frametimes-review-battlefield-3

AMD has said the new memory manager will address DX11 and DX10 games affected like farcry 3 and hitman absolution. also not every game is affected. games like bf3, crysis 3, max payne 3 have no frametime latency issues.

frame latency is a new method of performance evaluation. Both Nvidia and AMD will have to address fps and frametimes when it comes to game performance . And its clearly a work in progress for both camps.

there are many users happy with the performance of HD 7900 cards as firestorm007 confirms.