need some help with upgrading my GPU

[domjam]

Hello all im new to forums and am seeking some help with an upgrade

i am looking to replace my current gpu (5870matrix 2gig)

I use an HD TV for my screen and i want to be able to game at 1920x1080 with all the eye candy enabled. etc AA,AF,teselation..all that stuff for now and next gen games. with a solid 60fps or close to it.basicly no stutter and no lag.

I have been looking at the ASUS HD7970 Direct CUIITop and the MSI HD 7970 lightning. just recently though i found out about the new sapphire HD 7970 toxic 6gb witch will be released tomorow. im not sure what to go with.feedback appreciated.

my system:
MB:asus crosshair formula IV
CPUhenom II x6 OC 4.1ghz
CPU cooler: corsair H100
Ram:4gig hyperxmemory 1333mhz
GPU:5870 matrix platinum 2gig
PSU:corsairHX1000
HD:1TB

 

[RussianSensation]

Hey domjam, welcome to AnandTech.

Both of those are good cards.

First of all, rule out the HD7970 6GB TOXIC. It's overpriced at $700 and 6GB of VRAM is worthless for your resolution. There is a similar card with the exact same cooler and 3GB of VRAM - Sapphire HD7970 Vapor-X with 1050mhz GPU clocks for $457.99 - $10 off with coupon BIGBEN = $448
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=AT-7970GHZ

For $450, I'd pick that over the Asus Direct CUII. It has a higher chance to overclock better and the Vapor-X cooler is very good. Also, Sapphire HD7970 after-market cards tend have great memory overclocking.

I am not sure about the MSI Lightning for $520. Not sure it's worth it. At that point, I would personally just add another $100 and get 2x HD7950 MSI TwinFrozr III. These overclock to 1.1ghz on stock voltage and which point each of these 7950 cards ~ GTX680. That's the best bang for the buck on the high-end.

This is only at 1.025ghz, not even at 1.1-1.15ghz!

The GTX670 are also good options. Although at current prices, I think the cheaper 7950 or the faster HD7970 are better options esp. due to their overclocking headroom and great performance with latest drivers.

I suggest you take a look at a couple of reviews to gauge the performance in the games you intend to play:

TechPowerUP
Computerbase
TechSpot
AnandTech

The main benefit of the Lightning and Asus Direct CUII cards is that they have solid caps/chokes which means guaranteed no coil whine from the videocard. The Asus DCUII 7970 has gotten mixed reviews though with some being poor overclockers, or some other issues. But again, I think it'd spend $630 on HD7950 CF at that point rather than $520 on a 7970. The Gigabyte Windforce 3x is also good if you want 3 year warranty instead of 2 of the Sapphire card I linked.

 

[domjam]

thank you for ur reply. i live in uk so pricing is dif. and the price of the toxic is £500 plus shipping it would be £510 there is also a Sapphire HD 7970 VAPOR-X GHZ 6144MB priced at £469 and a Sapphire HD 7970 VAPOR-X GHZ 3072MB priced at £390 witch is alot cheaper however these 2 cards are not released untill a later date. I have never had a crossfire configuration as iv allwaz used a single card.going back on what u said about the toxic. so its a waste of monny if i only game at 1920x1080 and i would be better of with the 3gig cards insted

forgot to mention that the Gigabyte windforce 3x is £350

 

[RussianSensation]

Yes exactly. The main advantage of the TOXIC is the "Lethal button" that overclocks the card from the factory to 1200mhz / 6400mhz memory. However, most HD7970 cards can overclock in MSI Afterburner / Sapphire Trixx to 1150mhz on stock voltage. So why pay 500 pounds for that? 6GB of VRAM will be completely useless at your resolution. 99% of games don't even use more than 2GB.

How much as the GTX670 cards and HD7950 cards?
- GTX 670 Windforce 3x
- GTX 670 Asus Direct CUII
- HD7950 Sapphire Dual-X
- HD7950 MSI TwinFrozr III

Between the Sapphire Vapor-X and Gigabyte Windforce 3x, it's a tough choice.

Here is what I found:

MSI Overclocked Radeon HD 7950 Twin Frozr AMD Graphics Card - 3GB - £269.99 Inc VAT

That's an amazing deal. Take 100 pounds and save it towards your next GPU upgrade. Overclock this card to 1.1ghz and you are set.

 

[domjam]

thanks again for respons.
the gtx 670 asus Direct CUII is around £380
the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 Windforce 3X is around £340

i am thinking to go with the VAPOR-X HD7970 GHz Edition 3G GDDR5 But your choice for the 7950 sounds reely good 2 ..only thing is will i need overclock hardware to set the clock that high?i am not very formiler with the overclocking process of a gpu other then using software that comes with the cards.i herd u need waterblocks and coolers and all this other stuff witch costs more monny.lol and with the new tech in graphics for games that is allwayz coming out in the future.later that only meens cards are going to run hotter when overclocking if not with right cooling hardware.. but if i would not need to buy extra hardware to do the overclock..i might just go for that option..still leading towords the vapor-x though. I apreshiate your feedback

 

[daveybrat]

My personal opinion? Go with this:

GTX 670 asus Direct CUII is around £380

An extremely fast card that doesn't consume a lot of power.

 

[RussianSensation]

My personal opinion? Go with this:

GTX 670 asus Direct CUII is around £380

An extremely fast card that doesn't consume a lot of power.

£100 more for a GTX670 over the MSI TF3 7950? £10 more for the fastest single-GPU right now in the Vapor-X 7970 and you recommend the 670? Sorry, but at those prices in the UK, a £380 GTX670 doesn't make any sense neither from a value, nor the performance perspective.

The OP has a Phenom II X6 OCed to 4.1ghz. Doesn't look like the OP is concerned about saving another 40W of power.

only thing is will i need overclock hardware to set the clock that high?
i am not very formiler with the overclocking process of a gpu other then using software that comes with the cards

All you'll need is to download MSI Afterburner. Then move the GPU slider to 1100mhz, save the setting to Profile 1. Press the buttom at the bottom left of MSI Afterburner to "Apply overclocking at system start-up" and you are done with that application. The next step is to run a bunch of game benchmarks, Unigine Heaven 3.0 loops or MSI Kombuster runs to test the card for stability/artifacts.

i herd u need waterblocks and coolers and all this other stuff witch costs more monny.lol and with the new tech in graphics for games that is allwayz coming out in the future.

Both the MSI TwinFrozr III and Vapor-X cards have sufficient coolers to maintain 1.1-1.2ghz overclocks. The only thing is how quiet you want the card to stay. The Vapor-X will be quieter but of course it costs £110 more.

Temperature wise the MSI TwinFrozr HD7950 runs very cool (64-65*C), leaving plenty of room for overclocking. The Sapphire Dual-X/Vapor-X cooler is even better. It won't even break a sweat on a 1.15ghz HD7970.

Next year NV will launch GTX700 series and AMD will update to HD8000 series. You can't really keep up with GPU progress by future proofing. This is why I think it's a smart play to get the £270 MSI TF3 7950 and overclock it and put aside £100-110 towards your next GPU upgrade in 2013-2014. But if you want to spend nearly £400, then the Vapor-X looks good, especially if you play Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Crysis 1/Warhead, Anno 2070, Bullet Storm, Serious Sam 3, Dirt Showdown, Sniper Elite V2, Alan Wake or like to use higher AA settings in games. In those games it will beat a GTX680 no problem.

 

[toyota]

lol, his cpu uses more power than my entire pc did with a gtx670.

 

[RussianSensation]

lol, his cpu uses more power than my entire pc did with a gtx670.

Good thing he has a 1000W PSU.

I am telling you, it's always GPU power consumption being compared but it's really not that much of difference in the context of the overall system power consumption. The real difference is among overclocked CPUs but oddly enough people don't want to bring that up. Even Core i5/i7 series become inefficient with overclocking + overvoltage, and let's not even get started on old generation Core i7 920s and Bulldozers. You remember this graph, right?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/10/12/amd-fx-8150-review/10

They are using Prime95 though, but still paints a picture of how inefficient CPUs become once overvolted + overclocked.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

n/m

 

[domjam]

yes my cpu is not so great.i did custom build this thing quite some time ago but it still gets the job done.it was either upgrading that and switching to intel to get a new motherbord or a new gpu.i choose the gpu insted.and im going to go with the Vapor-X monny is not a problem since i will make half of it back with my old card and other computer hardware i still need to sell. i just wanted to make sure i would not be wasting monny on a gpu that would not perform properly on my rig. ie not using the 6gb on the toxic card. thanks alot guys

 

[RussianSensation]

Ya, it's going to be fine once you crank AA/AF in modern games. Let us know if you end up overclocking, what results you get at stock voltage and at 1.2-1.25V. Also, if you can take some pictures of the card and let us know how quiet it is .

 

[T101]

All I can say is that I have only once or twice seen a game use more than 2 GB video ram at 1080 resolution. So 6GB ram is overkill. Though it does not hurt either. Some games wont start with more than 2-3GB video ram. Of the hand; Operation Flashpoint - Dragon Rising comes to mind.

IMHO going with 670 or 7950 (basically nvidia vs amd) is mostly personal preference these days. Both are more than sufficient for the games of today.

 

[iiiankiii]

At 1080p, the 7970 is overkill. Most games right now just don't stress modern GPUs enough. A 7950 or 670 is a much more sensible choice. It performs very well at 1080p without breaking the bank. If you do decide to get a 7970, stay away from the reference design cooler. It is loud.

 

[toyota]

At 1080p, the 7970 is overkill. Most games right now just don't stress modern GPUs enough. A 7950 or 670 is a much more sensible choice. It performs very well at 1080p without breaking the bank. If you do decide to get a 7970, stay away from the reference design cooler. It is loud.

people buy a 7970 to try and play ALL their games on highest settings possible. and at 1080, the 7970 is far from overkill if wanting to do that.

 

[Masahiro]

I did some quick searching for a review that compared the 670 680 and 7970 in gaming to see how different they were and this is what I found:

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/05/14/geforce_680_670_vs_radeon_7970_7950_gaming_perf/2

Long story short here is what they said in the end:

"If you are not one to overclock, it is clear the GTX 670 is the better value even when compared to AMD's $449 HD 7970. The $399 GTX 670 can deliver a similar experience for less money. When compare the price compatible GeForce GTX 670 to the Radeon HD 7950, the value delta is tremendous; it is simply an embarrassing scenario for the Radeon HD 7950. The GeForce GTX 670 clearly offers much better gaming performance at the same price. At the current prices the Radeon HD 7950 cannot compete in the market."

"It is also worth again noting that AMD has been having trouble this generation keeping up with driver issues and CrossFireX support. For the first four months of the Radeon HD 7970 there wasn't even an "official" driver. NVIDIA on the other hand has been quick to support new hardware with unified drivers at launch of GTX 680. Even with the launch of GTX 690 that driver already supported its next release the GTX 670 so we were able to use publically available drivers from NVIDIA's website for the GTX 670. We've also seen [here] [here] [here] how NVIDIA's SLI is smoother than AMD's CrossFireX, and in every case we've tested so far this generation we prefer SLI over CFX for the best experience. And if you have not been exposed to NVIDIA’s Adaptive VSync Technology, you should give this feature a few moments of your time.

The GeForce GTX 680 represents a tremendous piece of technology that any gamer should love to have in his rig. The GeForce GTX 670 represents what is easily the best value in enthusiast PC gaming GPUs. Pick your poison."

Yes I'm an Nvidia fanboy lol, but this is the general consensus (from what I remember at least). Long story short, I'd take the 670 and save some money, it meets or beats the 7970 @ stock, and with an overclock (according to the site's benchmarks) it lags behind by only a max of 6 fps (save for Deus EX).

 

[RussianSensation]

Yes I'm an Nvidia fanboy lol, but this is the general consensus (from what I remember at least). Long story short, I'd take the 670 and save some money, it meets or beats the 7970 @ stock, and with an overclock (according to the site's benchmarks) it lags behind by only a max of 6 fps (save for Deus EX).

That's key right there. That review you linked is from mid-May and mostly outdated, both in terms of current pricing structure of the 7950 and performance increases HD7900 series got after June 22nd with Cats 12.7Beta. With price drops, HD7950 went down to become way cheaper than the 670 and driver increases have put HD7970 GE past most GTX680s.

Also, the prices in the UK are different (OP's country):

MSI TwinFrozr HD7950 = £270
MSI GeForce GTX 670 Power Edition OC NVIDIA Graphics Card - £311
Asus 2GB GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II NVIDIA Graphics Card - £340

I already showed that this card can hit 1.1ghz and match a GTX680. Tremendous value in the 7950 TF3.

On the high-end, NV pricing in the UK is even worse:

ScanFX Radeon HD 7970 X-Edition AMD/ATI Graphic Card (1050mhz GE Edition) - £324
Gigabyte 2GB GeForce GTX 680 3X OC Windforce 3X - £408
Asus 2GB GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II - £478

HD7970 GE costs almost the same in the UK as after market 670s and NV charges ridiculous amounts for GTX680. Overclock the 7970 to 1.15+ghz and it will make those 680 £400+ look very overpriced.