That price difference is there not for the performance differences but for everything else. Those other things matter as well they just aren't measurable in the same way. In all honesty I think the reviewers are doing every a grave disservice at the moment by not pointing out the deluge of problems with the 7000 series cards.
Are you seriously suggesting that GTX570 1.28GB is the better buy because of NV's "better" drivers? I have an HD7970 and have no problems at all. I can't comment on how 7970 performed with earlier drivers from January to April but 12.7 Beta is rock solid for me. Also, if you read places such as Computerbase, Xbitlabs, Tom's Hardware, they tend to be extremely critical when either brand tries to cheat by downgrading texture quality, etc. They have investigated these things many times before any time AMD tried to do something like that. Those websites wouldn't hesitate for one second to point out major problems such as lack of smoothness if they are there because they have done so in the past.
I would take SLI over CF due to documented smoothness by many users/reviews, but to suggest HD7000 series is basically non-workable due to constant driver issues and lack of smoothness in gaming is an exaggeration imo.
Having owned 7970's and now 680's I can say with a great deal of certainty that NVidia has a vastly superior product, its night and day better. Its more expensive but it also works as its meant to.
Night and day? :hmm: That's like saying you got a Lamborghini but it was only as fast as a Honda Civic? That's hard to believe considering in actual testing videos with framerates, a
stock HD7970 smashes a GTX580 (and same would be the case with HD7950 880mhz vs. a GTX570). Maybe you are comparing smoothness/micro-stutter of GTX680 SLI vs. HD7970 CF? That's not applicable to single-GPU cards.
Is
this video fake then?
The competition looks close in the GPU arena but it really isn't when you looking for smooth delivery of frames (which we should all be looking for in preference to FPS at any cost). We just need to work out how to measure it so that we are measuring the right things.
Some reviews already do that. They include time vs. FPS graphs (HardOCP, Computerbase, PCPerspective).
When looking at frame-time graphs, HD7970 GE has a slightly smoother gameplay overall than the GTX680, which is in-line with most reviews.
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/7/
I've owned many NV and AMD GPUs. There is no inherent lack of smoothness by AMD cards that's somehow disconnected from what's reported by Fraps. There are games where NV does really well such as World of Planes, Secret World or TrackMania 2, but there are plenty of games where the 7970 beats NV's 680. Do you think people would buy AMD cards if they showed 60 fps but felt more like 30-40 fps?
Regarding OP's decision a $310 HD7950 at 1.1ghz would mop the floor with a GTX570.
Also, are you suggesting reviews such as this one "fabricated" or paid for?
"The performance results are unquestionably impressive. In 7 out of 11 tests, The Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition outperformed the KFA2 GTX680 Limited OC Edition." ~ KitGuru
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