Radeon HD 7950 vs. GeForce GTX 780

[RussianSensation]

Thanks for the benches F2F. It's always a pleasure seeing your clear comparisons and much appreciate the max OC vs. OC benches. @ 1300mhz the 7950 is a spectacular performer for the price but this is a very rare overclock for 24/7 stable gaming.

Looking forward to your next comparison once you upgrade from the 780. Fingers crossed that your next card ends up another golden sample like the 7590 you had.

 

[Face2Face]

Thanks for the benches F2F. It's always a pleasure seeing your clear comparisons and much appreciate the max OC vs. OC benches. @ 1300mhz the 7950 is a spectacular performer for the price but this is a very rare overclock for 24/7 stable gaming.

Looking forward to your next comparison once you upgrade from the 780. Fingers crossed that your next card ends up another golden sample like the 7590 you had.

Thanks RS. Probaly going to wait until 20nm gets here until I upgrade again. I also would like to see a clock for clock comparison - 290 vs. GTX 780.... :hmm:

If anyone is interested in seeing what the performance benefit clocking up to 1300Mhz + on a GTX 780, this is a great review -
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013..._780_lightning_video_card_review#.UpNnvMTiiAk

 

[Zanovar]

Great stuff Face2Face,i really like this..All of the clock speeds that are used in these benchmarks do not fluctuate or throttle:thumbsup:.wish more reviewers would do this.

 

[Jacky60]

I'm really impressed by how well the 7950 keeps up. Obviously it's slower but not by a huge amount and considering its three years old is remarkable. I really need a new card-hurry up with those aftermarket 290 coolers ffs!

 

[Fastx]

I'm really impressed by how well the 7950 keeps up. Obviously it's slower but not by a huge amount and considering its three years old is remarkable.

+1
(more like two years old but still agree w/performance)

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Thank you F2F. Am I reading it wrong or clock for clock the 7950 closes the gap the further each card is OCd? How is that possible?

 

[Elfear]

Just noticed this thread for the first time. Thanks for the review!

I recently made a very similar switch and I wish I wouldn't have sold the 7970's so quickly. I wanted to run some benchmarks with both at max clocks but I couldn't get any of my games to work for some reason and didn't have the time to reload them all.

 

[24601]

Just noticed this thread for the first time. Thanks for the review!

I recently made a very similar switch and I wish I wouldn't have sold the 7970's so quickly. I wanted to run some benchmarks with both at max clocks but I couldn't get any of my games to work for some reason and didn't have the time to reload them all.

Better drivers = higher actual load on the cards.

This can tease out supposedly "game-stable" clocks into crashing/artifacting.

That's why it's far more sane to just find the 24/7 stable in any situation clocks.

You do that by running the fan at 100%, running the powertune to as high as physically possible (requiring flashing bios), and trying your hardest to remove any CPU bottlenecks.

That's how you find truly 24/7 stable clocks.

 

[KingFatty]

Better drivers = higher actual load on the cards.

I've never heard of this, but it doesn't seem like it would apply when the better driver is simply fixing a bug or something - what do you mean?

 

[Insomniator]

My 7950 I just purchased was 180AR, and I sold a 2+ year old 560ti to recoup more than half of that.

Glad to see it so competitive still, but I wonder how much of it is just do to minimal graphics improvements over the years. Hope new engines come out that push everything harder.

 

[Elfear]

Better drivers = higher actual load on the cards.

This can tease out supposedly "game-stable" clocks into crashing/artifacting.

That's why it's far more sane to just find the 24/7 stable in any situation clocks.

You do that by running the fan at 100%, running the powertune to as high as physically possible (requiring flashing bios), and trying your hardest to remove any CPU bottlenecks.

That's how you find truly 24/7 stable clocks.

I didn't explain very well but the cause of my games not working was not the overclock on the video cards but rather some of the old game files created under Win 7 on a different partition not working correctly with Win 8.1.

I agree with you though, stable overclocks make for a much nicer gaming experience. For benching though I only care if it makes it through the test. :biggrin:

 

[MrK6]

Just read this and wanted to say thanks to Face2Face, very informative and great presentation! I enjoy seeing "real world" results and it appreciate the time it takes to put something like this together.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I'm really impressed by how well the 7950 keeps up. Obviously it's slower but not by a huge amount and considering its three years old is remarkable. I really need a new card-hurry up with those aftermarket 290 coolers ffs!

It's highly unlikely AM 290s will be much if any faster than the 780 here.

1.3GHz 7950 with noticeably more bandwidth than what most R290s will achieve isn't a slouch, but it is a scorcher.