That's his reality. Ask what he sold them used for. I think in justifying his 6950 purchase, he flipped them for more than he paid ! They must have been special ! /sarcasm.
They were great for gaming but then I got into distributing computing projects that benefited greatly from double precision compute performance. At that point a
single 6950 beat all 3 470s @ 750mhz. So I sold all 470s for minimal loss after using them for more than 1 year. They were good for gaming. Actually, I would even say this week's launch of the GTX660 would hardly be an upgrade from a single GTX470 @ 750mhz in terms of performance. That was more than
2 years ago.
The main point is you don't have to buy hot and loud cards. In the case of the 7950 and 7970, it's 100% pointless to discuss reference designed cards with 1.25V bios simply because:
1) No overclocker on air who wants to seriously overclock and have a quiet system will buy such cards;
2) Reference cooled HD7970 GE does
not exist in retail. This card was a review sample only;
3) There are plenty of after-market binned 7950/7970 cards that come undervolted. Since this is an enthusiast forum where many of us share this type of information, if you happen to buy 1 out of 19 7950 cards that's an utter fail, you haven't been reading this forum. There is plenty of information around here which guides you exactly on what the best overclocking cards are from both NV and AMD!
4) Given that you have overclocked 460s in SLI, your arguments for ignoring overclocking and focusing on power consumption, while ignoring that a $320 Gigabyte Windforce 3x 7950 is uber quiet and can reach GTX680 performance under 190W of power while saving a gamer $180 are mind-blowing!
I guess price/performance, overclocking and after-market cards are out the window? You guys just cherry-pick what you want to focus on, while enthusiasts on this forum happily overclock their Core i5 2500k/i5 3570k/i7 2600k/2700k on quiet after-market coolers such as Noctua NH-D14, Corsair H100, Thermalright Silver Arrow, HR-02, Prolimatech Megahalems, etc.
The arguments coming forth now are nothing short of ignorant for an enthusiast forum. It's akin to comparing the heat and noise levels of a 4.4ghz Core i5 2500K on a stock Intel cooler. If you are doing that sort of thing, you only have yourself to blame for the excess temperatures and noise levels.
This applies to videocards as well. Pick the right card and it will do what you ask of it at very quiet noise levels and great overclocks.
Insisting on using reference blower cards with special BIOS as representative of the entire series of cards enthuasists can actually buy is pure ignorance in light of contradictory facts, especially since there is no such card for sale as HD7970 GE reference blower. :hmm:
You should put up the temperatures of your overclocked GTX460 @ 875mhz. Here is my "UBER HOT and LOUD" HD7970 @ 1150mhz on 1.074V average, with peak 1.174V @ 99% GPU load. It must be made up because AMD says the only way to get HD7970 to reach 1050mhz is by using a reference card and 1.25V BIOS.
As you can see, that's at 98-100% GPU load for hours at a time. That's way more GPU intensive than any videogame. In videogames it's only about 62-64*C.
The power draw is < 210W on this overclock. Plenty of enthusiasts here have way better binned 7970s than mine. Mine is just average. Some people on our forum reach 1265-1300mhz on their 7970s and they still run cool, not at 105*C at 100% fan speed.
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