so why buy the 6xx series ? (august '12)

[The Alias]

why buy nvidia's 6xx series, if for each of their skus amd has a card that outperforms it ?

to elaborate : the 680 is outperformed by the 7970ghz edition and the 680 never retails under $500, while the ghz edition retails for around $470 on newegg .(with a visiontek one at $430)

The 670 is outperformed by the 7970 , while the 670 ref is priced at $400 and a non ref 7970 is at $420 (and who doesn't like 420 ? lol)

Finally the 660ti is out performed by the 7950, yet a cooler, quieter non ref 7950 only costs $20 more at $320

the gt 640 performs at the 6670s level and is demolished by the 77xx series

then the rest of the 7xxx series are left to dominate as the 7870 offers 580 performance at a $260ish price point , the 7850 offers 570 performance at a $220 price point and that's before oc'ing !

heat is a non-issue as the prices I listed for amds cards were ALL non ref with excellent coolers . Same thing goes for noise .

Software : Driver issues have been experienced on both sides . Although I've seen more on the amd side . Txaa and adaptive vsync are pretty cool, although avsync has caused problems and txaa has only been implemented in one game (adaptive vsync can be replicated by downloading a frame rate limiter though) .

hardware : The extra bandwidth from the 7xxx series future-proofs your system in case of hard times which IMO means a bunch more than all that was said above, because if I decide to allocate my money elsewhere and don't have the money to upgrade my video card my gaming experience won't suffer as much for it and that provides a very deep sense of security and freedom with my cash .

As for power, let's break this down . :

7970ghz-680= 55w
7970-670= 50w
7950-660ti= 5w

when at full stress according to guru3d and at long idle :

7970ghz-680= -10w
7970-670= -7w
7950-660ti= -8w
according to anandtech

Now let's say you game 4 hours a day, leaving 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work and 4 hours for family time (who use another computer when they are home and need one) . So the equation I'm going to use is

4 x the full stress difference of a matchup + 20 x the long idle difference of a matchup then I'll convert that into cost using a kwh per dollar rate of $0.09 (my towns rate)

Now with that said, let's get some results :

7970ghz - 680 = 4*(55w) + 20*(-10w) = 220w - 200w = 20w = $.0018
7970 - 670 = 4*(50w) + 20*(-7w) = 200w - 140w = 60w = $.0054
7950 - 660ti = 4*(5w) + 20(-8w) = 20w - 160w = -140w = $-.0122

and this is over the course of a day . So it's really not even worth arguing over since the difference you pay over a month is not even a dollar ! Let alone something substantial .

So with all that said why would you buy nvidias 6xx series ?

 

[Phynaz]

I wanted a Cuda card. But not at that price.

 

[96Firebird]

Keep fighting the good fight.

 

[moonbogg]

6xx series overclocks as well. The aMd price drops are only a recent thing and now the playing field is more even. People bought the 6xx series because it was faster and cheaper. It is still faster with more and better features. 3D vision is cool. aMd is not cool.
I like the color green more than red. I am a fanboy. The word "Geforce" is awesome. Nvidia has a cool website. 6xx series is better at BF3.

 

[exar333]

Brand-new poster here at AT with a thread like this? Hmm. I probably don't need to say what others are already thinking.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Post with your main.

 

[hokies83]

Nvidia 600 series is waiting for performance enhancing Drivers like the Amd cards have been getting..

 

[The Alias]

6xx series overclocks as well. The aMd price drops are only a recent thing and now the playing field is more even.
6xx series is better at BF3 . 3D vision is cool.

true but amd's oc have been more effective per clock though

It is still faster with more and better features

amd is faster in their respective price brackets
.

Truth quotes lol

 

[Rvenger]

It is still faster with more and better features. 3D vision is cool. aMd is not cool.
I like the color green more than red. I am a fanboy.

What you said is not true. The 7970 GE is a faster card out of the box.

The regular 7970 is slower than a 680. Price cuts have been happening since March with AMD, not just recently

 

[boxleitnerb]

Some people like the features better. fps and watt are important, but they are not everything.

 

[SickBeast]

n/m

 

[RussianSensation]

3D vision is cool. aMd is not cool.
I like the color green more than red. I am a fanboy. The word "Geforce" is awesome. Nvidia has a cool website.

At least 1 honest NV fanboy. :thumbsup: Respect.

With HD7850 dropping to $190ish, HD7870 at $230 with lifetime warranty, a great HD7950 for $320, and HD7970 GE for $430, it would have to come down to specific NV features (PhysX, TXAA, CUDA, Folding @Home), power consumption and what games a person plays. Otherwise, AMD has locked down price/performance and top single-GPU performance this generation. On average, AMD cards deliver similar performance at stock speeds for way less $ and have more overclocking headroom as well.

NV is charging $70 more for a GTX660Ti for just 9-10% more performance over the 7870, and doesn't have any of the OCing headroom or performance reserve for MSAA/mods that 7950 does. Not great value now already just days after launch.

With 1000mhz HD7970s dropping to $420, even GTX670 is becoming a much tougher sell nowadays. On the low end, HD7750/7770 have no competition at all without getting old 40nm chips that use way more power and a $145 HD6870 provides great budget gaming performance for less $ than a GTX560Ti.

 

[Qbah]

Green has two 'e'
Red has one 'e'
Hence nVidia is better

That's why S3, 3Dfx and Matrox are out of the GPU game. Their names have no 'e'.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Green has two 'e'
Red has one 'e'
Hence nVidia is better

That's why S3, 3Dfx and Matrox are out of the GPU game. Their names have no 'e'.

Seems legit.

 

[chimaxi83]

Nvidia is just one word :thumbsdown:
Advanced Micro Devices is three :thumbsup:

Obviously better. :sneaky:

 

[AnandThenMan]

You can't beat the G-Force.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Cause Nvidia is usually quicker for fixes in drivers for new games, generally they perform with lower heat and power usage vs AMD parts this time, SLI > X-Fire from all my research on the matter.

I don't care about your numbers. Lower is lower. To some people with SFF systems they might have a lesser PSU but still want to do a little overclock. Those wattage numbers add up.

The extra bandwidth from the 7xxx series future-proofs your system in case of hard times which IMO means a bunch more than all that was said above, because if I decide to allocate my money elsewhere and don't have the money to upgrade my video card my gaming experience won't suffer as much for it and that provides a very deep sense of security and freedom with my cash .

No such thing. Anything unplayable on a GTX 670 in the future will be equally unplayable on an AMD card provided the developer didn't intentionally hinder performance on one brand.

 

[PCboy]

SLI > X-Fire from all my research on the matter.

Close but not quite, after 2 cards, Crossfire-X scaling is slightly better.

 

[The Alias]

No such thing. Anything unplayable on a GTX 670 in the future will be equally unplayable on an AMD card provided the developer didn't intentionally hinder performance on one brand.

the same would have been said last gen with the amounts of vram but look at us now anything under 2gb seems anemic

 

[Ferzerp]

Close but not quite, after 2 cards, Crossfire-X scaling is slightly better.

Except I don't think I've seen a single review that has compared this gen SLI to CFX that didn't state that even when the AMD set up had a higher measured fps, the micro-stutter issues with CFX made the SLI one seem more smooth.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Close but not quite, after 2 cards, Crossfire-X scaling is slightly better.

First of all, that may only include popular titles. Once you steer a bit away from the usually benchmarked ones, it gets very dark for CF-X.
Second of all, fps is only 50% of the deal with CF/SLI. How evenly the frames are displayed is another matter altogether.

 

[The Alias]

ok chalk one up to nvidia for sli !

 

[cmdrdredd]

Close but not quite, after 2 cards, Crossfire-X scaling is slightly better.

so? scaling in 2 games doesn't mean anything when your library of 10 other titles doesn't work. Plus microstutter makes a big difference. Look at some of the reviews that show minimum fps too. A lot of the time the AMD cards have higher averages and max but the minumums are much lower than they should be. The experience during gameplay has to be affected by that.

the same would have been said last gen with the amounts of vram but look at us now anything under 2gb seems anemic

Most games overstate the amount of memory in use and you specifically said bandwidth. I know for a fact that memory bandwidth won't make the difference between unplayable and smooth fps with a new title that stresses the GPU like say the original crysis did a few years back.

 

[cmdrdredd]

dp

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

If I didn't enjoy 3d vision and I wanted a card I'd buy AMD this round. Nvidia doesn't even allow voltage control and some cards are showing signs of degradation already. Oddly I don't even want to upgrade my card this generation.