[TechSpot] Comparison of current video cards

[Termie]

Link: http://www.techspot.com/review/603-best-graphics-cards/

This will help answer a lot of questions people have about which card to get for their holiday upgrade. Lots of information here, and the good news is that this is all with the latest beta drivers from both Nvidia and AMD.

Here are the summary recommendations:

$100 - $150
GeForce GTX 650 Ti

$150 - $200
Radeon HD 7850

$200 - $250
GeForce GTX 660

$250 - $300
GeForce GTX 660 Ti

$300 - $400
Radeon HD 7950 Boost

$400 and up
Radeon HD 7970

Happy reading!

 

[Silverforce11]

Great review, a lot of different games. Its weird to see gtx560 ti, which was considered fairly efficient (mid-range), consuming so much power compared to this gen's cards.

AMD's latest driver really makes a huge difference, before the 79xx would be considered power hogs since it was slower than gk104 whilst using more power, now its clearly faster and if the conclusion was that kepler is a DP neutered efficient gaming GPU... then the obvious conclusion is GCN is a very efficient GPU, period.

Edit: Stock 7850s are now terrible perf/$ when compared to 7870 and 660. Its time AIBs release a 7850 Ghz ed to replace stock 7850 models, since its 820-850 core clocks on most cards are crazy low. OC 7950 still reign king with top performance for crazy prices. Finally.. why are 77xx so overpriced?

 

[Granseth]

Great review, a lot of different games. Its weird to see gtx560 ti, which was considered fairly efficient (mid-range), consuming so much power compared to this gen's cards.

(...)

Agreed, I went from a 560Ti to a 7970 and though I was using way more power today since 560Ti has been thought of as a fairly efficient card, and 7970 has been frown upon.

Not that it was a deciding factor, and my power usage is probably much worse since I bought the 7970 at release, and has it running at 1200/1500. But still nice to have it put into context.

 

[l2ez4m]

So basically NV got a lead only in Dragon Age 2, Hard Reset. Pfff, who plays them anyways
Ups srry and in Max Payne 3, this one is bit better

 

[AtenRa]

Thx for the link,

For 1080p the HD7950 when OC is the king for price/performance, coming close or outperforming even the GTX680 in a lot of games.

 

[Jacky60]

If I'd bought a 680 I'd be really annoyed now, especially since in theUK the cheapest 680 still costs 20% more than the 7970. That's the power of marketing (and AMD's driver team finally getting their s**t together).

 

[skipsneeky2]

If I'd bought a 680 I'd be really annoyed now, especially since in theUK the cheapest 680 still costs 20% more than the 7970. That's the power of marketing (and AMD's driver team finally getting their s**t together).

Amen about the drivers,last year for my birthday back in April my gf got me a 6990,it was plagued with driver issues,performance issues and my gf could not stand how loud it was, then the icing on the cake was when i got a bsod and my pc refused to boot up even in safemood,returning it for a gtx580 got me back up and running.:awe:

Now i can praise the current beta 8 12.11 drivers,they are fantastic.:biggrin:

 

[ICDP]

If I'd bought a 680 I'd be really annoyed now, especially since in theUK the cheapest 680 still costs 20% more than the 7970. That's the power of marketing (and AMD's driver team finally getting their s**t together).

Yep, 20% more and 15% slower than a GE 7970.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

AMD's latest driver really makes a huge difference, before the 79xx would be considered power hogs since it was slower than gk104 whilst using more power, now its clearly faster and if the conclusion was that kepler is a DP neutered efficient gaming GPU... then the obvious conclusion is GCN is a very efficient GPU, period.

Tahiti has a 20% bigger die and 37% more bandwidth. It should be the faster card.

Now i can praise the current beta 8 12.11 drivers,they are fantastic.:biggrin:

It's interesting to note that a lot of the driver gains can be chalked up to the fact that writing a good shader compiler (the hardest part of the driver) for AMDs older VLIW architectures was much, much harder than it is for the simple SIMD/scalar architecture of the newest cards. AMD is fixing their driver issues not by having their driver team make better work, but by making their hardware easier to write drivers for.

And another interesting note is that in the same hardware generation, nV took the path to the other way and made their hardware a somewhat harder compile target. It's nowhere near as bad as VLIW was, ofc, but it's worse than Fermi, and although comparisons are harder, probably also worse than GCN. Nvidia is apparently very confident in it's compiler team now and is willing to let the carry more of the load.

 

[Elfear]

Their $250-300 bracket recommendation doesn't make a lot of sense. If the 7950 and 7950 Boost are both selling for $300, wouldn't the boost edition easily win out over the $280 660Ti?

 

[nforce4max]

I love how AMD is improving in its graphics department and lol @ the 560Ti hanging on

 

[Termie]

Their $250-300 bracket recommendation doesn't make a lot of sense. If the 7950 and 7950 Boost are both selling for $300, wouldn't the boost edition easily win out over the $280 660Ti?

My guess is that they are going only by pre-rebate prices. AMD is aggressively using rebates, Nvidia is less agressively using price cuts. That means that as of this moment, on Newegg, the cheapest 660Ti pre-rebate is $275: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...GTX%20660%20Ti

The cheapest 7950 pre-rebate is $300: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...on%20HD%207950

Thus, the best <$300 card is a pretty easy pick, the best card "around" $300 is harder, but the 7950 probably has the win there.

 

[sontin]

And another interesting note is that in the same hardware generation, nV took the path to the other way and made their hardware a somewhat harder compile target. It's nowhere near as bad as VLIW was, ofc, but it's worse than Fermi, and although comparisons are harder, probably also worse than GCN. Nvidia is apparently very confident in it's compiler team now and is willing to let the carry more of the load.

I don't see a problem with Kepler over Fermi. Comparing the GTX680 with the GTX560TI there is no problem with the compiler and it is not harder for the driver team.

 

[raghu78]

disagree on techspot's choice for the 200 - 250 price band. the GTX 660 has no chance against a HD 7870 at current prices. starting at 230 bucks the HD 7870 is the best card in the 200 - 250 price band.

 

[-Slacker-]

Tahiti has a 20% bigger die and 37% more bandwidth. It should be the faster card.

Tahiti doesn't have dynamic overclocking. Manually overclock a plain 7970 to 1200mhz and a gtx 680 to 1300mhz and see what happens then.

 

[MTDEW]

Tahiti doesn't have dynamic overclocking. Manually overclock a plain 7970 to 1200mhz and a gtx 680 to 1300mhz and see what happens then.

So exactly what does happen?
Have any links with benchmarks, so we can see what you're getting at?

 

[3DVagabond]

disagree on techspot's choice for the 200 - 250 price band. the GTX 660 has no chance against a HD 7870 at current prices. starting at 230 bucks the HD 7870 is the best card in the 200 - 250 price band.

Yeah. I agree with you there. Especially if you take into acct. the 660's bandwidth limitations.

For enthusiasts, this is a bit of a BS comparison. For mom and dad trying to figure out what to buy junior for Christmas though, it's a useful review.

 

[-Slacker-]

So exactly what does happen?
Have any links with benchmarks, so we can see what you're getting at?

I don't have benchmarks of the two cards at the settings I mentioned in the same review, if that's what you mean. Showing the cards at those settings in two or more separate benchmarks and two or more separate reviews would be meaningless, since results vary between sites, test setups, drivers etc.

But it stands to reason that a 7970 has significantly higher "ipc" when a stock 7970GE will beat a stock 680 by ~10% on average when the 680's dynamic boost can get past 1300mhz in some games.

 

[guskline]

Nice post Termie. Glad to see that AMD is doing so well in the graphics dept. Still like my GTX 680 and GTX 670s. Smooth and great game play. Hope to use a machine with either a 7950 or 7970 to get a feel for the performance.

 

[wand3r3r]

2560x1600 would be even more in favor of the 7970, but here's the percentages of the 680 vs. 7970.



1920x1200

AVP
7970 71.00
680 53.00
-0.34
Alan Wake
7970 72.00
680 64.00
-0.13
BF3
7970 83.00
680 74.00
-0.12
BL2 Physx low
7970 75.00
680 74.00
-0.01
COD BO2
7970 103.00
680 98.00
-0.05
Crysis 2
7970 48.00
680 46.00
-0.04
Dragon Age 2
7970 59.00
680 64.00
0.08
Deus Ex: HR
7970 109.00
680 105.00
-0.04
Dirt 3
7970 121.00
680 106.00
-0.14
Hard Reset
7970 84.00
680 95.00
0.12
Just Cause 2
7970 74.00
680 70.00
-0.06
Medal Of Honor Warfighter
7970 65.00
680 57.00
-0.14
Max Payne 3
7970 74.00
680 75.00
0.01
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
7970 105.00
680 91.00
-0.15
Sleeping dogs
7970 46.00
680 36.00
-0.28
The Witcher 2: Ass of kings
7970 88.00
680 78.00
-0.13


The 680 is faster in 2 games, 8% and the most being 12%. (1 game is 1% but close enough to be about even)

The 7970 is faster in 13 games, up to 34% faster, 6 faster then then fastest NV game (> 12%.)

 

[peonyu]

2560x1600 would be even more in favor of the 7970, but here's the percentages of the 680 vs. 7970.



1920x1200

AVP
7970 71.00
680 53.00
-0.34
Alan Wake
7970 72.00
680 64.00
-0.13
BF3
7970 83.00
680 74.00
-0.12
BL2 Physx low
7970 75.00
680 74.00
-0.01
COD BO2
7970 103.00
680 98.00
-0.05
Crysis 2
7970 48.00
680 46.00
-0.04
Dragon Age 2
7970 59.00
680 64.00
0.08
Deus Ex: HR
7970 109.00
680 105.00
-0.04
Dirt 3
7970 121.00
680 106.00
-0.14
Hard Reset
7970 84.00
680 95.00
0.12
Just Cause 2
7970 74.00
680 70.00
-0.06
Medal Of Honor Warfighter
7970 65.00
680 57.00
-0.14
Max Payne 3
7970 74.00
680 75.00
0.01
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
7970 105.00
680 91.00
-0.15
Sleeping dogs
7970 46.00
680 36.00
-0.28
The Witcher 2: Ass of kings
7970 88.00
680 78.00
-0.13


The 680 is faster in 2 games, 8% and the most being 12%. (1 game is 1% but close enough to be about even)

The 7970 is faster in 13 games, up to 34% faster, 6 faster then then fastest NV game (> 12%.)

Nice numbers, but at the same time its really AMD's loss to have released the 7970 with such poor drivers at release. Surely they lost a boatload of sells to the 680 because of that. Last summer it looked like the 680 was absolutely the better technology but now its the other way around, it only took AMD 8-10 months to figure out their own technology properly and have it perform the way it should have at release...There is definitely merit to having a on-the-ball driver team which nvidia has, great performing drivers [nvidia] vs unoptimized drivers [amd] at release pretty much decided this generation as far as sells go.

 

[Granseth]

Then again, it was an all new architecture (GNC) for AMD, and nVidia have something thats fairly similar to Fermi. As said in other threads before, there where great improvement in Fermi performance at first too.

 

[ICDP]

Nice numbers, but at the same time its really AMD's loss to have released the 7970 with such poor drivers at release. Surely they lost a boatload of sells to the 680 because of that. Last summer it looked like the 680 was absolutely the better technology but now its the other way around, it only took AMD 8-10 months to figure out their own technology properly and have it perform the way it should have at release...There is definitely merit to having a on-the-ball driver team which nvidia has, great performing drivers [nvidia] vs unoptimized drivers [amd] at release pretty much decided this generation as far as sells go.

Perception is not always reality. A lot of people on this and other forums have this strange perception that the GTX 680 has been much faster than the 7970 from march until 12.11 beta drivers arrived this month. This was not the case, and anyone who has used both cards since March will be able to tell you this.

I had a GTX 680 that could do 1300+ on the core stable. I also had a reference HD 7970 that can do 1170 with a small voltage increase. At these speeds the GTX 680 is slower than the 7970 by a large margin in quite a few of the more graphically demanding games. Well over 20% faster in some cases, and that was long before 12.11b became available.

The 7970 has been a very fast card since release right up to now. It has not been magically transformed into a GTX 680 beater overnight. It has been a better card for months, the 12.11b drivers just brought a lot more attention to this fact.

I decided to sell my reference GTX 680 and HD 7970 for a nice custom cooled card with quieter fans. I had no hesitation in deciding a custom cooled HD 7970 was a better choice than the much more expensive and slower custom cooled GTX 680s. This is from someone who has used both extensively since Jan/March.

 

[pmv]

Annoying (in way) that the cards trade blows so much, depending on which benchmark you look at. Different games, different resolutions, different leaders.

Add the fact that the price-bracket recommendations are all based on US pricing (and outside US the relative prices of cards tend to be different) and its all quite tiresome to work this stuff out!

Nice to see comparison with current drivers though. Googling old reviews is a bit useless if the drivers used are all out-of-date.

 

[Vicaar]

Yeah, that review leaves me more confused than before. There is a lot of hype for the AMD cards (in the mid-price brackets), yet that review does show nVidia in a pretty good light. And like you say, pmv, it comes down to actual pricing. It is hard to judge what the breakpoint is where a deal nudges a particular card from 'meh' to 'great bang/buck'.