why not OC'd 7950 instead of 670?

[Dark Shroud]

You sure?

Just because it can be turned on doesn't mean it works well if at all. If you don't believe me check the benches where a GTX 580 crushes the GTX 600 cards.

 

[chimaxi83]

Oh no, I know its a weak ass compute card lol. I just thought you meant it doesn't support it, which is what you said

 

[Dark Shroud]

Oh no, I know its a weak ass compute card lol. I just thought you meant it doesn't support it, which is what you said

Yeah I probably should have been a bit more clear on that. Nvidia is smart here, yes you can enable the feature the card supports. But it won't do much of anything beyond video acceleration because this card is built for gaming.

 

[RussianSensation]

Just because it can be turned on doesn't mean it works well if at all. If you don't believe me check the benches where a GTX 580 crushes the GTX 600 cards.

Which ones?

In the consumer space, one of the key computation programs that NV users use is Folding @ Home.

GTX670/680 > GTX580

What about Accelerated Video decoding for say smartphone or tablet? Again GTX600 mops the floor with HD7900 / GTX580 series.

In programs where double precision compute performance is necessary, GTX580 series was already weak compared to HD5800/6900 series.

So really stating that GTX670/680 is weak at 'compute' sounds like a comment from people who don't use compute in the first place. Those who do have long abandoned NV during HD4800/5800/6900 generations. AMD has been destroying NV in double precision performance for 6 years. Programs that require fast double precision performance are weak on ALL Nvidia consumer cards, not just Kepler. This has been the case since 2006.

 

[Jhatfie]

Well here is the thing. OC's can not be promised so if you want guaranteed performance get a 670 at the $400 price point. 7950's are way, way underclocked though and 45-50% increase in core clock is not uncommon at all with a small voltage bump IF you are willing to do so. Also, clock for clock a 7950 is only 3-5% slower than a 7970. With solid overclocking it can come close to a OC'd 670, but it will likely not be quite as fast. If the price is the same, 670 is a no brainer, but a 7950 is still a great card if you can find one for a good price.

 

[chimaxi83]

What about Accelerated Video decoding for say smartphone or tablet? Again GTX600 mops the floor with HD7900 / GTX580 series.

Still piss slow against Sandy/Ivy and Quick Sync, but it's definitely an improvement, especially in image quality over what 580's were putting out using CUDA. I think 680 uses a new path now though, not sure.

Yea, it's called NVENC, better performance and quality than using the CUDA path. I've used it with my 680 and the quality is not bad at all, but I haven't owned a 580 to compare against.

 

[blckgrffn]

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1572933&mpage=1

Meh. At least from and efficiency standpoint its a big improvement, but they aren't doing any more work from a PPD standpoint. It's all about getting optimized WU's out into the wild. I don't understand why AMD doesn't help F@H create some GCN optimized WU's as well. Heck, there are barely OpenCL ones for AMD.

It's telling that the nvidia line card still lists GK104 compute performance as N/A.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphics_cards_buy_now.html

If they can really get Fermi levels of compute performance with little K (the "good stuff" removed compute wise and 1/2 the power) big K should be beastly.

It likely pays to wait on Kepler from a compute standpoint... it's like getting new instructions on a CPU. The first gen CPUs are usually EOL by the time the instructions are really being exploited.

I am waiting for the Kepler version of the GTX 460/560 w/regards to compute. I can't justify spending more that ~$150 for a compute designated card. Even that's pushing it for me.

Ha, at least the N/A's make it easy to spot the Kepler cards in the line up...

 

[Zebo]

A lot of 7950s hit 1250 Mhz on air at overclock.net which will destroy whatever you can get a GTX 670 to. Also, Water doesnt really help at all with 6xx but helps a lot when you can ramp voltages on Tahiti so once you approach 1300Mhz even OCed 680s can't hang.

I'd get a 7950 if I could like amd drivers and control panel.