OK so I am going to be the peace maker.
Right now it seems to be ups and downs from AMD. One minute the 680 beats it in certain games, the next AMD release a new driver and the 7970 pulls ahead. I did take the time to look at those BF3 scores, BTW.
As some people have said, let's look at the cold hard facts.
The 680 is quieter. I won't say it's cooler because in some reviews I've seen it actually get hotter than the 7970. However, all reviews say it is quieter.
The 680 uses less power. Not enough to save you a significant amount of money, but it does use less power.
The 680 as of right now has better drivers. Personally I think the entire thing is so close that it comes down to drivers, and the 680 has the better ones. I've not used them, but I have used the AMD ones and they suck donkey balls.
The 680 can do clever tricks to improve framerates which is cool, it will help with games that it isn't man enough for, especially in surround.
Those are the good points. Now the bad.
It's a complete con. If you have the electronics experience I do then you can clearly understand it is a cheap card to make. It has 1/3 less the inductors that the 7970 has. Now I don't care what way you try and shake that, it's just fact.
You can come at me and say (and you would be sort of right) that the GPU core simply does not need the power stages that the 7970 core does. That is somewhat right. However, cheaper to make should = cheaper to sell. And as of right now the 680 costs more than the 7970.
The 680 has no voltage control, meaning overclocks are severely limited. However, this is quietened by the "out of the box" performance. However, it is a down side IMO.
The 680 will (sooner rather than later) become crippled by its vram. If it did not run surround? I would be far less worried about its future potential to do so. However as we know all it takes is one game and a card can be rendered useless.
So basically if you are paying for a 680 then the only thing it has going for it is the gaming performance which is very good. Now let's move onto the 7970.
The 7970 is a far more expensive card to make. The cooler is bigger (the metal part) and it has far more power components aboard than the 680. The reason for this is simple. It was designed as a high end card and not rebadged as one. It is a true high end card.
Eyefinity from my own experiences with Surround is better. Surround can be very hit and miss, and really relies on drivers. I found that I needed different drivers for each of the games I wanted to play. However, the 680 is a single card, so it may be better.
The 7970 has 3gb of vram because it was the more expensive card to make. If you look away from gaming performance the 7970 dominates the 680 in absolutely every way. Specs for example on paper are far higher and richer than the 680.
7970 when overclocked to 1125 which every card I have seen will do is either just behind the 680 or just in front.
7970 is a few quid cheaper. I've seen them for £386 or so.
Now the bad.
Drivers. They suck balls. They are awful IMO. So awful that a mate of mine bought a 7950 and sent it back the next day. He spent all night wrestling with them and just wasn't happy with it at all.
The card underperforms. IE - with a spec list as long as your arm this card should be battering the 680. On paper the 7970 absolutely obliterates it. Yet, this is not the case. 7970 is apparently AMD's Fermi. They have bolted on loads of new stuff and features yet can't quite refine it into performance at a user level.
Each driver AMD have released has improved one thing, then broken another. Until they get their act together we can't say for sure which card is the faster card. I have no doubt that the 7970 will continue to improve. The problem is AMD rushed it to market to get some sales before Nvidia knew what was happening. And this shows in a big way when it comes to the drivers. They are quite frankly bloody rotten.
So, hopefully there are both sides to the story there, without just posting a one line post to declare one the better. If that is how you feel then you are rather narrow minded, because as always it is a lot more complicated than that.
