• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

7970 vs 480 SLI

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

Soldato
Joined
23 Apr 2010
Posts
12,284
Location
West Sussex
Both cost right around the same, so what is the fastest?

I will update with more benchmarks as they are performed, but for right now I have put the 7970 against 480 SLI and the results are, how would you say? interesting.

I will note, you must at all times remember that scores put out here will differ to those in reviews and benchmarks running newer hardware. The results are perfectly applicable given that both card/s have been ran in the same machine.

The specs of my machine are -

I7 950 stock.
6gb ram.
128gb Corsair Force series SSD (Sata 2 rev)

First up 3Dmark Vantage, using the old version that adds CPU score for Physx.

7970 @ 1125mhz

7970Vantage1125mhz.jpg


GTX 480 SLI stock

vantage480sli.jpg


GTX 480 SLI @ 800mhz

Vantage480sli800mhz.jpg


3Dmark 11 7970 @ 1000mhz (before I figured out my stock volts were 1049)

79701000mhz3dmark11.jpg


EDIT. Found it ! 7970 @ 1125mhz

oc.jpg


GTX 480 SLI stock.

3dm11480sli.jpg


GTX 480 SLI @ 800mhz

3dm11480sli800mhz.jpg
 
Is the benchmark in any way a reflection of gaming prformance.
I'd like to see min and max and average framerates within several different titles, as varying resolutions and aa settings.
Additional investigations should be given to see that the sli doesnt fall over due to driver rstrictions in certain situations.

Interesting comparison however.
 
What volts do you use on your 1.049 card for your max OC and what's your max OC? lol. I ask because my 1.049 one is hotter and not as clockable as the 1174 one.
 
chipachap said:
What volts do you use on your 1.049 card for your max OC and what's your max OC? lol. I ask because my 1.049 one is hotter and not as clockable as the 1174 one.
Click to expand...

On the 7970 I had 1049mv was the "stock" voltage. Needless to say it would only do 1000mhz on that voltage, and it's not surprising given that 1049mv is very low.

The card did the 1125mhz on 1100mv, so at no point in time did I ever need to resort to using the "stock" 1174mv that some cards use. It also had an Asic quality of 86%, which according to how it works makes the card better for air clocking yet worse for water clocking.

Hikari Kisugi said:
Is the benchmark in any way a reflection of gaming prformance.
I'd like to see min and max and average framerates within several different titles, as varying resolutions and aa settings.
Additional investigations should be given to see that the sli doesnt fall over due to driver rstrictions in certain situations.

Interesting comparison however.
Click to expand...

I can say that the results are literally across the board. I'm using EVGA's brilliant SLI Enhancer, found here.

http://www.evga.com/articles/00463/Default.asp

And BF3 is as smooth as butter.

Crysis is notably faster in 3D, but then I would put that down to AMD's terrible drivers.

There shouldn't be driver restrictions in any of the tests I run. Not any more. It would only affect a brand new game that has just released.
 
Howdo Andy, ive got my 480 sli running 850 core 2000 memory atm taking 1.113 v each (saves on heating!) I have also got a 7970 which will do 1200 core with ease, i get similar results to you with 3dmark at similar settings with the cards but i notice games like battlefield 3 and gta iv have better minimum frames with the 7970 even though i see higher fps with the 480`s the minimums can hurt a lot, although should say in games im at 5960x1080. I find the 7970 very impressive even more so when overclocked the min fps it can keep is really nice for instance in bf3 it keeps a better min fps than my 480`s but can take higher settings in game to do it.

Have to say the 7970 seems to get better the longer its out hopefully that continues with driver updates, i like my 480 setup but having used both now the 7970 is better imo even the single one im using at eyefinity resolutions, planning to get the 480 setup sold and get another 7970 just for giggles. When i switch between the 2 setups the 7970 is the smoother experience its all downto the min fps you get i reckon.
 
I'd be interested to hear which is the easiest to live with. Benchmarks are okay if you're into that but I suspect most people are after the best tool for the job. Which would you prefer to use on a daily basis taking into account heat, noise, performance?

I'm actually surprised how close the 7970 is.
 
7970 for me just the heat coming out the top of my raven 2 with the 2 480`s can be insane, the 7970 can certainly handle what the 480 setup can imo although the 480 setup is faster overall i would say especially at resolutions under mine.
 
Last edited:
Troezar said:
I'd be interested to hear which is the easiest to live with. Benchmarks are okay if you're into that but I suspect most people are after the best tool for the job. Which would you prefer to use on a daily basis taking into account heat, noise, performance?

I'm actually surprised how close the 7970 is.
Click to expand...

I would rather glue my testicles to the heat pipes on my 480s than use AMD's drivers ever again.

I had three months of never ending issues and problems. With every driver release something was fixed and something else broken.

I guess that's what happens when you rush a release.

Heat and noise? 83c on GPU2 (the top one) running 30 mins of BF3 on ultra. Pretty much all of Operation Swordbreaker. With my 7970 @ 1125mhz it would hit 78c in the same circumstances.

The noise? is no worse, considering at 83c my fan profile caps at 75% and did the same with the 7970.

Now the heat? right now with the weather as it is and the window closed it's comfortable in here. However, I'm pretty certain that during the summer months I will probably need to remove a 480. That doesn't matter though, as one is perfectly capable of everything I use @ 1080p. I only really play Left 4 Dead 2 and Fallout 3/NV in 3D so one card would easily provide enough grunt for those two games.

As I maintain though, I would rather eat my own vomit than use AMD's drivers. They were bad enough when they called themselves ATI, but the drivers they have released for the 79xx cards are a bloody joke.
 
I am cnsidering getting a couple of antec 620`s and strapping them on my 480`s looks like a fun mod and seems to do wonders for them as ive got some evga aswell you can change the cooler within warranty.
 
Sounds like you've had a pretty bad experience. Stating the obvious but I presume the 7970 was on a fresh install? I'm interested in the varying results people get with drivers, some like you have real issues but others less so. There must be others factors at work too, software and/or hardware?
 
MartynB85 said:
Can you go into more detail about the issues you had with the AMD drivers.
Click to expand...

Yup.

Zerocore was utterly useless given that most of my problems were sleep related. On the first drivers I used if I let my monitor go to sleep it would awaken to coloured squares all over the screen.

That meant I would have to change my resolution and then allow it to change back again to make them go away.

On the same set of drivers three games I play (Alan Wake, Metro 2033 and Crysis 2) all suffered with screen roll. To get a better understanding of what it looked like cast your mind back to what a CRT television or monitor looks like on film when you play it back after recording it. White lines rolling down the screen.

Then I updated to the next set of drivers, which treated me to hard lock ups for a week before I rolled them back to the previous ones.

Then I put on the last ones (the current ones).

The game screen roll stopped, but I noticed my card ran hotter. I doubt it was coincidence, it was probably the drivers putting the card under more load in games to stop the screen rolling. I would strongly imagine it was like the old "Dual monitors one screen flickering" problem with ATI drivers.

The sleep problems however? still persisted. If I allowed my screen to go to sleep gone were the coloured blocks when I awoke it. This, however, was now replaced with the bottom half of my monitor becoming a black hole. The icons on that part of the desktop did nothing and if I dragged something down to the bottom of the screen it would simply disappear.

Nothing fixed it, so I had to completely disable the sleep function on my PC, making Zerocore and all of the other BS power saving features of the 7970 a moot point.

I put up with it until about a week ago, when I had simply had enough. Swapped the 7970 for a pair of 480s, problems be gone.
 
bhavv said:
What exactly made you choose two 480s though instead of a GTX 680?
Click to expand...

The fact that some one had two of them brand new in the box and offered me a straight swap for the 7970.

A week ago I put the 7970 up for sale. Just my luck then that AMD delivered me one last kick in the balls and dropped the price to less than the £370 I had mine listed for. That was nice of them.

So, to sell it I would have been lucky to clear £300, which would not have gotten me anywhere near to a 680. The main goal was to get the hell off of AMD's terrible drivers and back onto Nvidia ones, without losing any performance, without spending any money.

I won't be buying any more GPUs. I'm waiting for the console that does FSAA, then I'm done.

What made it even more appealing is the fact that I run two PCs. My main one and my fragbox which only has a 275 in. So, if I get bored with SLI I can simply pull one and chuck it in the fragbox :)
 
jeff6475 said:
so is the 680 better than the 7970 now then?
Click to expand...

No.

If you want to know my thoughts simply read over the forum. If you like you can take a look at the EVGA GTX 480 for £184.99 if you wanted my thoughts on that too?

My opinion hasn't changed.

£430+ for a GPU that cost little to make, only has 2gb of vram on and all came down to luck is bang out of order.

Hence why I didn't buy one, and won't.

You'll find out what they are really worth in a couple of months. See also - 7970. If AMD can bang them out for £359 and still make money what does that say for their launch price?

At least they have a small excuse. IE - the 7970 costs far more to manufacture than the 680.

But then it's all a bit of a silly argument really. The 680 could perform fellatio and wash your dishes. Fact is that since the day it came out there has been and still is no stock in the USA.

That would be why AMD haven't dropped the price of the 7970 over there, then.

Doesn't exactly fill you with dreams that the 680 is selling well here does it? if the USA sold out in one day and there are still loads for sale in the UK ages later they can't be selling very well. And I would bet my house that the UK got a pittance of stock compared to the USA.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom