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7970 vs 480 SLI

bhavv said:
The GTX 480 is obsolete tech, excessively power hungry and loud and hot...............

Between the 7970 / GTX 680 and SLI GTX 480, it matters little which setup is faster when the difference is so negligible. It is clearly preferable from an unbiased opinion to buy a single 7970 or GTX 480 right now rather than buying a pair of GTX 480s and wasting money on obsolete technology that is two generations old.
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Up until a couple of weeks ago I would have agreed, just because I had heard all the same things.. until I tried a GTX 480 out myself, I had read all the heat and power consumption rumors and joined in with the egg frying jokes ;-). Had a similar convo in another forum lol, the 680 is a polished, power efficient, die shrunk GTX 580 hybrid, it isn't real high end Kepler, GK110 will be a big leap over the current cards if the leaks are accurate. The real deal Kepler not a midrange card.

Things are a bit different in the games market aswell, it's stagnant atm cards from 2 previous generations are still able to max out the latest games, so there really is little reason to upgrade unless it's for E-peen ;-) fair enough for those with multiple screens or very high resolutions, but how many are running anything higher than 1080P?

I went for the E-Peen HD 7970 at launch and did get buyers remorse, sold that and got the 480 for around £100, runs BF3 on ultra but no buyers remorse becausce it was cheap lol.

GK110 and AMD's equivilant will hopefully be proper next gen cards, rather than another 5% - 10% increase but cooler and quieter that we've had coming from the 480 > 580 > 680 .. In two years the GTX 680 is what about 20% faster than a stock 480? Just overclock the 480 and your not even that far away tbh. Is a GTX 680 really worth £440? :/.

Hopefully some next gen games will launch to take advantage of the current high end power let alone force people to upgrade, becausce atm E-Peen aside there's no point spending £400 - £500 on a card when a £100 - £150 card can do the same job imho.
 
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bhavv said:
If you have no personal preference or bias either way then what made you feel the need to make this thread?
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Because just maybe I find it more interesting to, you know? actually do something with my time other than argue over stupid ****?

If any one out there was considering either 480 SLI or a 7970 then they now have information.

Maybe you should try doing something a bit more constructive with your time?
 
Boomstick777 said:
it isn't real high end Kepler, GK110 will be a big leap over the current cards if the leaks are accurate. The real deal Kepler not a midrange card.
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Mid range card or not, it performs better or on par with AMD's high end card. What does this say? Why is there peoples obsession to label it a mid ranged part? I have a 680 and I don't really care what the card was called and where it fitted into the hierarchy at various points in the development cycle - all I'm interested in is the performance it offers relative to its price point.

Boomstick777 said:
Hopefully some next gen games will launch to take advantage of the current high end power let alone force people to upgrade, becausce atm E-Peen aside there's no point spending £400 - £500 on a card when a £100 - £150 card can do the same job imho.
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Please link me to a £100-£150 card which can play today's top games on max settings. I agree, you can get some good compromises between image quality and performance at that price level but that comment which I've quoted is completely incorrect. You can't have maximum quality and playable performance.
 
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ALXAndy said:
Then you haven't read the forums enough.

I berated my 7970 from the moment it arrived.
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I was around the forums exactly when the 79xx series was released and I was one of the people saying the prices were ridiculous at the same, and you were in most threads defending AMD's release and price plan. Whether you liked your 7970 or not, those points still stand. You've gone from one extreme to another: Siding with AMD and defending them, to now slating them in as many ways as possible. I find it hard how anyone can take you seriously when you keep jumping ship.

I'm pleased you are happy with the old GTX 480, but I'm not sure I agree with your claims to being unbiased. Sorry.
 
Locky said:
No really it's not.
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http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=21691454&postcount=664

khemist said:
10224

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3203460

168d4jl.jpg


fnb9fc.jpg




GTX680 + 2500k - 1370 boost.
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I think you will find the 480SLI is on par with one 680.

PhAi9.jpg
 
OK look. Please, go away with the 680. It's getting annoying and has no place in this thread.

OK? stop trashing my thread with it as that was what got on my nerves last time. If you troll my thread with stuff that doesn't belong in it I will report you.
 
Rusty0611 said:
Please link me to a £100-£150 card which can play today's top games on max settings. I agree, you can get some good compromises between image quality and performance at that price level but that comment which I've quoted is completely incorrect. You can't have maximum quality and playable performance.
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I paid £100 for my GTX 480 mate, that's the point we're making isn't it? GTX 480's can be had really cheap now and can max BF3 @ Ultra setting no problem. Get a pair for around £200 and you got a bargain.

Not much has changed in the past 2 years, games have stagnated. The GTX 580 was a polished GTX 480 with power restrictions to hide it's TDP. The GTX 680 is a much more power efficient designed 'Fermi' polished to a high sheen as TTL said.

Hopefully the HD 8XXX or GK110 (GTX 7XX) cards will be a real tangible improvement, not just an extra 10% - 20% performance boost, also consider the woeful compute performance, is the 680 even a real high end card? Im not sure? .. A more power efficient card doesn't justify a £440 price tag imho.

GTX 480 is fine until the real next gen.. For everyone else there is the GTX 680 :). Maybe i'll pick one up there about £100 lol.
 
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Secret_Window said:
I was around the forums exactly when the 79xx series was released and I was one of the people saying the prices were ridiculous at the same, and you were in most threads defending AMD's release and price plan. Whether you liked your 7970 or not, those points still stand. You've gone from one extreme to another: Siding with AMD and defending them, to now slating them in as many ways as possible. I find it hard how anyone can take you seriously when you keep jumping ship.

I'm pleased you are happy with the old GTX 480, but I'm not sure I agree with your claims to being unbiased. Sorry.
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When I keep jumping ship?

What are you talking about?

If this were the annoying stupid and rather childish 680 vs 7970 debate being done again I would still say that they are about even.

You know? as I said all along. I would also say that AMD's drivers are rubbish, just like I did all along.

I even posted a thread about it that you seem to have missed.


Boomstick777 said:
GTX 480 is fine until the real next gen.. For everyone else there is the GTX 680 :). Maybe i'll pick one up there about £100 lol.
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Unless Direct X 11.1 doesn't run on a 480 then it is still very much current technology. So are the 68 and 69 series Radeons, and so are the 5 series Nvidias. According to a post from Gibbo yesterday there isn't going to be a £200 6 series Geforce, so the 570ti will still very much be a part of their line up.

The new cards use less power. From something some one mentioned yesterday you can use adaptive vsync with any Nvidia card now but I will have to try that out later.
 
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This was my score with my 480sli I even got higher but can't find the result.

3DMark Score P12002

Graphics Score12271

Physics Score12379

Combined Score10346

GraphicsTest1 52.84 FPS

GraphicsTest2 56.25 FPS

GraphicsTest3 77.54 FPS

GraphicsTest4 39.77 FPS

PhysicsTest 39.3 FPS

CombinedTest 48.12 FPS

Oh and quoting 3dmark really paints the full picture, I will get my 480 SLI results against a 680 in bf3.
 
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From what I have heard (and I may give it a try later) a 480 clocked to 850mhz puts out the same sort of performance as a stock 580.

And no single GPU on earth, 680 included, would stand toe to toe with SLI 580. Sorry, it's just not about to happen no matter how much you may want it to.

There may be times where the 680 or 7970 win but it would be because of poor support or poor SLI implementation and not because the 680 or 7970 are genuinely faster.

So please, without sounding rude, don't turn this thread into a 480 SLI vs 680 thread just so you can add another notch to your 680 "but I desperately need the attention" belt.

This thread (much like the "how much vram BF3 can use, take a look for yourself") is about comparing a 7970 with 480 SLI in the exact same PC. It's not a super fast PC by today's standards but it is the same one, so results I generate will be perfectly accurate all things taken into consideration.


dave_beast said:
IMO, the only folks that have problems with AMD drivers and call them "rubbish" are those that frankly don't know what they're doing, sorry.
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I know what I am doing perfectly well, thanks. So your "oh god look some one is having troubles with my girlfriend so must be stupid" attitude is quite frankly rubbish.

It isn't just me, it's loads of people. If you mean to tell me that double clicking on an exe and using your PC takes some kind of ninja skill then sorry, you're being ridiculous.

I ask you this. Why is is that I did the very same thing with Nvidia's latest driver (IE double click the exe) and then installed EVGA's awesome SLI enhancer and have had no problems like the ones I had with my AMD card?

Even if there was a fix for the problem I had (and there may have been something buried deep in the drivers) it isn't for me to find, Dave. That is AMD's job and part and parcel of why I paid £439 for their card.

It's not my problem.
 
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dave_beast said:
IMO, the only folks that have problems with AMD drivers and call them "rubbish" are those that frankly don't know what they're doing, sorry.
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That fact that I am in the top tier for getting the most out of hardware in benchmarks tells a story that I know what I am doing, but I still have problems with AMD drivers, so in your opinion I don't know what I'm doing right?
 
Locky said:
That fact that I am in the top tier for getting the most out of hardware in benchmarks tells a story that I know what I am doing, but I still have problems with AMD drivers, so in your opinion I don't know what I'm doing right?
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Tommy and I had a lovely chat over Skype last night about AMD drivers.

We both concluded that the 69xx series work very well under their drivers. We also concluded that the 79xx do not.

When I had 5770 Crossfire I found myself having the same issue many times over. IE - I would install the Cats, install the CFX profiles (500kb or so) and my games still would not scale properly. This was in spite of the fact that they were all listed in the profiles I downloaded.

The fix? well one of them was to rename shift.exe (NFS Shift) to Grid.exe (Race driver Grid) at which point it would spring to life and scale.

So, what was the issue? simple. When the ATI profiler scanned my system it obviously missed the registry entry for NFS Shift. Again, that's not my problem it's a fault with the driver.

Tridef Ignition misses tons of my games too but at least I can add them manually.
 
One bug that is annoying is when my computer returns from sleep mode, half of the screen in programs and esp firefox is black. I have to use task manger to end the process and start over.

Most of the issues I had/have with the drivers I have fixed, but some I just can't do nothing about.
 
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Locky said:
One bug that is annoying is when my computer returns from sleep mode, half of the screen in programs and esp firefox is black. I have to use task manger to end the process and start over.
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Yup that's one of the issues I had. Only it wasn't black it just became a black hole. Anything you dragged to the bottom half of the screen would simply disappear.

I used to change the resolution to another one, then let it change back and that used to refresh the screen and sort it. But it was really annoying and in the end I disabled sleep.

And no driver revision fixed it. The ones before? I would get coloured blocks all over the screen when waking it.
 
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