7970 vs 480 SLI

Boomstick777 · 21 Apr 2012 at 13:25

Locky said:
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.

Awesome scores! Looking forward to testing out mine in SLI, think I might steer clear of Furmark though.. Worried that 850w PSU might explode

.

I can max out BF3 on a single card, two should demolish it !!

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 13:28

Boomstick777 said:
Awesome scores! Looking forward to testing out mine in SLI, think I might steer clear of Furmark though.. Worried that 850w PSU might explode .

I can max out BF3 on a single card, two should demolish it !!

I did loads of BF3 benchmarks yesterday and posted them here. The answer to your question is yes, they tear it a new behind.

Boomstick777 · 21 Apr 2012 at 13:34

ALXAndy said:
I did loads of BF3 benchmarks yesterday and posted them here. The answer to your question is yes, they tear it a new behind.

Good stuff, so is SLI quicker than your 7970 was? I honestly can't tell the difference between my old 7970 and a single GTX 480 on BF3, well maybe the 7970 had a slightley sharper image but they be the new Beta Nvidia drivers im on. Im using the latest beta haven't tried any other drivers yet. Anyways as long as SLI doesn't introduce stuttering or any other problems 2 480's should be much quicker for me, and half the price

, My 480 is clocked @ 850, 2004 "bios flashed" Hoping the new card can match those speeds.

I'll add my 3D mark 11 scores when my second arrives..

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 13:38

Boomstick777 said:
Good stuff, so is SLI quicker than your 7970 was? I honestly can't tell the difference between my old 7970 and a single GTX 480 on BF3, so as long as SLI doesn't introduce stuttering or any other problems 2 480's should be much quicker for me. My 480 is clocked @ 850, 2004 "bios flashed" Hoping the new card can match those speeds.

I'll add my 3D mark 11 scores when my second arrives..

The only test so far that has the 7970 "ahead"* is Crysis benchmark. Not the game itself. And the reason the 7970 "won" (as I based it on min FPS) was because when the benchmark starts and it zooms toward the ground it took about a second for the 480 SLI to sync up and start hammering out the big numbers.

*which of course affected the min FPS, even if it was for like one second, and thus the 7970 came out ahead on min FPS.

When the football is over (Gooners vs Chelpoo) I will run some more. I still have the scores kicking around for Dirt 3 and a couple of others I did with the 7970

dave_beast · 21 Apr 2012 at 13:42

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?

Likewise, and i'd smash your score if I could care less

Locky · 21 Apr 2012 at 13:50

dave_beast said:
Likewise, and i'd smash your score if I could care less

Go for it

. Don't forget I don't have 2700k or 3930k to play with.

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 13:53

Hmm. I decided to give EVGA precision a chance. In a way it's just a skinned variant of Afterburner, but hey why not.

Now that part I like. It dynamically adjusts my clocks. When I start doing things like browsing etc it clocks to 400 mhz with the same lower volts, if I start hitting it hard it clocks them to 700.

I would imagine it auto overclocks if you adjust the FPS target too. Good idea that.

Locky · 21 Apr 2012 at 13:58

ALXAndy said:
Hmm. I decided to give EVGA precision a chance. In a way it's just a skinned variant of Afterburner, but hey why not.

Now that part I like. It dynamically adjusts my clocks. When I start doing things like browsing etc it clocks to 400 mhz with the same lower volts, if I start hitting it hard it clocks them to 700.

I would imagine it auto overclocks if you adjust the FPS target too. Good idea that.

50mhz is the 2d mode, 400mhz is for things like web browsing, watching youtube and VLC player etc and 700mhz+ is for 3dmode. I don't think it's evga tool that does that, it's just Nvidias profiles on the bios

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 14:00

Ah OK. Yeah probably the Adaptive Performance. Didn't see it do that in Afterburner though !

Locky · 21 Apr 2012 at 14:05

ALXAndy said:
Ah OK. Yeah probably the Adaptive Performance. Didn't see it do that in Afterburner though !

I remember my cards having the same clocks in various states.

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 14:07

Well my idle is down to 46c for the top card with 46% fan. Which can't be coincidence. It was around 52c in Afterburner.

So maybe Afterburner disables it?

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 14:11

Oops wrong thread.

Locky · 21 Apr 2012 at 14:49

ALXAndy said:
Well my idle is down to 46c for the top card with 46% fan. Which can't be coincidence. It was around 52c in Afterburner.

So maybe Afterburner disables it?

maybe, I used after burner to monitor and overclock my 480's though.

mmj_uk · 21 Apr 2012 at 15:10

bhavv said:
If you have no personal preference or bias either way then what made you feel the need to make this thread? You ask in the opening line of your OP 'Both cost right around the same, so what is the fastest?'. Regardless of whatever opinions you personally have, you are posting information in a biased way to make it appear that your new GTX 480 SLI setup is better than your previous 7970 setup.

I genuinely have no idea how a neutral non biased person could post in the manner that you always do.

And regarding the Vram point, I didnt state that Vram is as important as you over rate it to be, but first you stated that a GTX 680 is not worth the cost because it only has 2 Gb Vram, yet you feel justified with two 1.5 Gb GTX 480s in SLI regardless of whether you traded for them or bought them brand new, or if they are the last GPUs you will ever buy. The cost between the two setups is still hardly anything to dismiss the GTX 680 at its current price on your reason of its amount of Vram, while you have no issue with running a setup which costs around the same with less vram.

There is clearly a strong bias and hypocrisy in your statements where you simply feel justified to defend whatever components are in your own PC, while dismissing anything else for the same shortcomings that your setup has.

Pretty much spot on.

I was wondering why the forum had gone quiet on the VRAM front, so just to clarify someone who spent months berating cards with 2GB or less VRAM is now running 1.5GB cards...

ALXAndy said:
And BF3 is as smooth as butter.

A few weeks ago you were more or less saying that this was impossible with only 1.5GB.

Gregster · 21 Apr 2012 at 15:25

ALXAndy said:
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.

Andy, we all agree that the 680 and 7970 are very close to each other so all I did was post a pic of 3Dmark11 showing comparison between those 2.

This will give anybody who is interested a thought on 7970 or 680 or 480SLI. It was not derailing just giving alternatives.

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 15:29

gregster said:
Andy, we all agree that the 680 and 7970 are very close to each other so all I did was post a pic of 3Dmark11 showing comparison between those 2.

This will give anybody who is interested a thought on 7970 or 680 or 480SLI. It was not derailing just giving alternatives.

But it has absolutely nothing to do with the thread. We all know how the 7970 and 680 stack up, we don't need reminding of it.

I pointed out that this isn't about recommending anything. I wouldn't recommend a 7970 based on my experiences of it. I wouldn't recommend 480 SLI as it relies on too many factors (a good top end PSU being one, then the heat you need to dissipate and so on) and nor would I recommend a 680 because it's too expensive for the spec list on offer (ignoring the raw speed and sensibly thinking about the future).

I'd be hard pushed to recommend most of the top end GPUs on the market right now.

The way things are going however? if I were forced right now to recommend a high end solution I would say 7970. As even with the driver issues £360 is right around the right price for a top end GPU. ATI did it with the 5870, so there has been absolutely no need for this £440+ nonsense we have been seeing lately.

I guess it depends on if the 7950 drops. If it does then it would be back in my number one spot for the card to have.

Rusty0611 · 21 Apr 2012 at 16:04

Boomstick777 said:
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 seeing 480's available for £100 anywhere... Maybe you can get a one off deal but not something Joe Bloggs can do do max BF3 for £100. Just because you got one for that price doesn't mean that everyone can

Boomstick777 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.

My point is - what does it matter if it's a real high end card? It's even with AMD's self-declared top end card on performance.

Compute performance is down, yes, but I can guarantee the mass majority of purchases are for game performance not compute performance.

Agree with the stagnation point. All the talk in the Kepler rumour thread was of massive increases over the 580 and then when it came? Notable but not ground breaking. I think it'll be the same with the next generation of cards as well.

dave_beast · 21 Apr 2012 at 16:09

Locky said:
Go for it . Don't forget I don't have 2700k or 3930k to play with.

Doesn't make any difference in Heaven over my 5.5ghz 2600k

Btw, seeing as the suns out, lets get grilling

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 16:24

Dave I have reported your post. Hopefully it will be deleted.

If you want to be petulant then please go and do it elsewhere. I find it quite disturbing how many people on this forum who class themselves as adults choose to act so childishly.

ALXAndy · 21 Apr 2012 at 17:05

Mafia 2 results are in. Everything on as high as it will go, and to keep it fair Apex Physx was disabled during both tests.

7970 @ 1050mhz

Min - 64 FPS

Avg - 89 FPS

Rank B

7970 @ 1125mhz

Min - 67 FPS

Avg - 93 FPS

Rank B

GTX 480 SLI Stock

Min - 74 FPS

Avg - 104 FPS

Rank A

GTX 480 SLI @ 800mhz

Min - 76.9 FPS

Avg - 109 FPS

Rank A