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7970 choice ...

Associate
Joined
10 Jun 2011
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168
With the advent of the 12.10 drivers, it looks as though the 7970 is worth looking over.

I currently have a 560 ti and was waiting till this point really when prices settled and drivers matured, I think I am most certainly swayed to the 7970 at this point.

Was looking at the HIS HD 7970 IceQ X² GHz Edition and MSI HD 7970 Lightning BOOSTED Edition. I trust that these two are the fastest 7970's ??

Any thoughts on these ??

Thanks
 
Soldato
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Are you an advanced user? The lightning is really for people who want to tweak and play around with the card to get the utter maximum from it. What it comes to out the box should be achievable for any custom cooled 7970.

Just you can save some money this way and get identical performance. Unless as I say you're an advanced user who is looking to get the utter max from his card in benchmarks etc.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
10 Jun 2011
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168
Hi,

Thanks.. I haven't overclocked any hardware for some time and not really wishing to really.

So, no just a regular user... so which do you recommend for good speeds out of the box ??
 
Soldato
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Soldato
Joined
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Posts
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Peterborough
Thanks .. what about the GHZ version of this ? ..any good ???

Not worth the extra IMO.

Especially as a "GHz edition" is just a different BIOS with effectively a factory overclock. You could do it yourself :)

If you even just apply a mild overclock you can reach stock Lightning speeds and it should be relatively painless to do so.

However, if you do overclock then there are better options to the GB card.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
10 Jun 2011
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168
Thanks for your help dude.

So, if I decide to overclock which is best ? .. I tend not to because of longevity but I guess cards are pretty hardcore nowadays..
 
Soldato
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There is also the Matrix Platinum, which I have, but it's up to you...

If it wasn't for the rubbish software I'd agree.

@baz2963: I would also look at the 7950. At the same clock speeds as a 7970 it's only around 5% slower. At £240 ish it's a real bargain high end card. Unless you're looking for the utter max from your GPU a 7950 is a really nice compromise between price and performance and to be honest the compromise on performance isn't really that much at all.
 
Caporegime
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Soldato
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I agree if you want the max. If he does want to overclock though and get to a very achievable 1100 MHz on a 7950 he'll be within ~5-10% of the out the box speeds of the best 7970 on the market and have saved £140. Not to be sniffed at with a saving like that.

Decisions. Decisions. :)
 
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