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7850 vs 660GTX

nips

nips

nips

Associate
Joined
3 Dec 2012
Posts
21
I'm looking to purchase a card for new build and will be gaming at 1080P, also need to make sure it fits in a Sliverstone SG05/06 and I'd prefer the card to be as quiet as possible!

So the shortlist

MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB
MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr

Not sure if it is worth stretching the budget to £200 range and get a 7870 or 600 ti but then I'm not sure if the card will fit or PSU can handle also there will be increased noise.
 
Out of those two i'd probably pick the 660 while it's down at 159.99. Similar performance plus physx & cuda.
 
I wouldn't get either due to the SFF format, a rear venting gpu is what your looking for which probably leaves you with Nvidia as the only option.

Normally that would be fine by all means, but this gen Nvidia are using brand awareness to the max and charging over the odds.:(
 
NZB said:
Out of those two i'd probably pick the 660 while it's down at 159.99. Similar performance plus physx & cuda.
Click to expand...

Decided to go with your advice.

Was about £10 more for 660 but from my research had better benchmark scores along with the pluses you mentioned and the increased IQ/Adaptive Vsync.
 
Not great to have SFF, but if you had a normal factor getting an OC would be a lot easier. The 7850 overclocks extremely easily, it will give a stock 7950 a run for its money nevermind a 660. However the blower cooler seems like a good idea and at stock you get great performance from both cards.
 
delta0 said:
it will give a stock 7950 a run for its money
Click to expand...

Just to temper expectations a bit - to get near a 7950 on a 7850 you have to get lucky and recieve a card that overclocks very well. 1100 on the core on a 7850 is doable on almost all cards but the 1200 isn't by a long shot.

Great cards nonetheless.
 
NZB said:
Just to temper expectations a bit - to get near a 7950 on a 7850 you have to get lucky and recieve a card that overclocks very well. 1100 on the core on a 7850 is doable on almost all cards but the 1200 isn't by a long shot.

Great cards nonetheless.
Click to expand...

Yea that was the gamble i wasn't willing to take!
 
NZB said:
Just to temper expectations a bit - to get near a 7950 on a 7850 you have to get lucky and recieve a card that overclocks very well. 1100 on the core on a 7850 is doable on almost all cards but the 1200 isn't by a long shot.

Great cards nonetheless.
Click to expand...

Starting with an OC edition makes it easier, but I think there still some luck involved. I have a Sapphire 7850 OC 2GB. It is running at stock voltage and running 1200 core and 1450 memory. Even at 1100 the 660 will struggle as that is a big overclock (nearly 30%), certainly 1050 is easily done on all cards. The 660 cards that do OC do not do it well.
 
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delta0 said:
Starting with an OC edition makes it easier, but I think there still some luck involved. I have a Sapphire 7850 OC 2GB. It is running at stock voltage and running 1200 core and 1450 memory. Even at 1100 the 660 will struggle as that is a big overclock (nearly 30%), certainly 1050 is easily done on all cards. The 660 cards that do OC do not do it well.
Click to expand...

I struggled to find any benchmarks with

a) Latest AMD drivers (with the much quoted increase)
b) Overclocking results

So i had to go with what i found when the 660 was launched and the older drivers for AMD pre-Sept. The 660 beat the 7850 on virtually everything and in most cases was around the 7870.

I know the Nvidia don't overclock well but the little you do squeeze would more than likely put it at level pegging with a good 7850 yeild running at 1200+
 
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nips said:
I struggled to find any benchmarks with

a) Latest AMD drivers (with the much quoted increase)
b) Overclocking results

So i had to go with what i found when the 660 was launched and the older drivers for AMD pre-Sept. The 660 beat the 7850 on virtually everything and in most cases was around the 7870.

I know the Nvidia don't overclock well but the little you do squeeze would more than likely put it at level pegging with a good 7850 yeild running at 1200+
Click to expand...

The recent drivers from AMD have done a lot for the performance. At stock the 660 is only a tiny bit faster and the 660Ti is similar to the 7870 (http://hardocp.com/article/2012/11/12/fall_2012_gpu_driver_comparison_roundup/1). From there it is whoever can OC the most. A 1200MHz OC on the 7850 is a 40% OC, the 660 won't touch it at stock voltage. That is 7950 territory.
 
delta0 said:
The recent drivers from AMD have done a lot for the performance. At stock the 660 is only a tiny bit faster and the 660Ti is similar to the 7870 (http://hardocp.com/article/2012/11/12/fall_2012_gpu_driver_comparison_roundup/1). From there it is whoever can OC the most. A 1200MHz OC on the 7850 is a 40% OC, the 660 won't touch it at stock voltage. That is 7950 territory.
Click to expand...

Yea had a look at HARDOCP previously shame they didn't add results from the 7850 and 660.

On another note i'm not sure how much I trust their results with all the previous issues regarding being biased etc....
 
nips said:
Yea had a look at HARDOCP previously shame they didn't add results from the 7850 and 660.

On another note i'm not sure how much I trust their results with all the previous issues regarding being biased etc....
Click to expand...

Very true, it is easy to argue bias with any results. Since the driver updates it is generally found across many benchmarks that the 660 is marginally better than the 7850 at stock and the 660Ti is the equivalent of the 7870. It depends a lot on the review, the drivers used and updates for the cards for the game.
The 7950 sits just below the 670 and the 670, 680 compete with the 7970. There is also the 7890 that is about to come out. That will fill the gap between the 7870 and 7950.
What seperates them clearly though is the AMD cards generally OC very well (the memory bandwidth lets the 660 down, effectively bottlenecking it).
 
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