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EVGA nVidia GTX 660 SC vs XFX ATI Radeon 7870 GHz?

Coops_THC

Coops_THC

Coops_THC

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27 Dec 2012
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EVGA nVidia GTX 660 SC vs XFX ATI Radeon 7870 GHz?

Hi, i am building my first PC and have pretty much bought all the parts apart from the GPU.

I now have a dilemma as i have a budget of around £170-£180 (I have already gone over budget so would prefer not to spend any more) which both of these GPU's fit in but cant decide which is more value for money in terms of performance and reliability.

I have read numerous reviews and just have been getting a mixture of opinions from Nvidia fans and AMD/ATi fans. I have always stuck with Nvidia as from what i have read in the past ATi had temperamental drivers which were prone to encounter glitches/faults but have they solved this now and are they generally similar to Nvidia in terms of reliability?

I have also read that the 7870 has more room for overclocking (I do not know how to overclock but am wanting to learn in the future and experiment very carefully) Is this true?

Another thing that i have read is that Nvidia is generally better for gaming as it has the PhysX feature which many games support and improves performance.

The games i will be playing are:

Crysis 1/2
Battle Field 3
Age of Empires 3 (I know this wont challenge either GPU)
FarCry 3
and various other FPS games.

Specifications:

7870: http://xfxforce.com/en-gb/Products/...-HD-7000/AMD-Radeon-HD-7870/FX-787A-CNFC.aspx
GTX 660: http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=02G-P4-2662-KR

What GPU do you have and if you had the chance would you buy it again or choose something else?

Any advice would be much appreciated.
 
As much as I like Nvidia products, I wouldn't base my purchase on physx; there's only a handful of games (if that) that I've seen that make a worthwhile difference.

The 7870's equivalent is the 660ti, though the 660 does trade some blows with the 7870 in certain instances. However, out of the two, I'd rather go for the 7870 (as mentioned, preferably not XFX).
 
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Coops_THC said:
Can i ask why not XFX? From what i see the build quality seems to be quite good and i have only ever heard good things about XFX or do other manufacturers provide better value for money?
Click to expand...

Their coolers aren't the greatest and the warranty situation can be a bit iffy with them sometimes.
 
Its just the warranty for me, they come across as quite hard to deal with in an RMA situation, not to mention they plaster the rear of the card with 'void if removed' stickers. Its just less hassle to not deal with them.

I'd usually recommend MSi, Gigabyte or EVGA :)
 
I have just bought an EVGA Nvidia 660OC 3gig version to replace my ageing GTX295 and as my system specs are not that up to date I found this a good choice.
I only bought and fitted it today so I need more time to evaluate it but so far the overall improvement is good.
 
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