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Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD 7870 or stick with my AMD 6850 OC?

BennettWHU

BennettWHU

BennettWHU

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I'm currently running an MSI HD 6850 OC, but I want to upgrade to something a little more heavy in the near future. I have found two possible candidates and I'd like to know which I'm better off going with or if I should just stick with my AMD 6850? I'm not willing to spend anymore than £200 on a GPU unless there are a lot of accessories with it or bundled items. It comes down to the Nvidia GTX 660 (660ti is an option too) or the AMD HD 7870.
 
Before you do that...have you made sure your CPU is not going to bottleneck...or even may be it is bottlenecking your 6850 already (which would mean you could end up spending £200 and not getting the performance improvement you expected)?
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Before you do that...have you made sure your CPU is not going to bottleneck...or even may be it is bottlenecking your 6850 already (which would mean you could end up spending £200 and not getting the performance improvement you expected)?
Click to expand...

I don't know how to check if my CPU is causing a bottleneck. I'm going to upgrade it soon anyway.
 
660 is about equal performance with the 7850. The 7870 XT are binned 7950's (I think) which match 660TI performance.
 
When the GPU manufacturuer make a set of cards each card has to be able to pass a certain mark in testing.

So for example with the 7950's

Cards which underperform get put as 7870's but with 7950 PCB's

Cards which over perform get put as 7970's

Now these cards may only under perform a standard 7950 a tiny but which can make the 7870 XT a very nice card.

I think thats hows it works anyway :p
 
Bacon? said:
When the GPU manufacturuer make a set of cards each card has to be able to pass a certain mark in testing.

So for example with the 7950's

Cards which underperform get put as 7870's but with 7950 PCB's

Cards which over perform get put as 7970's

Now these cards may only under perform a standard 7950 a tiny but which can make the 7870 XT a very nice card.

I think thats hows it works anyway :p
Click to expand...


I thought a lot of work and effort went into making a GPU. I didn't realize they just went "This card doesn't hit the benchmark, scrap it. Make it a 7870 and re-label it". Bloody hell.
 
Rusty0611 said:
660 = 7850
660Ti = 7870
670 = 7950

The 7870XT sits between a 7870 and a 7950. The 7950 is a good deal faster than the 7870.
Click to expand...


I'm not sure if I should go for the 660Ti or the HD 7870? I like Nvidia, but I've never had a problem with my AMD GPU. An old AGP ATI card did break on me once, I'd had the card nine years though.
 
You can't go wrong with either but the 7870XT is just faster overall (and a bit cheaper). The normal 7870 is a decent bit cheaper and will match a 660Ti when both are overclocked.
 
BennettWHU said:
I thought a lot of work and effort went into making a GPU. I didn't realize they just went "This card doesn't hit the benchmark, scrap it. Make it a 7870 and re-label it". Bloody hell.
Click to expand...

well it's not quite that simple

take the nvidia example because I know more about the cores involved

They manufacture a gk104, if it's faultless it goes into 690s and 680s (maybe GRID idk), if it's faulty it gets tested again to meet the 670 spec (required number of cores) and any excess working cores are fused off. If it fails again it goes on to either die a death or be engineered into a 660ti. then below that the 660 is a gk106 core.

on the AMD side you have the whatever it's called (tahiti?) for the 7970, if it's broken it goes into a 7950, if that's broken it goes into a 7870LE. Then the 7870 and the 7850 are something else.
 
Whichever is best value for money. I'd either grab a 7850, 660TI or a 7950.
The 660TI does beat a standard 7870 when both are overclocked but does not beat a 7950.
 
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