GTX Titan or Xfire 7950s?

Gregster · 9 Apr 2013 at 00:11

Rusty0611 said:
Nice to see those "movie style" textures not being hampered by 2GB of VRAM.

I have completed and enjoyed the game but the GFX are nothing special at all. Put it against Tomb Raider or Crysis 3 and it looks like a console game. Maybe I missed the "Movie Style" textures

Uncle Petey · 9 Apr 2013 at 00:19

I was very sad when I finished Tomb Raider the other day... Such a good game.

Anyway...

spoffle · 9 Apr 2013 at 02:17

Rusty0611 said:
Nice to see those "movie style" textures not being hampered by 2GB of VRAM.

Gregster said:
I have completed and enjoyed the game but the GFX are nothing special at all. Put it against Tomb Raider or Crysis 3 and it looks like a console game. Maybe I missed the "Movie Style" textures

Studio quality, not movie style, and you missed them because they weren't there.

I was quite disappointed with the graphics of Bioshock Infinite, it looked nice enough, but was definitely nothing special.

The game was supposed to be a 30GB install due to the stuido quality textures, it's actually 17GB though, and whilst there are some high quality textures (like the posters) most of the textures aren't particularly high quality, and some of them are noticeably bad.

spoffle · 9 Apr 2013 at 02:27

Rusty0611 said:
Normally the ones making the most noise about are the ones who aren't currently using it.

To add to that, I've noticed that the most vocal about Crossfire are the ones that haven't even used it at all, and some people can't just help themselves with it. For example, a thread recently that was about using 3 7950s for bit coning mining, Andy couldn't help but completely ignore the whole of the OP's post and go straight to "Crossfire doesn't work and AMD even say so!".

I have to say that all my Crossfire set ups have been largely pain free, with the occasional scaling issue with new releases, but that's about it.

It's extremely difficult not to jump to the "PEBKAC" conclusion with a lot of these issues that people claim to have with any graphics card really.

Uncle Petey said:
Maybe if you stopped constantly posting sly digs and then trying to use the 'but I recommend AMD cards all the time, so I'm clearly unbiased' as some kind of get out of jail free card, you might provoke less arguments.

Certainly, I wouldn't say he's the only one guilty of that either.

Arthur Hucksake · 9 Apr 2013 at 05:36

LurkingWeasel said:
Do you have a pamphlet? Or in other words, I'm thinking of going all out and getting a Titan at 1080p @ 120Hz and would like to hear more of your experiences Have you posted in the Titan owner's thread by any chance?

I've been having oddities with how the boost and clocks work, but that has settled now I know it clocks really well. It's just something new.

It really depends how fussy you are with having a smooth frame rate, that's what these cards do extremely well. The card allows me to almost, max games and keep my high frame rates.

Like in Far Cry 3. With the 680 I would set it to ultra, but turn off alpha coverage and MSAA and use SSAO. With the Titan I can enable HBAO, MSAA and it still feels like I have a higher frame rate, even with vsync enabled.

Tomb Raider is much improved for me too. Real AA is now usable (although it doesnt make much difference to FXAA in this one).

Max Payne 3 is an absolute joy now, everything just gets turned up without worry.

No SLI profiles to worry about, and none of those very slight stutters I have always witnessed with multi-GPU. It's not really a "stutter", more of a frame clarity issue when turning in FPS games and what not. Hard to describe.

As for Crossfire, i've never liked it. Some games feel like you have mouse acceleration turned on, then there's less control over profiles without 3rd party apps. It's meant to have improved this gen though, but I don't know. I am pretty sure I would still come up against the same issues.

I switched my 570 SLI to a 680 last time and even though the bench numbers seemed to drop, actual gameplay improved tenfold.

If I had a 60hz screen I would probably stick with the 680. It's this 120hz lark that convinced me to go Titan and I don't regret it.

Final8y · 9 Apr 2013 at 06:40

Gregster said:
Very interesting and shows how frame drops are happening on the Unreal Engine 2.5 (modified). I was expecting this game to dominate for AMD being a Gaming Evolved title but even after accounting the frame drops, the 660TI could keep up with a 7970.

Talking about this game, I was very disappointed in the quality and was expecting a better looking title after the hype.

Gaming Evolved is not always about making sure it runs better on there hardware by whatever means, its about getting DX11/DX10 & features into PC titles that otherwise would not have, its better for everyone and not like the PC is a better experience only if you have a NV card..

AMD gets jumped on when it runs better on AMD hardware for cheating, crippling and whatever else people can think of, and then when a GE game runs better on NV cards, people shout shame on you AMD it runs better on my NV card

.

No win situation for AMD.

LtMatt · 9 Apr 2013 at 08:10

Gregster said:
I did find a benchmark from that dodgy Russian site for this game that Matt likes.

Not sure if we can still use this though, as it has Nvidia winning?

Of course you can its a shame you neglected to post the other results though. Unreal engine has always favoured Nvidia though over AMD so its not surprising to see their performance equal or only slightly worse than AMD. Perhaps the thing to be celebrated and applauded is how well gaming evolved ensures it runs well on both sides rather than just one.

I will get some comparison numbers up tomorrow but i expect my results will be pretty similar to gamegpu's, they always are within a few fps. Some other sites are often missing 5-30fps from amd results.

Rusty0611 · 9 Apr 2013 at 08:32

Diagro said:
also shows the 7970 being more than 15% faster then a 7950

They aren't clock for clock. What's ya point?

I should hope it's a good deal faster while the 7970 is 200 MHz faster

.

banjoted · 9 Apr 2013 at 08:40

Wow.

I'm new to the PC gaming scene. Sold off my Xbox 360 and retro console collection to build a gaming PC just a month or two back. Odd to see that the same petty bickering and infighting that so plagues the console realm is alive and kicking in PC gaming as well. I had no idea that AMD vs Nvidia was such 'a thing'.

And to be honest that's led to one of the biggest problems for me. I just don't know what to believe.

Are AMD drivers worse? Is Crossfire broken? Is a GTX Titan overkill for a single 60hz 1080p screen? I'm absolutely in the dark because I have no idea who is right and who is wrong!

LtMatt · 9 Apr 2013 at 08:47

banjoted said:
Wow.

I'm new to the PC gaming scene. Sold off my Xbox 360 and retro console collection to build a gaming PC just a month or two back. Odd to see that the same petty bickering and infighting that so plagues the console realm is alive and kicking in PC gaming as well. I had no idea that AMD vs Nvidia was such 'a thing'.

And to be honest that's led to one of the biggest problems for me. I just don't know what to believe.

Are AMD drivers worse? Is Crossfire broken? Is a GTX Titan overkill for a single 60hz 1080p screen? I'm absolutely in the dark because I have no idea who is right and who is wrong!

Welcome to the mad house.

Rusty0611 · 9 Apr 2013 at 08:51

LtMatt said:
Of course you can its a shame you neglected to post the other results though. Unreal engine has always favoured Nvidia though over AMD so its not surprising to see their performance equal or only slightly worse than AMD. Perhaps the thing to be celebrated and applauded is how well gaming evolved ensures it runs well on both sides rather than just one.

http://i.imgur.com/Z0PjMvv.jpg[IMG]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/PNx2Qlg.jpg[IMG]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/veMnIVH.jpg[IMG]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/iqkZP3V.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]

Indeed. It is good to see it running nicely on both but the game isn't really that demanding especially with the lack of "movie style" textures... (just for you spoffle :p).

To be fair to Greg he did post the maximum setting ones so he's hardly misrepresenting anything is he?

ChrisD. · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:00

banjoted said:
Wow.

I'm new to the PC gaming scene. Sold off my Xbox 360 and retro console collection to build a gaming PC just a month or two back. Odd to see that the same petty bickering and infighting that so plagues the console realm is alive and kicking in PC gaming as well. I had no idea that AMD vs Nvidia was such 'a thing'.

And to be honest that's led to one of the biggest problems for me. I just don't know what to believe.

Are AMD drivers worse? Is Crossfire broken? Is a GTX Titan overkill for a single 60hz 1080p screen? I'm absolutely in the dark because I have no idea who is right and who is wrong!

Read between the lines, you'll soon see for yourself.

LtMatt · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:06

Rusty0611 said:
Indeed. It is good to see it running nicely on both but the game isn't really that demanding especially with the lack of "movie style" textures... (just for you spoffle ).

To be fair to Greg he did post the maximum setting ones so he's hardly misrepresenting anything is he?

Using the ultra high quality preset changes the results quite dramatically though. But yes adding DDOF to the ultra preset means the 680 wins by 1 fps but thats within margin of error as well i suppose. I only mentioned it as he said was he allowed to post it as Nvidia wins.

Rusty0611 · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:13

LtMatt said:
Using the ultra high quality preset changes the results quite dramatically though. But yes adding DDOF to the ultra preset means the 680 wins by 1 fps but thats within margin of error as well i suppose. I only mentioned it as he said was he allowed to post it as Nvidia wins.

Hmmm? All I'm seeing is that he posted the highest playable settings results. I don't see the problem with that. I was just pointing out that you pulled him up for it but really that is what we should be comparing anyway.

Yes, the difference is tiny.

Final8y · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:22

@ Rusty0611 basically you cant to wrong buying either brand with of course a few exceptions.

Kaapstad · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:33

Rusty0611 said:
Hmmm? All I'm seeing is that he posted the highest playable settings results. I don't see the problem with that. I was just pointing out that you pulled him up for it but really that is what we should be comparing anyway.

Yes, the difference is tiny.

+1

To see how good a GPU is, it is always best to use the highest playable results, this reduces the influence of the CPU as much as possible.

Sometimes xfire or sli scaling gets the blame for poor performance but often this is not accurate. If 3 or more GPUs are run on the Valley bench @1080p for example, the results are rubbish and this is put down to poor scaling. If however the same Valley bench is run at 1600p or higher, the results and scaling are very good.

I know I am referring to a benchmark above but the same applies to games. To find out what a GPU/GPUs can do, the highest possible settings should be used.

Final8y · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:33

banjoted said:
Wow.

I'm new to the PC gaming scene. Sold off my Xbox 360 and retro console collection to build a gaming PC just a month or two back. Odd to see that the same petty bickering and infighting that so plagues the console realm is alive and kicking in PC gaming as well. I had no idea that AMD vs Nvidia was such 'a thing'.

And to be honest that's led to one of the biggest problems for me. I just don't know what to believe.

Are AMD drivers worse? Is Crossfire broken? Is a GTX Titan overkill for a single 60hz 1080p screen? I'm absolutely in the dark because I have no idea who is right and who is wrong!

Nvidia
https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/33/geforce-drivers/

AMD
http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=454&entercat=y

Fill your boots.

LtMatt · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:40

Rusty0611 said:
Hmmm? All I'm seeing is that he posted the highest playable settings results. I don't see the problem with that. I was just pointing out that you pulled him up for it but really that is what we should be comparing anyway.

Yes, the difference is tiny.

Gregster said:
I did find a benchmark from that dodgy Russian site for this game that Matt likes.

Not sure if we can still use this though, as it has Nvidia winning?

I was just saying he didn't post all the results, just the ones with Nvidia winning is all.

Final8y said:
Nvidia
https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/33/geforce-drivers/

AMD
http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=454&entercat=y

Fill your boots.

LOL

Rusty0611 · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:41

banjoted said:
Wow.

I'm new to the PC gaming scene. Sold off my Xbox 360 and retro console collection to build a gaming PC just a month or two back. Odd to see that the same petty bickering and infighting that so plagues the console realm is alive and kicking in PC gaming as well. I had no idea that AMD vs Nvidia was such 'a thing'.

And to be honest that's led to one of the biggest problems for me. I just don't know what to believe.

Are AMD drivers worse? Is Crossfire broken? Is a GTX Titan overkill for a single 60hz 1080p screen? I'm absolutely in the dark because I have no idea who is right and who is wrong!

Listen to people that have used both because most people who use one or the other are biased to an extent. This is generally a pro AMD forum but there's a few other people other than myself who have used both.

banjoted · 9 Apr 2013 at 09:41

MilanoChris said:
Read between the lines, you'll soon see for yourself.

I'm trying! But not having much success. Is the truth simply that everything's fine?