***BEST BANG FOR BUCK: GTX 760 SLI - ETEKNIX REVIEW!!***

[Kaapstad]

My 680s never did.. My 670s arent either? The struggle was originally the driver as certain AA forms work better on some cards more than others. The bus isnt the problem and neither is bandwidth as 200gb/s (400gb/s theoretical when in SLI or CF) is more tha enough for even an 2560x1600 res. The vram becomes the main limitation at this point along with how the drivers perform.

6 and 7 series nvidia cards use less vram than the ati cards due to efficiency, the AA is as said previously is driver related and also partically architecture dependent. The bus not being part of this equation.

A single GTX 690

No problem with vram @2560 x 1600

Spoiler

The only problem here is the game is optimised for AMD cards iirc

 

[Jono8]

I asked Thracks why Nvidia cards are close in Sleeping Dogs until you enable Extreme settings & SSAA at which point amd cards pull comfortably ahead. He said it was due to the wider bus of the AMD cards.

Check out this anand bench of 680SLI vs 7970 SLI. Blue is SLI. Look how at 1080p with SSAA off the 680 is equal to the 7970. As soon as you enable extreme settings and SSAA the 7970 pulls easily ahead.

Crossfire runs really nicely on Dirt Showdown i have to say. Its as smooth as when i had my 7970. Sleeping Dogs runs well with vsync, without it though it does have the frame latency problem. Luckily its one of those games that works really well with vsync so i will always use it. Still though it will be nice if AMD can fix that with the new drivers.

One game, that favours AMD cards? Well that is conclusive.

 

[Doomedspeed]

I have the same cards in SLi myself...if there are enough people interested I could attempt a mini review of them

Id like to see that.

 

[arc@css]

Id like to see that.

+1

 

[555BUK]

As throughput is a combination of bandwidth and speed shouldn't the higher memory speed of the 760's help somewhat to offset their lower memory bandwidth? I.E a 256bit bus with 1GHz ram would theoretically give the same performance as a 512bit bus with 500MHz ram so the gap between the 256/384 bit uses isn't as devastating as some people make out, especially when you consider that the cards use that bus differently (compression/etc).

You also need to consider latency. A 256bit bus would need to run at twice the speed and with half of the latency to match the "50% slower" 512bit bus. What actually occurs is that latency goes up as the frequency climbs resulting in smaller gains.

So, a 256bit bus with 1GHz vram would realistically give less than equal performance to a 512bit bus with 500MHz vram. It may get close (~80-90%), but latency will reduce performance.

 

[LtMatt]

A single GTX 690

No problem with vram @2560 x 1600

Spoiler

The only problem here is the game is optimised for AMD cards iirc

Its pretty equal until you bring Extreme settings and SSAA into play. Once that's brought in the 256bit cards fall behind.

One game, that favours AMD cards? Well that is conclusive.

Well that was one of the three games in the review posted. Also i did say specifically this game.

The 256bit cards struggle with Sleeping Dogs Extreme SSAA.

 

[jrodga2k5]

Id like to see that.

+1

I'll get to work on one over the course of the weekend then

Will be at 1080p so will probably hear "overkill" at that res throughout it but right now I can tell you I'm having a fantastic experience with them so far.

 

[arc@css]

Thanks. Look forward to that.

 

[Kaapstad]

Its pretty equal until you bring Extreme settings and SSAA into play. Once that's brought in the 256bit cards fall behind.

Spoiler

The clocks I used are near enough the same as a pair of average GTX 770s (depending on which one you pick) which would put them ahead of GTX 680 sli and HD 7970 crossfire @1600p using your figures for 1440p

Not bad for an AMD optimised game.

 

[LtMatt]

I'll get to work on one over the course of the weekend then

Will be at 1080p so will probably hear "overkill" at that res throughout it but right now I can tell you I'm having a fantastic experience with them so far.

Some benchmarks would be cool. Clock that 3770k up at 4.8ghz.

 

[rolypolyman]

All the technical stuff aside aren't the CF7950 better 'bang for buck' anyway?

 

[Marine-RX179]

Crossfire runs really nicely on Dirt Showdown i have to say. Its as smooth as when i had my 7970. Sleeping Dogs runs well with vsync, without it though it does have the frame latency problem. Luckily its one of those games that works really well with vsync so i will always use it. Still though it will be nice if AMD can fix that with the new drivers.

Yea but the problem with vsync is it does introduce some serious input lag in some games (not saying all), and it doesn't really work with 120Hz monitor.

Tried using RadeonPro, and it got problems of its own such as alt-tab between game in full-screen and desktop, the screen get locked on the game and can't tab to desktop sometimes.

I seriously hope AMD will get the latency issue sorted on hardware level with their next gen cards...or at least really get it sorted on software/driver level rather than we keeping our fingers-crossed month after month...

 

[Kaapstad]

All the technical stuff aside aren't the CF7950 better 'bang for buck' anyway?

+1

 

[LtMatt]

Spoiler

The clocks I used are near enough the same as a pair of average GTX 770s (depending on which one you pick) which would put them ahead of GTX 680 sli and HD 7970 crossfire @1600p using your figures for 1440p

Not bad for an AMD optimised game.

I doubt the change from 1440p to 1600p would see the 7970 numbers fall much lower tbh, a few fps probably. With your overclock you might be equal or just ahead but your minimum does look rather low ( i speculate the 256bit bus). That said the 7970's will only be running 1000/1500 so if you added any sort of clock to them those scores will change considerably.

I know you like a challenge Kap so here's a carrot.

See if your 690 SLI can beat my little old 7970. It more than likely will, but what will be interesting is to see how 1 680 core will cope with SSAA on a 256bit bus.

1080p, Extreme preset, SSAA high vsync off.




1080p, Extreme preset, SSAA Extreme, vsync off.

All the technical stuff aside aren't the CF7950 better 'bang for buck' anyway?

Aye, still the 760's are decent for the price imo.

Yea but the problem with vsync is it does introduce some serious input lag in some games (not saying all), and it doesn't really work with 120Hz monitor.

Tried using RadeonPro, and it got problems of its own such as alt-tab between game in full-screen and desktop, the screen get locked on the game and can't tab to desktop sometimes.

I seriously hope AMD will get the latency issue sorted on hardware level with their next gen cards...or at least really get it sorted on software/driver level rather than we keeping our fingers-crossed month after month...

Agreed its not for everyone. However sleeping dogs, imo, is a game that does not suffer from vsync drawbacks. That said i use a 60hz screen so your issue would not affect me.

I really hope they do release and fix the frame latency issue as much as you though.

 

[Kaapstad]

I know you like a challenge Kap so here's a carrot.

See if your 690 SLI can beat my little old 7970. It more than likely will, but what will be interesting is to see how 1 680 core will cope with SSAA on a 256bit bus.

1080p, Extreme preset, SSAA high vsync off.




1080p, Extreme preset, SSAA Extreme, vsync off.

It does by a mile but that is not your real question.

Spoiler

What you should be asking is can it beat 2 x HD 7950s and then the answer is no, as this is an AMD optimised game.

 

[LtMatt]

All the technical stuff aside aren't the CF7950 better 'bang for buck' anyway?

It does by a mile but that is not your real question.

Spoiler

What you should be asking is can it beat 2 x HD 7950s and then the answer is no, as this is an AMD optimised game.

Maybe.

Take away the SSAA and Extreme settings though and performance is pretty even in this game. I still believe the wider bus makes the difference once you chalk up that extremely intensive AA.

EDIT

Forgot i ran a 7950 crossfire benchmark at 1440p extreme SSAA in Sleeping Dogs. Clocks were 1093/1563 and i matched the 1440p 7970 results posted earlier.

Spoiler

 

[ubersonic]

Take away the SSAA and Extreme settings though and performance is pretty even in this game. I still believe the wider bus makes the difference once you chalk up that extremely intensive AA.

Didn't the creators actually say it was because Extreme is designed for AMD hardware?

As we did with HDAO, however, we take AA one step further in Sleeping Dogs. The “Extreme” anti-aliasing setting uses the compute horsepower of Graphics Core Next to do another anti-aliasing pass on the final frame, which will smooth out those last four pixels of aliasing we described in the example above.

 

[Kaapstad]

but what will be interesting is to see how 1 680 core will cope with SSAA on a 256bit bus.

GTX 690 running on one core

Spoiler

As you can see the vram and bus are working fine, compare the scaling going from 1080p to 1600p and also compare the one card and 2 card scores I ran earlier.

I think the real problem is and always has been that the GK104 GPUs are not as powerful as their HD 7970 counterparts, this becomes more apparent as the resolution increases (this is also noticeable when comparing Titans and GTX 780s).

When you go above 1600p and run multi monitors the extra vram and 384 memory bus on the HD 7970s does also come into play. But for resolutions up to 1600p the vram setup on the GK104s is fine.

 

[tipes]

I have the same cards in SLi myself...if there are enough people interested I could attempt a mini review of them

Yes please - I am tempted to go this route rather than a 770 from my current 6970 Lightning I have. Mind you I would also like to get an EVGA card - but they don't have a 760 it seems or at least not yet?

What to do?????

 

[Fanatic]

There are quite a few EVGA GTX 760s (8! different versions according to their website ). Just none sold on OcUK.