7970 CF vs 780Ti (plus SLI)

[Five.Stars]

Very nice. Are you going to put another rad in there when you watercool the new cards? I have the same case and a pair of 780Ti's I'm considering watercooling but the P280 doesn't have all that much room.

Yeah mate I have another rad (360) which I mounted externally on rad stand in previous iteration of build. Used a couple of QDC's to connect the rad to rest of system, the QDC's goin in and out of the watercooling gromets at rear of case allos me to disconnect that rad if I need to move case for maintenance or any tinkering that I often do. Not the tidiest of solutions tbh and would prefer a slightly bigger case so that I could have everything inside case, but it will do for now. That aside, the P280 is a great case.



As you can see, the order of the loop is a little bit odd simply due to having the external rad and the long run back from rad to res that goes over the gpu bridge looks a little bit "untidy". Something I will need to try rectify when I re-do the full loop I think, but I am struggling to come up with a better route due to the requirement of the large capacity rad outside of case. :/

 

[Roady]

Given the prices my 7970's went for, it would seem it can be had for under £250 mate! Great from a buyers perspective. Not so great when you are on the selling end. But such is life! Actually had an offer of £100 for 1 of my 7970's! Eventually settled for £110 due to no warranty. 10 minutes later a guy comes and offers £105 for a higher specced card (factory overclock) with 2 years warranty remaining! Aye nice try son! Found that quite insulting tbh!

Quite insulting considering the card, wish I'd seen yours, both of mine are out of warranty and cost me more than that...

But my £300 figure was for two cards!

I picked one of my 7970's up for £150 (Powercolor ref) and the other for £140 (Sapphire Twin-X) which was a steal!

 

[LambChop]

This place wouldn't be the same without an AMD vs Nvidia thread. I await the next one, should be along in about 20 seconds.

 

[Uncle Petey]

It wouldn't be the same without fanboys **** stirring either

This is a straight up performance comparison from a guy that's owned both and there's no argument going on that I can see.

 

[Heisenberg]

This place wouldn't be the same without an AMD vs Nvidia thread. I await the next one, should be along in about 20 seconds.

Have you even read the op and the rest of the thread? No one has argued and it's been an informative thread. What exactly do you expect on a graphics card forum? Move along

 

[RanxZy]

Not a very NVIDIA v AMD toned thread at all just a user showing a good comparison between a few setups they have had.

 

[Five.Stars]

Lol actually forgot I hadn't run the tests with both cards yet. Will do that tomorrow and update the posts with SLI results just to see how much of a jump I have gained.

Also, definitely not an AMD vs NVIDIA thread whatsoever. Just simply showing a comparison between 2 fairly high-end setups that I felt may be of interest to someone either considering going 79 CF or making a switch to a 780Ti.

 

[Gripen90]

2x MSI GTX 780Ti's in SLi are just pure awesome. Mine per default boosts up max 1150Mhz on the core 99% of the time.

 

[Five.Stars]

SLI results added belatedly.

1 question for those of you running SLI rigs - is it normal the cards boost is decreased a small amount running in SLI? Both my cards boosted out the box to 1111Mhz, but in SLI "only" boost to 1098Mhz. Not that it makes a huge difference I am sure lol.

 

[Gregster]

Yer, mine does the same.

 

[Five.Stars]

Cool cheers. Quite happy with results tbh. Hitman showed the least level of improvement, with only a ~24% increase in av. fps from stock 7970CF to "stock" 780Ti SLI. Heaven4 showing the biggest increase at nearly 86%.

Not sure if it was entirely worth the £600+ outlay after selling my cards lol, but you only live once and I have been really interested in trying out physx in my favourite games (Arkham series) as well as looking in to buying a gsync monitor in the hopefully not too distant future.

 

[Gregster]

Yolo

And fair comments. A little buyers remorse does kick in and for some reason, Hitman hates us nVidi SLI users.... No idea why, as even with a massive overclock, I can't get the frames any higher.

I also love Batman and so looking forward to Arkham Knight.

 

[melmac]

It's also a single card vs 2 of last generations flagship cards. We've been used to seeing small bumps in generations, this shows that the 780TI (and prob the 290x) are not far behind 7970 crossfire in terms of real grunt. Quite impressive considering it's still on 28nm.

Well, not wanting to start an argument but the flagship card of the last generation for AMD was the Ghz edition. And it's really two generations ago now for Nvidia since they have released the 780 then the 780ti since the 680. You might say that's not a generation, but, the 780ti uses GK110B and has 7Ghz memory.

And lastly, the 780ti in question has a pretty hefty factory overclock, going from the default 876 to 1020. Like if you compared stock 780ti to a stock Ghz edition 7970 in crossfire what would the difference be? Would there be that big of gap?

And before everyone jumps down my neck, the 780Ti is a great card and I have no issues with it at all.

To the OP, well done, awesome set of benchmarks, must have taking you ages to get done. It gets very boring after a while watching the same thing over and over!! It's a shame you were so rushed and didn't run the 7970 at Ghz speeds. But, that doesn't lessen your work in anyway.

And since you seem to like benching, I would take Greg's advice and join one of the teams going.

 

[Gregster]

And since you seem to like benching, I would take Greg's advice and join one of the teams going.

Good man

 

[Heisenberg]

Well, not wanting to start an argument but the flagship card of the last generation for AMD was the Ghz edition. And it's really two generations ago now for Nvidia since they have released the 780 then the 780ti since the 680. You might say that's not a generation, but, the 780ti uses GK110B and has 7Ghz memory.

Well that's like saying the Ghz 7970 was a new generation after the 7970. Is the 780ti not just fall fat gk110? Anyway, I was just stating it was fairly impressive how well the 780ti performed considering most people say there's not much a jump in gpu raw grunt anymore.

 

[melmac]

Well that's like saying the Ghz 7970 was a new generation after the 7970. Is the 780ti not just fall fat gk110? Anyway, I was just stating it was fairly impressive how well the 780ti performed considering most people say there's not much a jump in gpu raw grunt anymore.

If you want to count the 7970Ghz edition as a new generation, then that's an extra generation between them so the performance jump comes even smaller!! The 7970Ghz edition is just a clock increase over the original 7970. The 780ti has the new rev GK110 Chip(GK110B) and completely new memory (7Ghz) over the original 780. So it not the same at all. There is as much difference between the 780ti and the 780 as there was between the 480 and the 580.

I am just saying this because I think the performance increase hasn't been all that impressive for the near two year gap between them. I apply this equally to both 290x and the 780ti.

 

[Heisenberg]

We'll it's still a 7 series card by name so it's the same generation as a standard 780. NVidia found a way to squeeze more from gk110 so they released it as a ti.

 

[melmac]

We'll it's still a 7 series card by name so it's the same generation as a standard 780.

Really, So, if they called it an 880 ti, then it would be enough of a change to be a different generation? Just forget about all the hardware changes and software changes between the 780 and 780 Ti. Going by that logic, I guess the 750 series isn't next gen either because it's still a seven series card by name?

NVidia found a way to squeeze more from gk110 so they released it as a ti.

I keep telling you what changes they made, and you keep ignoring me. They didn't squeeze more performance out of the Gk110, they made a completely new revision in September 2013 and GK110B was born. They also added faster memory. Maybe it would be better to call the 780Ti as third gen Kepler. 680 was first gen, The Titan and Original 780 was second gen.

But if you won't accept that that the 780ti is a third generation card, then maybe you will at least accept that it's the third iteration of Kepler and comes almost two years after the release of the 7970?

Because personally I was hoping that the 290x and the 780ti would be able to match the stock, non Ghz, 7970 in crossfire. The move to 28Nm was tough at the beginning and neither AMD or Nvidia made much performance gains over the previous cards. I thought when they got the problems sorted out and more time with 28Nm that huge gains would come. But maybe I expected too much.

 

[Five.Stars]

It does match the stock non ghz 7970 in Crossfire - checkthe Heaven 4 results which are completely GPU dependant.

It does fall short in the other benches, but only by a maximum of 22% which is pretty decent in a single generational leap.

Admittedly, there was a revision of the 7970 (Ghz Edition), but since I didn't own Ghz Edition cards I couldn't bench them. I could have run my cards at Ghz speeds obviously, but my tests were simply about out of the box performance between the cards I owned previously and their replacements.

 

[Five.Stars]

Also you said it yourself in September 2013 a new revision was born - how can a new revision of an existing product be considered a new generation?

Make your mind up, or at least if you are going to try and start an argument on a relatively argumentative free thread, then try not argue against your own argument.