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7970 vs 680 thread.

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

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O.K. So it's handbags time.

Please note. This thread was not posted for people to argue in. Scores are what are wanted, put your benchmarks where your mouth is !

Davebeast. Please post your results here again. That way other threads can stay clean :)
 
rob77 said:
Since the 680 seems to be using some kind of speedboost as default I only think it is fair to have both cards running max overclocks for a fair comparison. I've read a few of the reviews that have gone up and they seem to forget that the 7970 overclocks very well and the 680 is already overclocking.
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That was the general idea Rob yes :)

I would, but I have an I7 950 at stock. This is going to need the guys with the heavily overclocked Sandys.

Edit. Layte - the idea is to run everything and then we can put together our own results mate.
 
Jas1222 said:
More I think about it I can also do Metro, SC2, Portal 2, Civilization V. Skryim and Arkham City. Might just stick with BF3 and Crysis though :P
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Portal 2 IMO is irrelevant. It uses a years old engine so doesn't really tax anything on a GPU.

Skyrim is also not the world's most taxing engine, but it will be interesting to see what figures come up :) Especially when we know the clock speeds, so guys please be sure to be running Afterburner and give us the maximum clock speeds from there.
 
TheRealDeal said:
It looks pretty poor in sli, barely beating out 7950cf or gtx580sli. Could be down to early drivers.
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It could be. But then it could be the memory bandwidth or some other bottleneck caused by the fact that this is a pretty weak spec card.

Without starting the argument again the 680 is very mildly specced. This is because it's clearly not a high end part. In gaming it performs amazingly, however, sooner or later with a mid ranged part you are going to come across some problems.

Honestly, if Nvidia really are pretending this is their high end card then they need help. Low memory bandwidth, pretty low memory for a £400+ card and so on all point the other way.

As for drivers? absolutely, it could well be that. But, Nvidia are usually much better at AMD with drivers. And they have had three months to work on them and improve them, and I imagine that that's exactly what they did.

Personally I would like to see unique non unified drivers. I am only too aware of problems when you try and mash everything all into one. Fix one thing, it breaks another (hobbyist programmer, worked with a friend on an emulator).

Let's say we fixed the payout code on one technology, that would then lead to the payout code becoming broken on another.

MAME is very similar. As they gleefully bolt on all these new techs they unknowingly break something else.
 
http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-gtx-680-2gb-overclocking-review-win-some-lose-some/15322-6.html

It's becoming more official by the day.

We're pretty sure that most (sanctioned) reviews that you'll read on the Internet today will unashamely proclaim that the GTX 680 is the best single card around, but the truth is most users who buy these cards are going to overclock their cards to the limit and then both Nvidia and AMD flagships are going to trade wins at the top. The lackluster compute performance and inferior memory bandwidth will hurt the GTX 680 in multi-screen, maxed out image quality, high end gaming. We also estimate that the BOM (Bill of Materials) cost on the HD 7970 is higher, given the higher end VRMs/more phases and larger cooling system.

To be fair, we'll have to give it to Nvidia that the GTX 680 is still a very fast card and has significantly better energy efficiencies and clock potential than the Taihiti XT @ 28nm. It is also refreshing that AMD finally has some competition at the top, so we can stop paying ridiculous prices for single GPU boards. We also didn't cover the other features like TXAA and triple display support, but these are gimmicks that are also present in the Radeons. We would like to pit the GTX 680 again with the HD 7970 in multi-GPU scenarios, hopefully 4-way.

With an MSRP at US$499, the GTX 680 sits between the HD 7950 and the HD 7970. If you are just purely using it for gaming purposes, you can buy this card.
 
DamoTourettes said:
You *did* read the bit where the 7970 is OC'd to 1250Mhz on the core in that review, right? How many cards do you see in the wild pushed that far?

Real world overclocks please, not *golden chips* that are like hens teeth. 1150 is what most folks can achieve.
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Tom Logan did a review yesterday on lower clocks.

This is something you are either going to accept, or you are not.

Same goes for everyone else.

Here we go. Clock per clock test. Is that fair then yes?

http://www.overclock.net/t/1232948/7970-vs-gtx-680-who-is-the-real-king

So who really is the Clear winner? Clock per clock the battle gets really close, and maximum overclocks are very close as well.. I dont see why so many review sites jumped the gun to say its the clear victor, when the stock clocks are so high when compared to the 7970. If for instance, Sapphire does release their 1335 Mhz 7970 (here), this would be the victor just based off its clocks alone. With this in mind, there isnt a clear winner.
 
You know, I would actually like to feel sorry for people that jumped the gun and rushed out and replaced their 7970 with a 680. I would.

But I can't. Any one stupid enough to believe everything they read at a first glance deserves to be shafted.

The absolutely crazy part is that even if the 680 did win and was faster (which it doesn't and it isn't) there would still be no logical sane reason to replace one with the other.
 
dave_beast said:
It shows how biased the review sites are out there, pretty shocking tbh.
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Either biased or flat out stupid.

I will go with the latter, as alienating AMD isn't a good idea.

The thing is they gleefully wrote their reviews saying how the 680 was faster before the reviews had even begun for crying out loud. What I mean by that is the titles of the reviews. Tomshardware was -

GeForce GTX 680 2 GB Review: Kepler Sends Tahiti On Vacation

I just wonder if they are going to realise the error of their ways, or just continue to look idiotic and stupid.

As we have already covered, all it really takes now is a driver from AMD. One little tiny piece of software can spin this all around and drop it firmly on its head.

I also wonder why Vortez have not had any cards for review.

Was it because they stood up proudly and compared the 7970 to the 580 properly and put all of the doubters to bed?

This has also solidified the reason why I cancelled my Bit-Tech sub. At the end of the day if they are going to be so stupid and moronic as to clearly state the 680 (which is clearly overclocked AND overclocking itself) a winner then they need help.

What bothers me the most (and it really, truly does) is that people have turned hypocrite overnight. They have allowed a card that overclocks itself to be put, very unfairly, against one that doesn't.

And that goes against the very fibre of enthusiasts. Taking something out of context and unfairly declaring it a winner when that's not the truth or the complete picture is just flat out balls wrong.
 
shadow_boxer said:
ALXAndy are there any true reviews of the 680 OC Vs 7970 OC or stock Vs stock?
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Overclock3D started out by realising that the 680 was overclocking itself.

Thus, beginning any fair review on that basis would be quite frankly impossible.

I mean come on, it's not rocket science is it? Comparing a card that overclocks itself to one that doesn't is quite clearly very unfair.

Overclock3d basically overclocked BOTH cards before they even started. They pushed as hard as they could on both, and once they were stable and at their limits they began the review and benchmarks.

And neither card proved to be a clear winner. It was trading blows all the way.

Then today I found two others. And do you know what makes me laugh?

Whenever you post one people find something wrong with it, trying to nit pick inconsistencies.

For example, on one of them the immediate reaction was -

Oh noes that's not unfair because the 7970 they used hit 1250mhz and nearly all of the 7970s won't !

I find that particularly interesting you see, because that same person is unable to differentiate a card that overclocks itself to one that doesn't.

So, quite frankly this is being met with 100% pure, unadulterated filtered ignorance. The "lalalalalala" technique, when obviously it's a lot more complicated than that.

And that's just it. Many thought that this would be a simple battle. It isn't. When you are comparing the two best cards on the market cheating to declare one a clear winner is wrong.

You know, I wouldn't even mind if overclocking did not carry the importance and significance it does. Entire websites were founded on it, yet all of a sudden because a new GPU comes out none of it matters :rolleyes:
 
RavenXXX2 said:
You think you would get unbiased game benchmarks in here, look at GPU smack talk going down, it's like they are defending a loved one or something.:D
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Do you know what I am defending? the entire existence and reason for the term "enthusiast".

People are buying these cards with their eyes and ears shut. They are refusing to listen.

Which I find rather hilarious. Amazing how you can completely change your ideals overnight !

There has never, ever been a moment in computing history where people unfairly compared a product to another one and then lied and said it was the winner.

PC enthusiasts are not that stupid. Firstly they know how to operate a computer properly and secondly they know how to overclock hardware. Never before have they negated to overclock one and then compared the two.

It's biased, and it goes against the very logic of the PC enthusiast.
 
Rroff said:
lol the GTX680 sure has some people worked up... can we stop crying over the clock boosting feature already? the cards are quite capable of running 1200MHz constantly out the box but instead nVidia decided to use a system to get the best combination of performance, power usage and heat output.
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And when put to similar clocks the 7970 is just as fast.

There's no crying going on, just a huge case of denial.

As for the heat? 680 is the hotter card.
 
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B1gbeard said:
Has anyone here said otherwise? I don't think I've seen anyone state it's not the case.

Stop raving on here like a madman and go to Anandtech or whatever and rant over there.
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Ah so you haven't noticed the ton of reviews declaring the 680 a winner and all of the poor deluded souls on here saying it's faster?
 
Rroff said:
I don't think its an outlandish claim, they are certainly as close framerate wise as makes no difference to what people would experience ingame (except maybe in some specific high res/multi monitor or AA scenarios).



The architectures are different you really can't compare them clock for clock. Comparing average attainable 24x7 stable overclocked versions against each other may have some merits but its a different story once your including end user overclocking and we are yet to see what the GTX680 is fully capable of overclocked although I suspect the 2 cards will still perform very similiarly when overclocked to the max.
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Look back a page or two and they are compared clock for clock.

And once again, there's nothing in it.

Linus has uploaded a video and again, nothing in it.
 
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