7970 vs 680 thread.

[ALXAndy]

War never changes.

You can't fight in here gentlemen ! this is the war room !

Tbh it's entirely underwhelming, 3 months later than the 7970 and it's the same. Only thing that is truly different is the proprietary stuff that each company own. I was hoping it would be much much cheaper and actually better than the 7970 but it's not. As much as people would like to think so, it's not the case sadly.

Yay.

Which is completely true. Even if it were better than the 7970 it would not be better enough to justify the price tag.

I have no problems whatsoever admitting that I overpaid for the 7970. I'm not exactly rich, and for many years lived in the mid range sector. I think the most I ever spent on a GPU was £250 and that was a pair of the buggers, two 5770s. I then changed them to a single 470 which with a Zalman cooler cost me £205.

Had the money not been money to burn I wouldn't have bought the 7970. Several weeks before I did I bought a 6970 fake Lightning for £285. That was the most I had spent since 1999/2000.

The sad fact is that for some reason people have not been able to be so selective and brutally honest about the 680. There are actually websites justifying the price tag.

One of those websites (Bit-tech) scored the 7970 lower complaining about the price tag. They then refused to score the 7870 and 7850 because they had no set price.

So if price is so important then why has the 680 been given the thumbs up?

I don't care what people say about me, what they think about me either. This isn't about being a fanboy or that I give a crap because I have an AMD card. I don't care, and I have put all of my peeves about the 7970 up for all to see. I've said plenty of bad about the 7970.

However, if the 7970 was not worth the asking price then why is the 680? does it do anything the 7970 doesn't?

Even if it were faster and by a long way then surely it still wouldn't be worth £400+. There are cards costing less than half of that that can take care of most anything at mainstream resolutions. So are we now being sold things we simply don't need?

It would seem so. So for the record all of these new cards are over priced and pretty stupid.

 

[ALXAndy]

I agree - whatever way you shake it the GTX680 is a £300 card with an overclock (not talking about clock boosting). I do think some of the new features that are coming out with it are nice for gamers tho and that alone IMO makes it more worthwhile given the option of it or the 7970.

I read an article this morning that compared the two in terms of technology and what they would cost to produce. Whilst they didn't have figures and are likely never to get them they did mention that the 7970 would at least have cost AMD far more than the 680.

Mostly down to what is bolted on and the technology itself.

I still firmly believe by looking at the actual low down specs of the 680 that it is a mid ranged part.

Who knows, maybe Nvidia will fail with the kitchen sink one like they did inititally with Fermi? and maybe AMD will be able to do some revising and so on and make SI better?

 

[ALXAndy]

These cards should be selling for around £300 to £350.

Mind you, initial Fermi cards should not have cost what they did, but I imagine Nvidia after spending so much money were left with little choice.

There is always more than one side to every story. Personally I think Southern Islands cost AMD a lot more than 104 has cost Nvidia.

But, either way both of them should be far cheaper than they are, especially the Nvidia one because deep down it's a mid range card with a spec list to match.

I guess some people see the tricks it does to be good. Personally I don't. The tricks it performs are there to fool people, and not hidden away for the user to discover like a normal product.

Personally I hope AMD drop the price of the 7970 and turn it into a true enthusiast part. Noobs need not apply, come only with your copy of Afterburner.

And I say that and I own one. I hope they come down to around £300 and do very well at that price.

 

[ALXAndy]

I can only speculate: it could be company image, or the way NV treat their partners (could be better than AMD, I don't know) or they are genuinely silly enough to have stock vs stock as the final say.

And the second point you made, graphics card have always been a luxury and not essential in my eyes, I can't justify the 680 pricing but it seems most likely that NV just decided to price match because they had a good clock, they left a lot of the compute parts out for now so it's a bit cheeky but they're a business. And as always, business is business.

Honestly, NV could have caused such a larger stir if they priced the card at £300. It would have been the 5xxx series all over. To me they're just mirroring each other, they both felt they lacked in certain areas that their competitor excelled in and aimed to improve that. They both did. And here we are.

Of course they are a luxury. And on PC they are an expensive, stupid one.

What I mean is this. A console costs around the same price as a decent graphics card. Let's ignore all of the other hardware and the fact that the console is seemingly very underpowered and concentrate on one thing - improvements during life cycle.

If one were to compare what the Xbox 360 could do graphically when it came out (not much, will say something on that in a moment) as to what it does now?

Tell me, have you ever seen such visual improvements out of a single GPU? or did you have to buy ten to the one console?

Any way, when the 360 first came out I was running NFS most wanted on my PC @ 1600x1200. I went around a friend's house who got the 360 on launch day with a copy of the same game and it looked crap. It was jerky as all hell, too.

However, how that same console can run say Skyrim now in any shape or form is testament to how well the 360 has improved since launch. Like wine consoles mature as they age. Unlike a GPU, which becomes an expensive paperweight lesson in less than a year.

So given that this generation of GPUs will be good for a very small handful of top end games on the PC (BF3, C2, maybe BF4 depending on how much vram it needs etc) then it really does highlight just how crap they are. And to show how slowly things move in PC gaming Crysis still does not scream along like it should, even on these £400 wonder cards.

 

[ALXAndy]

Just noticed I end my huge sentences in . I should stop that.

The Xbox is a different kind of animal, although it had a single GPU, the development process is completely different and there is much lower level of coding that can be done, with which I'm sure you're aware of.

Over the years the xbox did get new motherboards and smaller lithography I believe on their CPU, no idea if the GPU did but it hasn't been the same hardware (technically) for years now.

7 or so years is a long time to figure out the low level coding, which Carmack did with Rage (IDTech5). And although texture sizes increased and what not, they have to use a lot of tricks to get to the point they're at just now. Shifting things from memory on the fly and streaming textures instead of having more RAM. Which we'll see from the new generation of consoles.

Oh but of course. Having the same unified identical architecture is a fantastic idea and gives developers the time they need to explore it and take advantage of it.

That has never, and will never happen in PC gaming. So roll on the next console for me.

 

[ALXAndy]

Be funny if this all ends in a GPU Driver war.. lol

Ultimately if you wanted to know which card will come out on top (but I don't see it even with drivers) that is what it may come down to.

The fact is that they both perform right around level, so saying one is great and the other not so great is clearly wrong.

That is all I have been trying to do since the 680 came out. Trying to make people aware that maybe they should not fall for the hype, or that the 680 is worth £400 when the 7970 isn't.

Sadly that message will be slow to get out, with fever hitting as soon as the reviews did. Many have sold cards that were equally as good and replaced them.

Maybe just because they can't stand the thought of not having the latest, because quite clearly the 680 ain't the greatest.

 

[ALXAndy]

Well one good thing did come of all this.. Nice 'n cheap 7970's on MM

I don't see any.

 

[ALXAndy]

7950 is the best purchase right now.

Well, the best of a bad bunch, but you know what I mean

 

[ALXAndy]

IMHO, people see AMD has a value GPU vendor and Nvidia as the non-value vendor,hence AMD cannot get away with the same pricing levels as Nvidia. Even if they had exactly the same products as Nvidia,they would have to price them lower. This is the impression I get!

I'm equally as critical of everything in life Cat, but the way I see it the Nvidiot does indeed and is alive and well. As much as I hate clichés I truly believe that Nvidiots do exist. Kind of like some sort of mythical beast.

And, they are the same sort as the Apple bunch, who also definitely exist. It just seems that certain companies have a way of peeing on people's backs and telling them it is raining.

What I mean by that is that certain companies can do no wrong. And even when they do there was a very good reason why they were doing it.

Corporations. They use all sorts of low down tricks and brain washing techniques, and some of them are good at it. Nvidia always were.

I had a ahem, discussion about it recently when we did the time warp back to 1999. Up until that point no one was interested in specs or what not, as we just liked seeing new things. Nvidia though? from the word go as soon as they set foot in the marketplace they started the flame wars and bad mouthing.

So whilst Nvidia were indeed supplying faster cards than 3DFX and they were capable of 100 FPS in Quake II and so on none of it really mattered. But, Nvidia made it matter and made people start to obsess over having the fastest even though it was completely unessential. Fact of the matter was a 4mb onboard or something like a Trident with a Voodoo card was more than adequate for maxing out games.

And, it hasn't changed much. Here we are ten years down the line being sold bottles of snake oil. The most successful DX version ever was of course DX9. But how much crap have we been mis sold since?

DX11. Wow, brand new technology that does tessellation !

Wooooow. Let's all load up a benchmark that uses it and then obsess over whose goes faster. Wooow, DX11 is great. But is it really great?

Well, many will not have seen this.

Why haven't they seen it? because at that time Nvidia and AMD did not need another reason to sell you a new GPU that would do all of the things they say. However, with DX11 tessellation became essential, and if you didn't have a DX11 card you smelled like wee.

Same goes for the lighting and shadows. When Dirt 2 came out it was quickly realised that near on all of the features it used could be ran with DX10 cards. The lighting, shading and so on were all unlockable and would all run perfectly fine on a DX10 card.

Now we are being fed more hyperbole and snakeoil.

It never ends.

 

[ALXAndy]

The worst thing is now the very same reviewers are saying a £400 card is "good value" FFS. How times change.

It's disgusting mate it really is.

Mind you, Bit-tech sold its soul to the devil a couple of months ago.

They used to be a very down to earth site/magazine that spoke honestly and fairly about everything. There were a few times I felt they got it wrong (like the Noctua NH-D14) but then we must remember that a lot of it comes down to opinion. However, the site has changed dramatically recently.

Now when you go there it sometimes plays an Ebay ad over the top, and their reviews and awards seem to be used a lot more.

Need for speed : The run is a classic example. It got over 90% and a gold award for a game that was seriously buggy and locked to 30 FPS.

The fact that they negated to mention the 30 FPS however was a sign of the times. They obviously didn't want to upset EA as they then get starved.

And their 680 review is more of the same. Basically it doesn't give the whole story, then tells you it's well worth the £400. However, even if it did have a lead on the 7970 it's definitely not the lead the 7970 took over the 580 ! yet they found it hard to recommend the 7970 due to its price tag

I've said it before and I will say it again. Reviewers in this day and age are no such thing. They are salesmen.

Case in point. Tom at OC3D wrote a pretty stinky review of some Kingston ram with water cooling blocks on. It was so bad that Kingston forced him to remove it, and have not offered him anything for review since.

Tom reviewed an NZXT case that was attempting to dethrone the Fractal R3 but it was crap, so he told it like it was. NZXT refused to give him anything else. Finally they did (a cooler) and he bum licked it from the word go.

Of course he did. He has a living to make, and food to put on the table.

Oddly of all of these companies that "roll like dat" Alienware are the worst. If they were bad mouthed in a review they would hit the reviewer with a cease and desist and then never give them another review product.

 

[ALXAndy]

Its hilarious they have gone from £250 to £300 being overpriced to £400 cards which have less of a performance increase being great.

At least whatever people say about Anandtech he did at least say that the previous generations were better for price/performance and hopefully there would be room for price cuts in the future now the GTX680 is out(the GTX680 is actually cheaper in the US than here when compared to the HD7970).

Don't really read Anandtech tbh. Nothing against it, just haven't really checked it very often.

Previous gen cards will always be better value. I bought the 280 I had a week before ATI released their DX11 cards for £180. It was a XFX XXX model that was worth almost £400 at launch.

I only ended up with DX11 cards because it packed up. Then I got a 470 when the 500 series came out for £170 or so.

I've always just gone with the flow and picked up the bargains. 7970 is the first stupid card I've bought in over a decade. Last one was a 3Dlabs Oxygen for £280. Mind you, I have to say that back then the Geforce II was slower but no one knew about 3Dlabs because they were workstation cards. Didn't matter then though, good old OGL

 

[ALXAndy]

Alxandy you make some very valid points. Just makes me think there is room for a real independent review site. One that buys its own hardware and has unbiased tests, surely the traffic that would generate could make it pay?

It would get shut down in a heartbeat mate.

I know a good few ex game reviewers. All of them were chased out of the industry due to being honest. One of them hasn't been able to get any work reviewing since he told Driv3r like it was.

It's mostly the company I keep that keeps me on my toes. I usually know the truth.

It's all very similar to when I worked in sales running a call centre in the USA. Still under NDA with that so I do need to be careful what I say, but let's just say that you can take a bottle of herbal snake oil that cost 40 cents to make (most expensive bit being the plastic bottle) and then sell it to some one for $59 with a recurring shipment every month.

It's not about what you have and what it can do, it's all about how you sell it mate. Making people happy with what they are buying, even if it's a load of old crap.

I was in that job for three years all told before I finally broke down and couldn't keep doing it. I'm a very honest person, and I don't like seeing people mis sold a load of crap. We had a product in one day that was literally a sachet of powder and the way they were selling it was completely dishonest and relied on scaring people.

It's a very cut throat world out there. The sad fact of life is mate that people are never usually interested in the truth as the truth isn't very exciting.

Let's take the Xfactor. It's rigged from the ground up. Auditions are rigged, only showing on TV what they want you to see. If you are very good? you get to go on TV. If you are very bad? you get to go on TV. However, they pre screen all of the contestants so if you're not very good looking or what not but CAN sing (IE won't sell records to kids or make people laugh at you) then they just turn you away.

Then all of the acts are "sold" to us. IE - right from audition level it's clear to see who will make the live shows because their auditions include all the sob stories ETC. They are already playing on our emotions for votes.

Next step? rigged. Even if we vote some one in they can change it and keep some one in, meaning all of those thousands of phone calls (and pounds) were just really a waste as they get to choose and so on.

It's extremely linear mate, but then most sales are. I still remember to this day the graphs we used to show our new employees where you basically railroad the person on the phone into the end result - a sale !!!!

So yes. I know far more about how this all works than others will, as basically it has been my business in some shape or form for nearly a decade.

 

[ALXAndy]

ive got both cards gtx680/amd7970 and can say i can see crap all between them to be fair.

Well from a visual perspective you won't mate. Both are veeery powerful cards capable of ripping games to bits at 1080p.

But of course none of this is ever pointed out truthfully in reviews.

You know? that bit at the end that says -

If you already have something like a 570 or 6950+ and you game at 1080p then there is absolutely no reason to buy this card. Infact, if you have anything over those like a 580 or 7950+ then you would be better of going outside naked and standing there barking like a dog than buying this card.

But they can't can they? If you do that you don't make the 680 sound wonderful. You don't make it sound marvellous.

So who would buy it?

I repeat. Reviewers are not reviewers, they are salesmen.

It shouldn't even be up to them to try and dictate what is worth what in pounds and pence, they should simply post up the scores and remain completely impartial, letting the user make up his/her mind.

THAT is the honest way to do it. But no. Right from the opening bloody line it's crap like "wow this card really is amazing and is faster than the 7970 !".

But that's human nature. Stupid will always outweigh intellect because intellect is hard work. It needs constant attention and learning. Stupid is nice and easy and it's easy to be ignorant.

 

[ALXAndy]

I totally agree with you and approach life with my eyes wide open with a healthy dose if cynicism. I'd just like to see someone with some morals and the cash to back it stand up and be counted. Unfortunately we as a species are intrinsically selfish. Play any multi player game and see how many people play support roles and how little thanks they get. That's what p's me off about all this corporate team player c##p, the ones who talk about it most are the most selfish. Explains why both myself and my wife have never got on in large companies, too damn honest!

So far I haven't jumped on either gpu because I feel the truth is neither are worth the current price. That doesn't mean I won't buy one though once the market settles!

Gaming is also a sham IMO.

I mean FFS, when did it become OK to palm off some one with a £50 game that lasts for three hours because you couldn't be assed to put in the work for some one who doesn't like playing online?

Now I will admit, I'm a bit of a hermit. And, due to that the only games I like to play are co op games. When playing competitive games I tend to lose my rag quickly and when the crap talking comes I end up slagging people off.

Just not my thing. So now we have games like MW2 and MW3 that offer about four hours of entertainment to some one like me. Then they rely on YOU to make a game out of it by giving you a simple map.

Kerching !

Now Fallout 3? at least 70 hours of solid gameplay there with all the DLC. You know? it relies on nothing but itself to give you that entertainment. Not a few maps that leave it all down to you.

But that's what has happened to the gaming market. Sooner or later these small "RARE" type developers are guzzled up by a corporation and, just like Nvidia and AMD

LESS IS MORE !

Going back to the 680 for a minute I truly do find the 2gb vram amazingly stingy. It's almost like Nvidia have this vram sales method similar to dating women.

"Treat em mean, keep em keen !". No offence like, but I had a 470 and a pair of 295s out dated by a single game. And what stunk to absolute high heaven is that technically these were still amazingly capable cards with the 295 pipping a 480 yet, they were rendered chocolate teapots by their lack of vram.

At least AMD seem to be far more generous with it. I mean crikey, the 6950 @ £169 has bloody 2gb !

What's that saying about the 680 ?!?!?!

 

[ALXAndy]

At the core of it all is dumb people, that will unfortunately never change.

Indeed. Roll on Xfactor 2012

It's a sad day when companies need to constantly ram crap in your face.

I remember a day where something sold based on how good it actually was and how it was worth the money.

Then you spread the word. None of this marketing nonsense.

Thing is, all of this crap they feed us (the adverts, demo videos for tessellation and graphs and charts) all cost us money. So all of that rubbish that Nvidia started putting into the market all needs to be paid for.

So if you just went out and bought a 680 not only did you pay for the 680. You paid the manufacturing cost, the costs of advertising and the reviewers. And all of the adverts slapped all over websites.

 

[ALXAndy]

Considering how close the two cards are, it tells me that the extra gig of VRAM is unnecessary. IMHO the only thing the 4GB 680s will have is a little more future proofing, as right now that extra gig in the 7970 is obviously wasted. But then, many people looking at the 7970 and 680 aren't worried
about the future proofness of the card, they are after the best numbers.

I wish I could turn back time to the point where AMD switched to 2gb and all of the reviewers slagging them off (/glares at Bit Tech again).

I'll never forget the reviews of the 6950 and 6970 where they slated AMD for frivolous use of things like vram. In the end AMD made a cut down version of the 6950.

But now? hah ! in your face !

It is not possible to max out BF3 on a 560ti without serious stutter and lag. However, the 6950 manages perfectly playable framerates.

Bit tech even changed their monthly recommendations from Nvidia cards to AMD ones over night.

Yet, the 560ti was hailed as an amazing mid ranged card. Shame it's been rendered useless so soon !

All it takes for me is the thought of Frostbite III and I shudder. It seems DICE do like pushing the envelope, as they only used FBII a couple of times before designing a new one (and that's good IMO, push the boundaries).

2GB could be proved useless with one game. And at £400+ that's worrying.

Edit. Wait til you see how much Nvidia charge for that future proofing. £500-£600 by all accounts !

 

[ALXAndy]

Well that has been an informative thread, loving all these comparisons.

Seriously though ALXAndy, you said no arguing, then proceeded to argue with people lol.

I see no corruption with any of the reviews, or any of them recommending anyone to sell a 7970 and get a 680.

As for marketing, both sides are guilty of that, it essential as when the actual products are similar, you need something like a brand specific feature to sway it one way or the other.

There is a stark difference between discussing something and arguing mate. Arguing usually results in heavy usage of the word troll, complete with psychiatric evaluations and at times, flat out insults.

I'm no kid. Infact, I'm closing in on 39 years old. At this time in life I am able to have a discussion without resorting to insulting people.

You will note that there has been some very worthwhile open and honest discussion in this thread. Some things people won't agree on, but that's fine. If we all agreed on one thing then.......

We would all have Ipads and Geforce cards.

And the world would be incredibly dull and predictable.

 

[ALXAndy]

Did you just liken those nVidia users to the types who choose Apple products?

Really?

Credibility dissolved in 1 second flat. 1 strike away from Ignore.

Have you been reading the thread? properly?

Try to. If you don't want to or you aren't interested then hey, that's cool. But picking out a few lines of text and then jumping to a conclusion is bad, mmkay.

If you mean - Do I feel that Nvidia are very clever and shrewd and have a brainwashed bunch of followers? then yes, guilty as charged, slap me on ignore.

By that of course I mean that there are actually people out there who sold their 7950 and 7970s in order to buy this new Nvidia card that is no better than what they had.

There are probably people who do equally stupid things over a new AMD card. Me? I don't do any of it.

Point of fact is that when I bought my 7970 Nvidia had absolutely nothing to offer at all.

The 580 3gb was more money, slower in absolutely everything, did not support three screens on one card in surround... I could go on all night.

There was just no way, as much as I tried, to convince myself that the 580 3gb was worth buying over the 7970.

Now though? the 680 is not the step up from the 7970 that the 7970 was in regards to the 580.

 

[ALXAndy]

Well you know what to do, start a 680 users thread, hopefully all the BS fanboy talk will be kept to a minimum, otherwise suspensions will fly.

I started this thread so that any debate or VS type arguments could take place here.

That way the two or three "Did you order a 680? if so post here !" and "Post your 680 stuff here" etc would remain that way.

Because woe betide had I set foot in there and voiced my concerns and opinions I would have been labelled a troll.

Personally I think this thread has been perfectly fine. The truth has come out, and at the end of the day there really is nothing between the cards (thankfully three to four websites have covered it properly) and so we've been discussing other things.

All I can do, I guess, is just repeat. If you don't like the idea of actually sitting down and discussing it and you want to have a totalitarian black and white thread about the 680 then this isn't the place to have it.

Around two years ago I pretty much stopped using all forums. Mostly because I found that others were not capable of sitting down and discussing things openly and honestly and would often cop the nut ache and throw a strop. So, I just chatted to people on Facebook as I know them personally and thus it never ends in insults and arguments.

A forum is about discussion. Without the discussion you have nothing. Just tumbleweeds.

It's quite amazing and worrying just how many people out there though support ideology and wish for a forum where they all just sit around and agree with each other.

 

[ALXAndy]

I never said you were a kid, or that you were insulting people, though as said likening people who use Nvidia to Apple fans is pushing it though, as you know that will wind some people up.

Ironically whenever I rip on Apple fans on Facebook they all tend to come out in droves. Even though what I usually say is completely correct.

The truth sometimes hurts. Sometimes it rubs people up the wrong way as it's not what they want to hear. Cue my mate, who queued up outside a shop for a nice handwarmer (Ipad 3 or whatever the damn name is).

He now refuses to accept that his device has heat issues, nor that half of what they have bolted on to it is all pointless tat. Nor that my Ipad 1 can run games equally as well as the Ipad 2 he just sold to get an Ipad 3.

If you know any Nvidia owners who would sell a card six weeks after paying £430 to replace it with an AMD one that was equal to it? then I am all ears.

Only Nvidia can make people do that. And don't worry, I'm not bashing on or insulting any one because it's just how it is. And yes, it's very similar to the way Apple have this hold on people.

I'm certainly not tarring every one with the same brush of course, because I myself am a bit of a closet Nvidia fan. I must say I do like the hype. However, I don't like it when they bend the truth. And that is what I feel they have done with the 680.

By now any one still reading this thread will have noticed the several links, reviews and articles which state that the 680 is equal level with the 7970.

By now any one who truly believes that not to be so will have chucked a strop and stopped reading it, and quite possibly has me on ignore.

Ironically, i tried an ipad2 for the first time the other day, was surprised as for the money there isn't a tablet that comes near it.

I bought a Hannspree Hannspad and dropped it 6 days after buying it, breaking it

Mate of mine showed me his Ipad 1, fell in love. Look, I'm not saying they aren't good, just like I am not saying that Nvidia 680s are not good. However, what I do know is that Ipads are bloody expensive ! And, each one has been perfectly fine and you really don't need to rush out and buy the next one.

What does the Ipad 2 have over the Ipad 1? dual core graphics ! wow. So there's a dual core GPU that isn't programmed to work with any games because the single cored Ipad 1 still exists. It has a camera ! wow. So I shall throw my Sony in the bin and go and buy an Ipad 2 !

Fact is that as much as Apple want me to believe that my Ipad is worthless and rush out and buy an Ipad 2/3/4/5 it isn't. It does everything I wanted it to, and has since I got it.

As public Enemy once said - Don't believe the hype.

I've read just about every review, and came to the conclusion that both are very good cards, and so near in price and performance that picking which is all down to which brand you prefer, or if you have no brand preference then which one has the best features.

People who sold the 7970 to get a 680 were more than likely Nvidia fans on a temporary trip to the other side, i doubt anyone was convinced it was a massively better card.

They fell for it. Yet, had a trustable well viewed review site had been more honest they wouldn't have fallen for it.