• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Can a 7950 Overclocked offer near 680 performance for less money.

Soldato
Joined
27 Mar 2010
Posts
3,069
Hi just wondering that with the 7950 being priced around 80-/+ quid cheaper to a 680. If you were to overclock the 7950 to around
1150 core 1600memory, how far behind would it be to a gtx680 in a wide selection of games at 1920x1080.

All i've found so far is guru3d did some tests with an oc 7950 and their gtx680 review they overclocked the 680.

gtx680 (core1264 boost 1264 6634 memory)
7950 tfIII ( core1167 6256 memory)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
crysis 2 (1920 x1080)
gtx 680 70 fps
7950 72 fps

Alien Vs pred
gtx 680 60 fps
7950 tfIII 58 fps




Are there some cheaper 7950's that dont have voltage control? Like powercolor didnt allow their cheaper 6850s to.
 
Yes, 7950 overclocked still offers ridiculous performance but, I'd still wait, we've got some lower end Nvidia parts to come and "old" cards to go out of stock, then some price adjustments/price fights to fill in the gaps the lack of old cards creates, 7950 should be sub £300 in not to long, or a 670ti/660 something cut down or underclocked 680gtx will offer far better value for money than the 680gtx.

Keep in mind that is two of AMD's better games against the 680gtx, others will be behind though a couple others are WAY in AMD's favour like Metro 2033.

THe very varied performance across games is a tough one, Nvidia has stronger game dev links(or simply pay more) so who knows which way most games will go in the next year or two, AMD architecture favouring or Nvidia.

Either way there ARE better value Nvidia cards to come, and prices WILL drop.

a 670ti something or other and a 7950 around £250 but only 10, maybe 15% slower than their big brothers would be great great cards.
 
I think the 7870 is hitting the price segment of where the 6970 is/was, and I cant see the 7950 dropping to £250, maybe £300.

I suppose it all depends on how Nvidia competes with their lower range cards.
 
I'll show you later on.
I expect my 7950 at 1125MHZ to be pretty close to a fully OC'ed 680, but the winner being the GTX680.

I should have my card around 3pm, I'll run some benchmarks and comparative review.
 
The 7870 basically offers the exact performance as last years 6970 at last years prices! Where's the progression? Hopefully when supply of the 6900 cards disappears we'll see price drops on the whole range. You can already get a a 7970 for just over £300 so hopefully we'll see it come down further to nearer £250.
 
Shadow-boxer yeah I know the 7870 is pointless coming from my unlocked 950 mhz 6950. But like I skipped the 5000 series and was still using a 4870 until the 6950 fluttered her eyes at me.

Where have you seen a 7970 so cheap, or did you mean 7950?

Like I said though do the cheaper 7950's have decent vrms and an unlocked voltage controller?
 
The 7870 basically offers the exact performance as last years 6970 at last years prices! Where's the progression? Hopefully when supply of the 6900 cards disappears we'll see price drops on the whole range. You can already get a a 7970 for just over £300 so hopefully we'll see it come down further to nearer £250.

There's a few factors, 28nm is said by just about everyone to simply cost a lot more per wafer than 40nm.

65/55nm to 40nm and you had basically an increase in wafer cost from $3.5/4k only to $5k so pricing wasn't disimilar(because wafer costs came down over time anyway) so you have essentially double the transistors per core for the same cost.

This gen it seems to be not far off double the transistors, but noticeably more expensive wafers making the improvement in cost(rather than performance/power) not anywhere near as good.

Also people are saying the cost in simply taping out a product is going up, process costs are increasing gen on gen. We're getting pretty good actual process improvements still, so the 7870 power usage is awesome, but the cost to produce between process generations is going up too fast now.

Some real competition between foundries would probably help there, if GloFo get their **** together then two companies competing for orders means lower costs, likewise if GloFo had 28nm gpu's being churned out today, it would effective hugely increase overal worldwide 28nm production capacity meaning between two companies demand for 28nm would decrease, and stock of cards would increase all which would help push prices down.

Lastly, people are simply accepting that its fine for people to raise gpu pricing, some price increase is unavoidable, £450 IS a joke, £500 is a joke, if people simply did not pay it...... prices would drop.

There's a price they can't go below and that's higher than last gen, then there is the price they can get away with because people are just paying whatever is asked of them. Consumers are to blame for the latter one of those, if people just refused to buy at those prices we'd all be better off.
 
i bought 7950 last night, even though i wanted 680. Power consumption, stock cooler, price and no zeropower tech all contributed towards 7950 choice. 680 is already oc'ed as far as i know and 7950 isnt which leaves a lot of room for oc with direct cuii cooler.
 
Shadow-boxer yeah I know the 7870 is pointless coming from my unlocked 950 mhz 6950. But like I skipped the 5000 series and was still using a 4870 until the 6950 fluttered her eyes at me.

Where have you seen a 7970 so cheap, or did you mean 7950?

Like I said though do the cheaper 7950's have decent vrms and an unlocked voltage controller?

It would be interesting to know if the cheapest 7950's have anything lacking or no voltage control, but there are, if you shop around, some great prices on MSI twinfrozor's(whatever they're called) and Gigabyte Windforce, I've seen £50 difference for both those cards looking around various shops.

I'd pay £350 for one with a quiet massively better cooler and MSI/Gigabyte over a £300 cut down version, the cooler alone is worth it in all honesty.
 
Shadow-boxer yeah I know the 7870 is pointless coming from my unlocked 950 mhz 6950. But like I skipped the 5000 series and was still using a 4870 until the 6950 fluttered her eyes at me.

Where have you seen a 7970 so cheap, or did you mean 7950?

Like I said though do the cheaper 7950's have decent vrms and an unlocked voltage controller?

Yeah, sorry typo. I meant 7950.:)
 
aye got a reference 7950 stock clocks 800/1050 easily overclocked without touching volts to 1080/1425 so a increase of nearly 25% on gpu clock and nearly 40% on memory clock and that was without even trying. make of that as you will and thanks w3bbo for the card :-)
 
Maybe it would, but I wouldnt call the 7950 so overclockable...
Mine went to 900/1300 with stock voltage

Mine did 1125/1500 pretty easily, and mine wasn't the best of clockers.


Yeah, in AvP.

Nuff said? :p


Lol, what's wrong with AVP :p?


hows the benching coming on matini ? I'm relying on you for a post on the overclockers
site lol


After a bit of use, I ended up letting my friend pick up the 7950.
Without posting a bunch of numbers, a fully OC'ed 7950 and an OC'ed 680 (Who knows what they're capable of right now) you're never really going to notice a difference between the two, if you can get a 7950 at say 320 or around (Can even get second hand 7970's for around 330) then I'd say get one over the GTX680 and save yourself some money.

I'm a little annoyed at the 2GB VRAM (For purely illogical reasons)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom