GTX 670 or AMD 7970?

[OptimaLnrg]

the workaround for voltage on 670s is a solder gun unfortunately.

Or maybe the msi power edition (not confirmed yet)

 

[Freddie1980]

I agree with your comment flopper but AMD released slides of 'improvements' are likely to be nowhere near the truth on the majority of systems, just the same as the marketing junk released by Nvidia is usually a load of old toffee too.

Them saying a 7700 gets a 50%+ gain in performance in Skyrim at 2560 with 8AA and 16 AF can only be taking it from unplayable to barely playable at about 25fps I'd wager, if that!

Nvidia and AMD both specifically team up with Developers at times to ensure certain features are included in new titles, again I'd usually wager this is mostly just marketing spiel but it does happen, obv. the Devs want their game to work on as many systems as possible to reach the broadest audience.

The other way to interpret the results on that graph is that AMD has fixed the issues they were having with performance in various titles, in this that would mean they have fixed Batman: AC and Skyrim.

Some games will always work better on one architecture then another but in reality the way PC games are developed and run through DirectX is very inefficient. In a dream world if programmers actually wrote so it could be directly read by the video card all are games would be 50% quicker, I'm not saying Windows/DX is bad but compared to consoles PC's are tackle the problem of rendering like brutes.


edit:

What's this issue with the GTX670 voltage??? Please don't tell me I've bought a dud.

 

[Rusty0611]

psychodil in bf3 im hitting 19xx vram usage and taht is not on maxed out details. 3D does eat extra Vram up.
7950+ water block it is then After 8-10 hours weekend sessions with my 6950 i get max of 55c on core. So i assume there is still no workaround vcore limit on 670s ?? Shame

3D does not use more VRAM. Well technically it does but looking at less than 50MB so could be in a margin of error. Don't post if you haven't at least tested.

 

[OptimaLnrg]

What's this issue with the GTX670 voltage??? Please don't tell me I've bought a dud.

Most/all 670 / most 680 max voltage limit is 1.175v (software) for the core, limited by hardware for most models.

kfa2 680 white pcb ugly thing has potential for voltage control via software apparently and is in the works?
msi lightning 680 / power edition 670 has potential for voltage control, lightning already had 1.212v on core out of the box.
evga classified 680 has voltage control via the stupid external EVBOT thing.

I'm not aware of any others..

According to evga_jacob, nvidia say there should be no software voltage control for kepler. (I lost the link to this). Although tbf he could just be trying to justify why the classified doesn't have software voltage control.

 

[Rusty0611]

What's this issue with the GTX670 voltage??? Please don't tell me I've bought a dud.

It's not an issue. The voltage is dynamically altered to fall in line with the boost speed. However, it's capped at 1.175V.

 

[tommybhoy]

Nothing against AMD. Im not a fanboi, thats bs. I get the best card at the time (according to my own judgements) but over the years with my 5870 I noticed a lot of Nvidia endorsements and tech in games as well as the ATI drivers causing me issues over the last two years with my 5870.

BF3 and Skyrim where running great on whql drivers. So far only tried Metro with these beta drivers.

Game was stuttery before, now its much better.

Driver problems non existent with Nvidia after a months use then?

As I said before, I very much doubt someone who has problems with drivers holds onto their card for two+ years.

PS. BF3 may run faster on Nvidia but it was developed with both Nvidia and AMD, it's been plastered all over both vendors driver installation packages.

ME3 is a bad example as well regarding vendor support, it's not gpu PhysX that's used, you don't need an Nvidia gpu for cpu PhysX, besides it gives out mental fps anyway on lesser gpu's.

As I said, nothing wrong with enjoying a gpu, but the bandwagons bad enough regarding bumming drivers down(again, that you used for two+ years) in nearly every thread you post on.

NVIDIA is better at 3D. I own a 680 with NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 and my mate had the AMD 3D and sorry but AMD's 3D is nowhere near as good as NVIDIA's and even my mate who has a 7970 agrees.

I have a friend who says troll troll troll.

Saw the above statement elsewhere and thought it very apropriate for your comment, it has nothing at all to do with the subject on hand but I couldn't put it better myself.

If that was really the case, why are there a lot of people on the Tridef forum using Tridef instead of Nvidia 3D?

Tbf though the Tridef forums all seem to have people who prefer using Tridef on their Nvidias.

But rather than give out a one sided view I'll be subjective.

Nvidia 3D Vision is so superior to this it's insane, and they know it =/.

So very much wish I'd gone passive with the 680, too late now.

Not really, Tridef is way better in a lot of situations. There is less crosstalk issues. Nvidia 3D seems to be better support for games out of the box, but the Tridef are much better at supporting games after they come out.

Of course there is going to be a difference if you use side by side in tridef and are comparing it to steroscopic 3D because it is frame sequential.

In fact I much prefer Tridef. It's much more robust than 3d Vision and handles FPS games much better.

 

[Gregster]

If that was really the case, why are there a lot of people on the Tridef forum using Tridef instead of Nvidia 3D?

Because they know no different?

At 1080p with the "high" detail preset, Battlefield 3 looked good and ran fairly smoothly on both setups. However, unlike the 3D Vision setup, the HD3D rig exhibited a few kinks—even with AMD's new Catalyst 12.1a driver. Sometimes, overlays like blood splatters and dust particles, which are meant to look like they're stuck to the screen, would only be visible to one eye. I saw the same problem in the single-player campaign. At the start of one mission, when you slowly wake up after an earthquake, an overlay of the character's eyelids opening and closing suffered from the same bug. At certain points, one eye would be getting a totally dark image, while the other would see the full 3D scene. Disconcerting. Seeing dust and blood splatters through only one eye seemed to cause eye strain over prolonged multiplayer sessions, too.

What about the displays and glasses?

I actually tried Battlefield 3 on the Samsung panel with the Radeon first, and I must confess to being sorely disappointed. The image was too dark, details were too small, and trying to sit closer to the display resulted in serious eye strain. (Turns out Samsung's documentation recommends sitting no closer than 20" from the display in 3D mode.) A large part of being a skilled BF3 player involves spotting camouflaged enemies in hard-to-see places—grass, bushes, behind rocks, and the like. The dimness of the Samsung setup with stereo 3D enabled was a handicap, and it led me to getting blindsided by enemies I really should have been able to spot.

To make matters worse, the Samsung panel had some nasty ghosting going on. With each eye, I could see a faint outline of the image intended for the other eye. Switching the glasses off and on again to re-sync them didn't help. Somehow, though, cycling display inputs through the monitor's OSD reduced ghosting in a noticeable way. Go figure.

After that, switching to the Asus monitor with the GeForce was like night and day. Not only was the image bigger, which helped with both the immersion and the spotting of bad guys, but it was also brighter and closer to the level of contrast one might expect from a 2D panel. Best of all, I saw little to no ghosting and experienced almost no eye strain. My only beef was that, sometimes, I caught reflections of the game action in the glossy frame of the Nvidia goggles. Really, Nvidia? Why would you make that glossy, of all things?

In any case, I got sucked into the action and ended up losing track of time playing BF3 on the 3D Vision rig. It was delightful. Bullets whizzed at me menacingly, dogfights gained a whole other dimension, and crawling through grass and bushes was suddenly a whole lot more realistic. No doubt about it, the 3D Vision 2 rig made the game more fun and visually engrossing than my personal, non-stereoscopic gaming setup.

The latest entry in Rocksteady Studios' Batman series is featured prominently in 3D Vision 2's official compatibility list. True to Nvidia's promise, the game was smooth and exhibited no visual bugs that I noticed in 3D Vision mode. (To keep frame times low, I played at 1080p using high detail levels, but I left DirectX 11 features disabled.) I'm afraid I can't say as much for HD3D, which lacks proper stereoscopic support for the game altogether. Arkham City doesn't use AMD's quad-buffer API, and it doesn't have a complete HD3D profile in TriDef. Trying to use the TriDef's profile creation feature resulted in awful artifacting. The Virtual 3D option provided the best approximation of what I saw on the Nvidia config, but the distortion around objects and characters was bothersome.

While I couldn't stomach much of Arkham City in HD3D, I spent some time playing on the 3D Vision 2 setup. As in BF3, enabling stereo 3D added to the experience. Arkham City's streets are dark and visually noisy, which can make the game feel a little uniform without the illusion of depth. (In fact, I think one can say the same thing for all too many Unreal Engine 3 games—there's something about UE3 and gritty environments, isn't there?) Adding depth made Arkham City's game world pop, causing level geometry, objects, and characters to stand out, to gain more visual separation from one another. Believe it or not, I got the feeling playing in stereo 3D made the levels easier to navigate.

All in all, though, stereo 3D wowed me less in Arkham City than it did in Battlefield 3. Perhaps that's because Arkham City is a third-person game that doesn't throw objects and bullets directly at the player's face. Then again, its masterfully voice-acted cut scenes did look great with a dash of stereoscopy. Hmm.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22350/2

But what do me or my mate know? You know best Tommy.

 

[Zeed]

gregster i just have Passive 3d monitor so i would be using crappy AMD soft anyway..

Rusty0611 i tested and it does eat up more of my Vram. Might be Drivers problem not sure. It eats extra 200 megs w/o AA in my case.

Will buy 7950 with water block than. I wpuld go for 670 if you would not need 2 soldier it to get more Vcore out of it .....

 

[Gregster]

gregster i just have Passive 3d monitor so i would be using crappy AMD soft anyway..

Rusty0611 i tested and it does eat up more of my Vram. Might be Drivers problem not sure. It eats extra 200 megs w/o AA in my case.

Will buy 7950 with water block than. I wpuld go for 670 if you would not need 2 soldier it to get more Vcore out of it .....

Makes sense bud. The 7950 clocks up real well (ask milano chris who almost beat my heaven score).

You will enjoy it bro

 

[ChrisD.]

I liked my 7950 but I think I prefer my new GTX670.

 

[Mr. May]

I moved from 7970's to 2x 670's and they feel 100x smoother even though the fps counter says otherwise

Never buying ati again.

 

[arc@css]

I moved from 7970's to 2x 670's and they feel 100x smoother even though the fps counter says otherwise

Mr. May, did you notice any image quality differences between the two set-ups?

 

[tommybhoy]

But what do me or my mate know? You know best Tommy.

My best mate...

...

Is that the way it's meant to be played now Gregster?

I wouldn't embarass myself on the forum with talk of-my friend who uses such and such says.

Tommy doesn't know what's best, tommy isn't daft enough to say what's best because I have only used Tridef and didn't say it was better than Nvidia 3D!

I'm not in the position to comment on Nvidia 3D as I haven't used it before unlike others who know best.

As I said it's subjective, two quotes from my last post from real OcUK forum users who have used both, one prefers Nvidia 3D, the other prefers Tridef!

Because they know no different?

Nvidia users using Tridef will either not have the 3D vision kit but from my visits to the Tridef forum some Nvidia users prefer the effects of Tridef instead.

BF3 has been fixed since 12.1, plus, they used the inbuilt effects, not Tridef mate, the difference is night and day with the 3D effects.

BAC wass never meant to run nice on AMD, but that's another story, it also runs fine now too, or since April at least:

What has surprised me the most, is the fact that Tridef just 'works', after all the bad things said in the graphics section of the forum regarding AMD's implementation of 3D, take into account I'm using CrossFire too with no hassles as mentioned in various threads over there(I'm assuming Tridef sorted out the CrossFire problems).

£166(after cashback and assuming you get a good one) for a 120Hz 3D monitor using AMD gpu's is amazing value compared to swapping to the green team and investing in Nvidia 3D surround and being tied to it.



There is a laser sight available via Tridef hotkeys(keypad arrow keys and no.5) for those finding it hard to aim.

All games launched via Tridef game launcher unless stated.

BF3(not launched via tridef, 3D applied directly within the game), very disappointing, thought it would be much, much better, especially compared with the effects on other titles, quite a performance hit too!

L4D2, incredible 3D effect, the best use of 3D of all the games I tried, imo the overall depth, looking into the distance is incredible.

Skyrim, stunning 2nd best looking title for me absolutely fantastic.

Deuss Ex(not launched via tridef, 3D applied directly within the game), it's ok, but nothing special.

BAC, fantastic, not much of a performance hit and Bats looks incredible when you pan the camera around him it has to be seen to take it in.

Dead Space 2, fantastic.

Bulletstorm, very immersive.

ME3, good looking and lots of depth.

F3 NV, great looking.

Dirt 3, (not launched via tridef, 3D applied directly within the game) disappointing as I heard it was very impressive, maybe expected too much.

Portal 2, looks great but I was getting a huge performance hit.

Crysis 2, fantastic, not much of a hit.

Crysis, sore on the senses, it looks great, but I was getting a shimmering effect, maybe have to play about with the settings and there is a considerable performance hit too.

Since that post, I found out that Portal2 performance hit was removed when I disabled CrossFire.

It goes to show though, that it's not changed much in this section of the forum from what I said in the top paragraph of the above quote.

 

[Gregster]

My best mate...

...

Is that the way it's meant to be played now Gregster?

I wouldn't embarass myself on the forum with talk of-my friend who uses such and such says.

Tommy doesn't know what's best, tommy isn't daft enough to say what's best because I have only used Tridef and didn't say it was better than Nvidia 3D!

I'm not in the position to comment on Nvidia 3D as I haven't used it before unlike others who know best.

As I said it's subjective, two quotes from my last post from real OcUK forum users who have used both, one prefers Nvidia 3D, the other prefers Tridef!



Nvidia users using Tridef will either not have the 3D vision kit but from my visits to the Tridef forum some Nvidia users prefer the effects of Tridef instead.

BF3 has been fixed since 12.1, plus, they used the inbuilt effects, not Tridef mate, the difference is night and day with the 3D effects.

BAC wass never meant to run nice on AMD, but that's another story, it also runs fine now too, or since April at least:



Since that post, I found out that Portal2 performance hit was removed when I disabled CrossFire.

It goes to show though, that it's not changed much in this section of the forum from what I said in the top paragraph of the above quote.

For a start, I do have experience the same as my mate (why would you be embarrased about mentioning a mate who's system you are very familiar with?). I advised him to get a 680 when I did but he ignored me and got a 7970 with the samsung 27inch monitor at a later date(his choice). I had no experience with 3D gaming at all and read loads of write ups before commiting to buying my Asus VG278H (which has the lighboost technology with 3D vision 2). After me bragging, my mate came round and had a play on Trine 2.

He got his monitor and also bought Trine 2 and the depth was not as good as mine. I played BF3 on his and again it looked **** compared to mine. He came round mine and played Trine 2 and Diablo 3 and his comments were "yours is better than mine in depth and brightness"

For me, the 3D on AMD was dark and ghosting was showing. I get none of this with 3D Vision 2.

So when I say NVIDIA is better at 3D, I know what I am talking about. Even my brother has AMD 3D and prefers mine.

Maybe AMD's new drivers have improved the ghosting and darkness? Maybe the new drivers have sorted out the glitching and other failings...I don't know.

I am passing on my experience with both set ups and if this disagrees with you...Tough, get over it.

It winds me up when people have no experience with things and yet feel they have the knowledge to post ****.

 

[Klo]

I moved from 7970's to 2x 670's and they feel 100x smoother even though the fps counter says otherwise

Never buying ati again.

Why not?

Don't be stupid, each time you want to buy new cards look at what everyone has got to offer. Don't just put a blanket ban on ATI because you've had one better experience with Nvidia.

 

[Mr. May]

Mr. May, did you notice any image quality differences between the two set-ups?

No both look the same to me image wise.

 

[Mr. May]

Why not?

Don't be stupid, each time you want to buy new cards look at what everyone has got to offer. Don't just put a blanket ban on ATI because you've had one better experience with Nvidia.

The driver support was horrific for crossfire. the cards where brilliant though shame about the software.

Also games like shift 2 would not work due to using physx and being crippled by not having it and AA would not work.

Half the times i loaded up BF3 it would not work the cards where scaling 97%-50% it was a mess..

Max payne was playing with high framrates ie 100+ but felt like 30-40.

I have never had a problem with any nvidia with any of my games owning 6800 ultra, 9800gtx sli, 275sli, 470, 470 sli, 480, 480 sli and now 670sli

The only one which was a problem was 470 tri sli due to lack of vram at 2560x1440

 

[psychodil]

The driver support was horrific for crossfire. the cards where brilliant though shame about the software.



I have never had a problem with any nvidia with any of my games owning 6800 ultra, 9800gtx sli, 275sli, 470, 470 sli, 480, 480 sli and now 670sli

The only one which was a problem was 470 tri sli due to lack of vram at 2560x1440

Oh you seem to have forgotten to mention the problem you are having with bf3 crashing. At least that is what you said in your other thread.

 

[Mr. May]

That due to trying to clock them too high the base boost on my cards put them at 1175 i was trying to add another 100-200 mhz on that

Bit of research and there fine now @ 1230/3300

Unlike the 7970's which Ive had for months and still didnt work properly.

Ive tested all the games i normally play to night and all feel better/smoother and actually work

 

[tommybhoy]

So when I say NVIDIA is better at 3D, I know what I am talking about. Even my brother has AMD 3D and prefers mine.

Maybe AMD's new drivers have improved the ghosting and darkness? Maybe the new drivers have sorted out the glitching and other failings...I don't know.

Hit speed dial and give your 'bro' or 'mate' a phone, he should be able to tell you all you need to know, after all I post **** and don't know what I'm talking about, they will tell you the truth, honest guv.


Sigh, back to the perfect glitch free gaming I see with Nvidia hardware, even though the forums down, do you want me to start posting Nvidia 3D problem links?

I am passing on my experience with both set ups and if this disagrees with you...Tough, get over it.

It winds me up when people have no experience with things and yet feel they have the knowledge to post ****.

LOL, I haven't laughed so much in ages, seriously, when is uncle Bob and aunt Fanny coming into the fray?

If you wan't folk to take your posts seriously, your going the wrong way about it.

I never said one is better than the other, I'll leave that up to the friends n family on what's best.

I simply stated some prefer one over the other, pointed out by other members of this forum.

Are you saying only Martini's right and melmacs posting **** too?