Nvidia GTX770 or AMD HD 7970

didgemaster · 2 Nov 2013 at 21:09

I will be building a new computer shortly and can not decide on the GPU should I go for Nvidia GTX770 or AMD HD 7970? When funds allow I will add another

rest of the setup that I think I'll buy:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £275.99
1 x Corsair Professional Series HX+ 850W '80+ Gold' Modular Power Supply (CP-9020032-UK) £149.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £142.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x NZXT KRAKEN X40 AIO Water Cooling Unit - 140mm £78.98
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD38G2666HC11CDC01) £74.99
Total : £844.33 (includes shipping : £9.50).

Cool Breeze · 2 Nov 2013 at 21:21

Go for the 7970 or a 280x (same cards really) over the 770 as you get a wider memory bus 384bit vs 256bit and an extra gig of ram.

Performance not a lot in it unless you get a toxic or matrix version then when you clock these they leave a 770 in the dirt.

MikeTimbers · 2 Nov 2013 at 21:48

Is the question related to their relative folding performance or gaming performance?

gpuerrilla · 2 Nov 2013 at 21:53

With respect to mining it came down to the AMD cards having more shader cores utilising integer operations, I am not sure if it's so clear cut these days especially as folding is different to cryptocoin mining.

Out of your options listed I would choose the 7970 as CB has answered perfectly.

didgemaster · 2 Nov 2013 at 22:27

MikeTimbers said:
Is the question related to their relative folding performance or gaming performance?

Folding

Biffa · 3 Nov 2013 at 01:58

They have roughly equal PPD but the Nvidia OpenCL driver uses a full core for each card whereas the AMD driver does not.

diogenese · 3 Nov 2013 at 03:39

I have 8 cores running boinc and three nvidia cards folding and they take less than 1% of cpu time per card.

didgemaster · 3 Nov 2013 at 09:26

roughly equal PPD is this running standard client or beta

diogenese · 3 Nov 2013 at 10:03

run advanced to get the zeta 17 core wu's

MikeTimbers · 3 Nov 2013 at 16:20

So if Nvidia achieves roughly the same ppd with a terrible implementation of OpenCL, the moment it is better or there is a JIT compiler for NVidia, the ppd will rocket past AMD again.

Biffa · 3 Nov 2013 at 20:22

Maybe.. I don't think any OpenCL changes will improve it much, but yes a JIT compiler may help a lot.

didgemaster · 4 Nov 2013 at 08:34

MikeTimbers said:
So if Nvidia achieves roughly the same ppd with a terrible implementation of OpenCL, the moment it is better or there is a JIT compiler for NVidia, the ppd will rocket past AMD again.

Biffa said:
Maybe.. I don't think any OpenCL changes will improve it much, but yes a JIT compiler may help a lot.

Any ideas on time scales for this?

Biffa · 4 Nov 2013 at 09:50

No idea unfortunately, I think it will take Nvidia getting serious about OpenCL, at the moment they are happy in their CUDA bubble. And why not? They invested huge amounts of money into it and have been reaping the rewards where it counts most, in the scientific research community and their Tesla cards.

didgemaster · 4 Nov 2013 at 12:57

I thought that mightbe the case - none of which makes my decision easier!

maybe I'll go for a second hand 7970 for the moment

didgemaster · 6 Nov 2013 at 21:05

doing a little more research it seems that the 7970 uses more electricity than the GTX770 can anyone point me to some points per watt stats?

Biffa · 8 Nov 2013 at 02:25

I'm pretty sure they pull the same watts at full whack, around 195W

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_770_review,5.html