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Spec me a card

ZeroUK

ZeroUK

ZeroUK

Associate
Joined
20 Sep 2010
Posts
189
Hi all,

Going to be ordering a graphics card and Noctua cooler in the morning but need a point in the right direction as what would be best for me.

Current spec:

2500k at 4.6Ghz
8Gb DDR3
Asus P8Z68-V
GTX 470 with Zalman cooler at 800Mhz

I game at 1080p. I play DOTA 2, Starcraft 2, Dark Souls, CS GO, DayZ and will be purchasing Sleeping Dogs.

Although I am an NVIDA fanboy at heart, I was tempted by the 3gb 7970 cards as I would eventually like a 2560x1440 (but no idea how soon I would be changing to this). I'm not interested in SLi / crossfire.

I'm currently set on a Gigabyte Windforce 670 but am open to other suggestions.

Thanks!
 
I'd go with a 7950 personally, save yourself the £70 and get only 10% less performance, and it overclocks very well indeed.

I know you are not a fan of CF, but if you have £300 to spend on a 7970 then you could pick up 2 7850's for the same price, or for another £340 ish, 2x 7870's which would trounce a single 7970 by between 20-40% in most games.

Good review here, where you can see the real world gains on some top titles of CF performance.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4...ference_video_cards_in_crossfire/index10.html

Chris.
 
Chrisoldinho said:
I'd go with a 7950 personally, save yourself the £70 and get only 10% less performance, and it overclocks very well indeed.

I know you are not a fan of CF, but if you have £300 to spend on a 7970 then you could pick up 2 7850's for the same price, or for another £340 ish, 2x 7870's which would trounce a single 7970 by between 20-40% in most games.

Good review here, where you can see the real world gains on some top titles of CF performance.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4...ference_video_cards_in_crossfire/index10.html

Chris.
Click to expand...

Whilst i agree on most of what Chris has written, you should be aware that you will have some form of micro stutter.

If you can id advise on getting one powerful card, rather than getting two weaker ones.

I had xfire, it was good but in some games micro stutter was an annoyance.

In saying that though, there are ways around micro stutter, like using vsync which almost removes it completely on AMD cards.
 
If looking at 670's, then the MSI 670 GTX PE is a pretty decent card. Just bought one myself. As fast as a 680 GTX out of the box and one of the very few 670/680's where voltage adjustment is available via Afterburner. Runs nice and cool / quiet as well. Solid build and decent looking card as well.
 
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Ok thanks for your inputs. I have been reading about Dark Souls issues with AMD so that has put me off somewhat... 670 does seem like a good all rounder if a little more expensive.
 
sin said:
MSI 670 GTX PE blew up

http://www.overclock.net/t/1299621/msi-gtx-670-pe-oc-blew-up
Click to expand...

Yep... I've seen that. Certainly did not put me off. There are always a few duds and that applies to any electronic component/s. MSI in general have a pretty decent reputation as far as I'm aware. I've had an MSI 460 HAWK and an MSI 580 GTX Twin Frozr and all have performed faultlessly. Who would have thought that ASUS would drop such a clanger with their 670 TOP card! Such is life ;)
 
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sin said:
Ye MSI is good make could have happened to any make of card
Click to expand...

Agreed.

I always buy a new graphics card with some trepidation... You do so much homework reading reviews and looking at the forums, only to buy what you think should be the ideal card and have an issue. As an example... My first 580 was a Gigabyte windforce and that would not run stable at stock volts and suffered from slight coil whine. A shame because it was otherwise a nice card. Just life...
 
mikeo said:
Agreed.

I always buy a new graphics card with some trepidation... You do so much homework reading reviews and looking at the forums, only to buy what you think should be the ideal card and have an issue. As an example... My first 580 was a Gigabyte windforce and that would not run stable at stock volts and suffered from slight coil whine. A shame because it was otherwise a nice card. Just life...
Click to expand...

On that very subject, I have owned 2 VTX3D's, both suffered terrible coil whine (not crossfire). 1 7970 ASUS TOP, again hideous coil whine, was clearly second hand when I got it and had no form of voltage adjustment (locked by ASUS). I then went for CF 7870's, performance is excellent but I now find one of the cards is artifacting even at stock speeds, and the fan profile is hideous, can be fixed with CCC but the trade off is higher temps, which makes the artifacting even worse (shouldn't have bought the XFX core edition), no coil whine at least :)

So what next, 2 HIS IceQ Turbo 7950's I think, can get them and will claim the VAT back so will cost me the same as my 7870's cost, fingers crossed.
 
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