Upgrading from a 6950

guywithtwohands · 10 Jun 2012 at 00:08

EDIT: I ended up choosing the Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce.
Hi there.
So having recently bought a 27" 2560x1440 monitor, I started looking for a new graphics card as well. I've been looking around a bit and have now decided on either the Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce or the Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC.

My system specs:
Asus P8P67 - "REGULAR edition"
i7-2600k
AMD Radeon HD 6950
8 GB RAM
Corsair Professional HX650W

Perhaps it should be noted that I have a second monitor being used as extended desktop running 1920x1080.

The main advantage the 7970 has, is the additional 1 GB of VRAM, at least the way I see it. Other than that, from what I've been able to gather from benchmarks, they perform relatively the same with some titles fluctuating between the two.

So what do you guys say, 670 or 7970

?

malachi · 10 Jun 2012 at 00:21

If I was in your shoes, I would do neither and crossfire the 6950 instead. But if you like the single card option, 7970.

guywithtwohands · 10 Jun 2012 at 00:27

malachi said:
If I was in your shoes, I would do neither and crossfire the 6950 instead. But if you like the single card option, 7970.

I thought about that too, but decided against it, mainly because I like the single card solution, but also since, as far as I know, my motherboard's other PCI-e x16 slot is running in x4 mode (look here http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8P67/#specifications), so it wouldn't give me the full crossfire performance (as far as I understand).

arc@css · 10 Jun 2012 at 00:52

Coin flip. Look to see what is the cheapest, and perhaps factor what technology is favoured by the games you play.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/508?vs=598

I've just had a look at the prices, and I personally couldn't justify spending quite a lot more for the AMD card when the 670 matches it, and is substantially cheaper. The extra 1gb of memory won't make much difference, if any.

guywithtwohands · 10 Jun 2012 at 02:25

arc@css said:
Coin flip. Look to see what is the cheapest, and perhaps factor what technology is favoured by the games you play.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/508?vs=598

I've just had a look at the prices, and I personally couldn't justify spending quite a lot more for the AMD card when the 670 matches it, and is substantially cheaper. The extra 1gb of memory won't make much difference, if any.

You don't think the extra gigabyte would make a difference at 2560x1440? Hmm.
Well, looking at the benchmarks, it does seem like the 670 gives a few higher frames per second in the games I play.

arc@css · 10 Jun 2012 at 03:18

guywithtwohands said:
You don't think the extra gigabyte would make a difference at 2560x1440? Hmm.
Well, looking at the benchmarks, it does seem like the 670 gives a few higher frames per second in the games I play.

There will be very few games that will benefit from it; note this would be more applicable to multi-screen in the vast majority of situations. Even then, many reviews I've read suggested that the memory deficit made little or no difference at all.

guywithtwohands · 10 Jun 2012 at 04:05

arc@css said:
There will be very few games that will benefit from it; note this would be more applicable to multi-screen in the vast majority of situations. Even then, many reviews I've read suggested that the memory deficit made little or no difference at all.

Oh ok. So you think I will be just fine with the GTX 670 at 2560x1440?
Sorry for the many questions, I just want to make sure I'm not making a bad choice here

.
As mentioned though, I do have a second monitor used as extended desktop, but I guess that uses very little graphics power and isn't much of a deciding factor.

But right now I am very much leaning towards the 670.

dave_beast · 10 Jun 2012 at 04:09

guywithtwohands said:
But right now I am very much leaning towards the 670.

Make sure you read up about the stuttering problems before making your decision.

Rusty0611 · 10 Jun 2012 at 11:15

I would go for the 670.

dave_beast · 10 Jun 2012 at 11:44

Rusty0611 said:
I would go for the 670.

And I would suggest they don't until the issues are sorted.

Havana_UK · 10 Jun 2012 at 12:06

Nvidia have acknowledged hat the stuttering problem (which not all are experiencing) is a driver issue and will be fixed in their next major driver release, expected this month.

I have the GTX680 and haven't experienced the problem myself, and therefore my advice would be NOT to base your buying decision on a driver issue, especially considering nvidias excellent driver track record.

Something else to bear in mind, is that once you have substantially overclocked a 7970 you are beyond the realms of performance that can be achieved with a GTX670.

Marine-RX179 · 10 Jun 2012 at 12:35

Havana_UK said:
Something else to bear in mind, is that once you have substantially overclocked a 7970 you are beyond the realms of performance that can be achieved with a GTX670.

But you are forgetting that 7970 is a bit more expensive as well, or people are simply paying more for more performance.

Rusty0611 · 10 Jun 2012 at 13:28

dave_beast said:
And I would suggest they don't until the issues are sorted.

You've already said that implicitly in your last post so I don't know why you felt the need to say it twice?

Marine-RX179 · 10 Jun 2012 at 13:49

Rusty0611 said:
You've already said that implicitly in your last post so I don't know why you felt the need to say it twice?

Because he thinks he's on a holy crusade to rid the world (or at least peoples' PC) of the evil known as Nvidia?

shawsy109 · 10 Jun 2012 at 13:49

Lets not turn this into yet another green v red thread and keep it on topic instead of arguing the toss.

Marine-RX179 · 10 Jun 2012 at 13:52

shawsy109 said:
Lets not turn this into yet another green v red thread and keep it on topic instead of arguing the toss.

It won't happen, unless someone decide to post (spam?) the same thing 3rd or even 4th times.

dave_beast · 10 Jun 2012 at 13:55

Rusty0611 said:
You've already said that implicitly in your last post so I don't know why you felt the need to say it twice?

Because you blindly suggest to go for the 670 without giving any reason why, but why would you, you would buy an Nvidia dog pooper scooper if it had holes in it.

OP, take a read here before pressing buy on anything http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=226227

Marine-RX179 said:
Because he thinks he's on a holy crusade to rid the world (or at least peoples' PC) of the evil known as Nvidia?

No, stop reading what you want to see, i'll suggest an Nvidia card to someone if it suits their needs better, however, I can't recommend the 670 as it's still not fixed.

Marine-RX179 said:
It won't happen, unless someone decide to post (spam?) the same thing 3rd or even 4th times.

Suggest, if you don't have anything constructive to add to the discussion to not participate with flame baiting nonsense.

tommybhoy · 10 Jun 2012 at 14:48

Until the stutter problem is 100% fixed, it's a problem, as I stated in another thread they said it will 'hopefully' be fixed, not that it 'will' be fixed.

In order to keep selling the cards in a healthy fashion, they need to be actively voicing that it will 'hopefully' be fixed in order to cover their backs.

My suggestion would be to keep what you have for the moment and wait for a concrete fix, otherwise you are taking a gamble.

Keep your eye on the thread Dave posted as there is far too much brand loyalty in forums to get an honest answer, while waiting for an Amd card to go on an offer that matches or is very close to the 670, but Amd have problems of their own, namely the zero core not working for everyone.

opethdisciple · 10 Jun 2012 at 15:27

Rusty0611 said:
I would go for the 670.

+1 - This is what im going to do. Tired of AMD's drivers.

Rusty0611 · 10 Jun 2012 at 15:35

A

dave_beast said:
Because you blindly suggest to go for the 670 without giving any reason why, but why would you, you would buy an Nvidia dog pooper scooper if it had holes in it.

Actually my last 3 cards were AMD so that kind of nullifies whatever point you're making.

I love the way you tell someone off for posting nonsense in the same post that you put what I have quoted. Fantastic.

Stuttering is a problem if you're affected which is a large if.

To really debate the scale of the issue you'd need to know what % of users are affected. Judging by the number of people affected/not affected on these forums I would say it's a very small proportion. But of course I'm guesstimating.

The point is moot anyway - it shouldn't be there and nVidia need to fix it.