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Why the 670 doesnt appeal to me

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Firstly this thread is not here to upset 670 owners or for any fanboy rants, just for me and others to share opinions so please no bickering.

The 670 is a cracking card out of the box, no question. At stock it is a good bit ahead of a 7950 (although more expensive) and about equal to a 7970 ( also a bit cheaper than a 7970 unless you include the 3 free games you can get with a 7970). However im not reall interested in stock performance, as my cards are never at stock. Im only intersted in typical overclocked performance vs typical overclocked performance, and most reviews dont often show this.

But the reason the 670/680 cardsit don'y appeal to me is that I am an overclocker, I enjoy spending time tweaking voltages, clock speeds, fan speeds etc.

When I went from a Phenom 2 to an i5, I was pleased with the performance, but overclocking it was so quick and boring, in a way i was dissapointed as I enjoyed tweaking the NB voltage, NB Speed, HT speed etc on the phenoms, and the I5 overclocking was just increase voltage, increase turbo multipler to 48 and done :(

I feel nvidia have just done the overclocking for you on these cards, so that the "stock" benchmarks and reviews are excellent and that is what sells most cards.

However for me I would have much preferred the 670 if it came stock clocked at even 800MHz, as long as they gave me full control of voltages, clock speeds, memory voltage etc. I know damn well if they did this I could get the cards to 1300Mhz or very likely even more, and the watercooling guys out there would hit even higher, representing even better bang for buck.

So I can see how these cards are excellent for the guys out there who cant/dont overclock much, regardless of the excellent performance, but for me part of the enjoyment of new CPU's and GPU's is overclocking and tweaking them, and i feel with these cards we are paying nvidia to do this for us when I know damn well I could get more performance out of these cards if nvidia gave us full control of voltages.

So for me the 79xx cards appeal to me a little more due to having better bang for buck when overclocked to the max and factoring in the free games and extra vram. This opinion of mine will probably change quickly if/when somebody figures out how to adjust voltage on these cards and people start hitting 1300/1400MHz+ :D

I am no AMD fanboy, having a 570 at the moment. I am a fanboy of value for money and bang/buck :p

Having said all that I am still jealous of you 670/680 owners, I just wish nvidia hadnt noobified the overclocking
 
II would be surprised if AMD didn't go down some sort of auto overclock route in the near future.

They used to have/still have overdrive in the catalyst control centre dont they? Its just optional which is what I prefer. As long as they give me full control of everything I am happy :-) I dont need or want a helping hand with voltages/temps/clocks as I enjoy finding the limits myself :)
 
Yes, I love trying to find my cards maximum - Which is no where near my CCC limits! This is my 24/7 clock, but I have benched at 1265/1800mhz

485827_10150831577681494_659761493_9933394_1678524406_n.jpg
 
They used to have/still have overdrive in the catalyst control centre dont they? Its just optional which is what I prefer. As long as they give me full control of everything I am happy :-) I dont need or want a helping hand with voltages/temps/clocks as I enjoy finding the limits myself :)

Same here, but gpu boost is working well for nvidia. The majority of the market will be gamers that want to plug and play and not tinker with the clocks themselves.
 
Its all going that way though and the main reason is eco warriors.

The amount of threads ive read where people are bashing a card because "OMG its pulling 350W I cant justify that amount of power usage".. ect Because people simply don't understand electric.. they think its 350w out the wall socket.

So Nvidia go off and find a way to make a card which will appeal to these idiots and know if they manage to pull it off they can make big money. Which they have done.

And the same now with ivy bridge the only marketing point ive seen is Woah its 77w.. I see no real upgrade with the cpu it self ok it can use PCI-E 3.0 but that gives an extra 1fps in games.

cpu overclocking.. have to admit old school overclocking was real fun. Maybe not the prime time but the tweaking was! But today they have to cater for retards so lets make it 2 setting overclocking!
 
Same here, but gpu boost is working well for nvidia. The majority of the market will be gamers that want to plug and play and not tinker with the clocks themselves.

I totally agree, and its a great card for a plug and play gamer. Just wish they had it as an option, maybe even have it on as default, but could be disabled, and with adjustable voltage, now that would be great :)
 
Same here, but gpu boost is working well for nvidia. The majority of the market will be gamers that want to plug and play and not tinker with the clocks themselves.

But thats the point. They dont have to tinker with it they could just leave it stock but its just "I want the same as that guy has there gimme gimme"
 
The amount of threads ive read where people are bashing a card because "OMG its pulling 350W I cant justify that amount of power usage".. ect Because people simply don't understand electric.. they think its 350w out the wall socket.

Maybe because it is?

And I have 480 SLI, probably one of the worst power draw setups :p
 
I completely agree with psychodil. At least with Sandybridge there was no competition, while the 7970 and 680 are equal apart from the ability to increase the cooling for measurable gains, tweak voltage and it's cheaper.

I would take the 680 if everything was equal but the 7970 is by far the better product for a PC enthusiasts.
 
Newer CPU/GPU's being easier to clock is exactly what is actually making me overclock these days, before Sandy Bridge I never overclocked due to the amount of settings you had to change, where's with my current set up all I had to do was change the multi from 33 to 44 and gained a ton of extra performance.

GPU boost is great for me since it does most of the work for me and I can just tweak it slightly to get more performance.
 
Newer CPU/GPU's being easier to clock is exactly what is actually making me overclock these days, before Sandy Bridge I never overclocked due to the amount of settings you had to change, where's with my current set up all I had to do was change the multi from 33 to 44 and gained a ton of extra performance.

GPU boost is great for me since it does most of the work for me and I can just tweak it slightly to get more performance.

Thats another angle that I hadnt thought of, thankyou.
 
The amount of threads ive read where people are bashing a card because "OMG its pulling 350W I cant justify that amount of power usage".. ect Because people simply don't understand electric.. they think its 350w out the wall socket.

Thats what i mean.. Its pulling 350w DC not AC ^^ This is what i mean people simply don't understand..

If it's pulling 350W from the PSU then it's pulling more like 400W from the mains.
 
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