upgrading from asus gtx 670 top to hd 7970 ghz!

[Abdo shniba]

Hi guys

I have an asus gtx 670 direct cu II top card which is working flawlessly, i love the performance and I had no problem with it, but I'm thinking to sell it and upgrade to sapphire hd 7970 GHz vapor-x card, is the performance diffidence worth upgrading? I know that my card performance almost matches regular gtx 680 and hd 7970 but how it's compared to the GHz one?

My Regards .

[Mathragh]

Unless you got money to spare, I wouldnt do it.
The difference isnt thát great, and unless you can sell that 670 for a significant portion of its original price, you'll get a quite low return on your investment.

This is all unless you plan on doing lots of GPGPU, the 7970 would be quite the upgrade for that(for most apps).

[Abdo shniba]

no GPGPU, just gaming, I've just rechecked W1zzard's review for my card "I bought it after reading it", and realized, there is no difference with my cards performance and the gtx 680 \ hd 7970, in this case I might wait for next gen cards, what do you think?

[TheMailMan78]

Originally Posted by Abdo shniba

no GPGPU, just gaming, I've just rechecked W1zzard's review for my card "I bought it after reading it", and realized, there is no difference with my cards performance and the gtx 680 \ hd 7970, in this case I might wait for next gen cards, what do you think?

Um yeah? Going from a 670 to a 7970 is just dumb. Nevermind having to deal with random AMD driver issues.

By the way look at W1zzards system spec and keep in mind he could have any card he wants......

[Abdo shniba]

Originally Posted by TheMailMan78

Um yeah? Going from a 670 to a 7970 is just dumb. Nevermind having to deal with random AMD driver issues.

I guess I'll stick with my Asus card for now,

on a side note, we have hd 4650m, 6770m, 4670, 7750, and 7950 amd cards, and we have never encountered any driver issues to date, it's just old wives tale , the same goes for nvidia's cards we own, gt 9500, 9600, 9600m, 450, 460, and my gtx 670, no driver issues either .

[tokyoduong]

Originally Posted by Abdo shniba

I guess I'll stick with my Asus card for now,

on a side note, we have hd 4650m, 6770m, 4670, 7750, and 7950 amd cards, and we have never encountered any driver issues to date, it's just old wives tale , the same goes for nvidia's cards we own, gt 9500, 9600, 9600m, 450, 460, and my gtx 670, no driver issues either .

good choice! just OC your card if you want moar powah!!

And yes, I've barely encountered driver problems with either brands. AMD "used to" suck years and years back but they make very good drivers now.

[TheMailMan78]

Originally Posted by Abdo shniba

I guess I'll stick with my Asus card for now,

on a side note, we have hd 4650m, 6770m, 4670, 7750, and 7950 amd cards, and we have never encountered any driver issues to date, it's just old wives tale , the same goes for nvidia's cards we own, gt 9500, 9600, 9600m, 450, 460, and my gtx 670, no driver issues either .

Well it's not an old wives tail honestly but if I start listing examples this will turn into one of those stupid AMD vs NVIDIA threads and nothing would get done. Anyway I'm glad you made the right choice.

[brandonwh64]

Originally Posted by TheMailMan78

Well it's not an old wives tail honestly but if I start listing examples this will turn into one of those stupid AMD vs NVIDIA threads and nothing would get done. Anyway I'm glad you made the right choice.

Tale*

Fixed for you.

[Jack1n]

I would not Upgrade to a 7970 if i had already had a 670,as far as AMD drivers go the only time ive had them crash is when my overclocking was not stable.

[Abdo shniba]

Originally Posted by TheMailMan78

Well it's not an old wives tail honestly but if I start listing examples this will turn into one of those stupid AMD vs NVIDIA threads and nothing would get done. Anyway I'm glad you made the right choice.

yeah, I guess I made the right choice, also I know it's not exactly old wives tale, but it's a very very old issues from the ATI age , as I told you I use both and love both, I'm fanboy of both.

Originally Posted by Jack1n

I would not Upgrade to a 7970 if i had already had a 670,as far as AMD drivers go the only time ive had them crash is when my overclocking was not stable.

now after you mentioned it, the same happened to me when I overclocked the amd card too much, it was my fault,

anyway long live the competition , so that we have great products .

[TheMailMan78]

Originally Posted by Abdo shniba

yeah, I guess I made the right choice, also I know it's not exactly old wives tale, but it's a very very old issues from the ATI age , as I told you I use both and love both, I'm fanboy of both.



now after you mentioned it, the same happened to me when I overclocked the amd card to much, it was my fault,

any way long live the competition , so the we have great products .

I used AMD since the days of the RAGE GPU. I went NVIDIA last year for the first time for a reason. Ever since Nov. of 2011 the driver team has been running on a skeleton crew. Ever wonder why they release nothing but betas now instead of WHQL drivers monthly and a special tool to clean out older drivers?

AMD hardware is AWESOME but the drivers for the past year or so have REALLY tanked. I had TONS of openGL issues and so did a lot of other users. Forget it if you run crossfire. Single card with basic gaming you might be ok but even then the install is a mess. I have got NOTHING against AMD man. I love their cards. I just want a well paid driver team to make good use of them!

[Mindweaver]

Yea, keep your GTX670, because you have the best one already. If you want MOAR POWER then grab another GTX670.

[Abdo shniba]

Thank you all guys, much appreciated .

[crazyeyesreaper]

I made the opposite switch I went from a HD 7970 from ASUS (DirectCuII TOP ) at 1100 MHz to a GTX 670 I would make that same change every single time.

The ASUS card had advertised voltage support which didnt work
Overvoltage with an ASUS motherboard by soldering wires also didnt work properly aka it raised VRM voltage not GPU voltage and this was from the looks intentionally done so false marketing if there ever was any.

I paid $630 for the DirectCu II TOP 7970 at launch, great hardware terrible customer support from ASUS and junk drivers.

I sold the card bought the GTX 670 FTW from EVGA clocked it to 1060 core 1139 boost i average 1179 boost. performance is withing 2% of my 7970 at 1100 mhz in most games.

Also got the option of enabling SSAO in games like Skyrim which while it can be done on AMD is a far more involved process.

I used applications like Autodesk Maya $4000 3D modeling App, 3DS Max, Mudbox, etc and from about 2010 on my 5850 crossfire to 6970 crossfire to 6950 crossfire to single card setups of the same cards to my 7970 those applications would hang or lag do to broken Open GL drivers it took AMD 27 driver revisions to fix the issue from what i remember counting. little over 2 years of terrible performance in those applications to the point I stopped modding games.

I love the AMD hardware when it works its great but looking back while I could always get something to "work" it also tended to be a god damn headache.

I went from 7300 Le to 7800GTX 512mb to 8800GTX 640mb then i swapped to AMD so 4870x2 to 5850 crossfire to 6970 crossfire to 6950 crossfire + SSD to 7970 I am now back on NVIDIA hardware again.


Long story shor your GTX 670 is close enough to 7970 performance that its not really worth switching. any game your GTX 670 cant play the 7970 isnt going to be so much faster as to be fluidly playable.

[Protagonist]

Keep your GTX670, on the other had i love my EVGA GTX670 FTW very nice card, in the past i have only used 1 Radeon card and it was HD5770 not to sound like a broken record but i ran into driver issues with it every time a new on come had to uninstall the old ones and wrestle in the new drivers, plus at the time there was a pink driver problem causing windows color scheme to appear pinkish but it was fixed but then moved to a GTX460 and felt right back at home. I here AMD has since gotten better with drivers.

[Abdo shniba]

Originally Posted by crazyeyesreaper

I made the opposite switch I went from a HD 7970 from ASUS (DirectCuII TOP ) at 1100 MHz to a GTX 670 I would make that same change every single time.

The ASUS card had advertised voltage support which didnt work
Overvoltage with an ASUS motherboard by soldering wires also didnt work properly aka it raised VRM voltage not GPU voltage and this was from the looks intentionally done so false marketing if there ever was any.

I paid $630 for the DirectCu II TOP 7970 at launch, great hardware terrible customer support from ASUS and junk drivers.

I sold the card bought the GTX 670 FTW from EVGA clocked it to 1060 core 1139 boost i average 1179 boost. performance is withing 2% of my 7970 at 1100 mhz in most games.

Also got the option of enabling SSAO in games like Skyrim which while it can be done on AMD is a far more involved process.

I used applications like Autodesk Maya $4000 3D modeling App, 3DS Max, Mudbox, etc and from about 2010 on my 5850 crossfire to 6970 crossfire to 6950 crossfire to single card setups of the same cards to my 7970 those applications would hang or lag do to broken Open GL drivers it took AMD 27 driver revisions to fix the issue from what i remember counting. little over 2 years of terrible performance in those applications to the point I stopped modding games.

I love the AMD hardware when it works its great but looking back while I could always get something to "work" it also tended to be a god damn headache.

I went from 7300 Le to 7800GTX 512mb to 8800GTX 640mb then i swapped to AMD so 4870x2 to 5850 crossfire to 6970 crossfire to 6950 crossfire + SSD to 7970 I am now back on NVIDIA hardware again.


Long story shor your GTX 670 is close enough to 7970 performance that its not really worth switching. any game your GTX 670 cant play the 7970 isnt going to be so much faster as to be fluidly playable.

Thanks for your insight, and for letting me know that , as I've stated above my gtx 670 will stay, and your post made my decision to keep it grows stronger , the thing is seeing crysis 3 average FSP is in the 30s range with high end card worried me, as crysis is the start I kept thinking how it's gonna be in the near future when
next gen console becomes mainstream and the games will be crysis 3 like, I thought my card wont stand a chance ,

Oh well, le just hope next gen games will be heavily optimized so that it can run better than crysis 3 now, "I have high hope as the new consoles architecture is PC like and that little gpu lying inside the PS4 is not a match for my 670" a man can only hope , say Amen guys .

[Abdo shniba]

Originally Posted by Protagonist

Keep your GTX670, on the other had i love my EVGA GTX670 FTW very nice card, in the past i have only used 1 Radeoon card and it was HD5770 not to sound like a broken record but i ran into driver issues with it every time a new on come gave had to uninstall the old ones and wrestle in the new drivers, plus at the time there was there was a pink driver problem causing windows color scheme to appear pinkish but it was fixed but then moved to a GTX460 and felt right back at home. I here AMD has since gotten better with drivers.

I can assure you they did .

[Anusha]

You are going pretty much a side-grade than an upgrade. If you don't have any specific issues with your 670, I suggest you save up now and get a next gen card. Or SLI if you must.

Even if I was in the market for a new card and was looking at these two cards, I would go with the 670 because nvidia drivers seem more stable.

[alarinn]

I have the Gigabyte WF 7950 and although it is a fast card, it's unreliable in most games. Even with the latest drivers, it still has artifacts or desktop crashing from time to time. In Rifts, artifacing occurs always after a certain amount of time. LoTRO crashes from time to time or freezes up altogether. Several other games stop playing after reaching a certain point. The issue for me is I expect this to happen with newer cards, but not from one that is a year old.

Some of the blame can be placed on Gigabyte for releasing a new revision back in October 2012 that rendered the voltage locked. That and no OCing overhead made for a not-so-great experience considering the 560Ti I replaced it with never had a single issue over the 1.5 years I had it. I bought the 7950 because one of the fans failed on the 560Ti.

Over the years two things I found on both AMD and nVidia cards - AMD makes blazing-fast, inexpensive cards with lots of OCing headroom but Beta-quality drivers AND nVidia makes solid cards with great driver support and not-so-great OCing headroom. With the issues I've had with this 7950, I'll take the stability of nVidia.

I don't have my sig:

Asus P67 Deluxe mobo
Intel i7 2600K @ 4.6 GHz
8GB Ripjaws
Samsung 256GB 840 Pro SSD (OS)
Crucial M3 64GB (Games)
WD 1TB 7200RPM SATA
Gigabyte WF 7950
HAFX case
Custom Watercooling
Corsair 850 HX PSU

[Mathragh]

Originally Posted by alarinn

I have the Gigabyte WF 7950 and although it is a fast card, it's unreliable in most games. Even with the latest drivers, it still has artifacts or desktop crashing from time to time. In Rifts, artifacing occurs always after a certain amount of time. LoTRO crashes from time to time or freezes up altogether. Several other games stop playing after reaching a certain point. The issue for me is I expect this to happen with newer cards, but not from one that is a year old.

Some of the blame can be placed on Gigabyte for releasing a new revision back in October 2012 that rendered the voltage locked. That and no OCing overhead made for a not-so-great experience considering the 560Ti I replaced it with never had a single issue over the 1.5 years I had it. I bought the 7950 because one of the fans failed on the 560Ti.

Over the years two things I found on both AMD and nVidia cards - AMD makes blazing-fast, inexpensive cards with lots of OCing headroom but Beta-quality drivers AND nVidia makes solid cards with great driver support and not-so-great OCing headroom. With the issues I've had with this 7950, I'll take the stability of nVidia.

Did you make absolutely sure the former drivers were thouroughly cleaned before you installed that card? Just a question, but many things can go wrong when switching between drivers. While I know most people wont put up with the effort, I always like to do a clean format whenever I do something major like changing out my graphics card.

[erocker]

Originally Posted by alarinn

Even with the latest drivers, it still has artifacts or desktop crashing from time to time. In Rifts, artifacing occurs always after a certain amount of time.

Faulty card, return it, RMA it, whatever. It's defective.

[alarinn]

Originally Posted by Mathragh

Did you make absolutely sure the former drivers were thouroughly cleaned before you installed that card? Just a question, but many things can go wrong when switching between drivers. While I know most people wont put up with the effort, I always like to do a clean format whenever I do something major like changing out my graphics card.

Yep, I did using Driver Sweeper and their latest driver cleaning software. I tried everything short of delete and re-install. As new drivers came out, things did improve but still nothing close to the 560Ti. For me, if it takes a company more than a year to produce stable drivers, I'm out. By the time they get it right, we are all upgrading already. I did like the 4850x2 but it too suffered from shoddy drivers. Again, maybe I got unlucky with Gigabyte, but I researched that 7950 for 3 months and Sapphire was out at the time. I was hoping to get the prior release but I guess the original 7950s were competing too well:P

[erocker]

Drivers aren't your problem. Your card is bad.

[alarinn]

Originally Posted by erocker

Faulty card, return it, RMA it, whatever. It's defective.

I didn't notice this until after NewEgg's warranty expired. I could RMA is back to Gigabyte but I'm out a card until then. Do you all know what Gigabyte's policy is for RMAs?

[alarinn]

It might be the card but I think it was Gigabyte that screwed it up since they released a new version of their WF 7950 right around October 2012. With that release, they locked the voltage and the OCing headroom was nada. Even a 10 point bump in the core made it unstable. Had I known at the time they did that, I would have asked for a refund but I didn't find that out until 40 days after when everyone else started to question what's up.