Need help in choosing graphics card

[batman3009]

Im confused between gtx 670-radeon hd 7950-radeon hd 7970,which one of them is the best & who is the best manufacturer?

[Frag Maniac]

The 670 is better in performance and price than a 7970, and I also feel Nvidia offers better and more long term driver support.

That said, early reports indicate the upcoming 660 Ti may have 90% the performance of a 670 at 3/4 the price. It should hard launch by the end of the month.

With Maxwell only two years away and Nvidia claiming a huge leap in performance from Kepler, I have opted to limit my GPU upgrade to only $300.

[Aksh_47]

Get the 670 if u don't wanna wait.. It currently offers the best price/performance. A Direct CUII 670 from ASUS or the AMP Edition from Zotac offers better performance than the stock 680, and come for $100 less. So 670 is currently the best option.

[BarbaricSoul]

the GTX670 and HD7970 are pretty much equal in performance. The 7970 does better than the GTX670 at higher resolutions(1920*1200 and higher), while the GTX670 does better at lower resolution(1680*1050 are lower). Price wise, the 7970 is a little more expensive(depending on exactly which card you pick, the difference can be as low as $20). Depending on the resolution, the 7950 has about 15% less performance than the GTX670/7970, but is about $50 less expensive.

Brand wise, I prefer XFX and EVGA myself.

[qubit]

Get the 670, no question.

frag maniac has pretty much said what I was going to say.

nvidia has a more fully featured, better graphics control panel and less driver bugs than AMD, which is a major reason that I stick with them. Since going nvidia about three years ago, I've had very few issues running games. I'll be skipping the 600 series and will upgrade the following generation.

[the54thvoid]

If you game at 1080p, then the 670 is the only option really.

But if you play with a vertical pixel scale of 1440 or above, the 7970 is better. The 7970's all clock way higher without fuss and at 1GHz or higher the 7970 pulls away at the top end resolutions.

And before people mention power consumption, if you game on a large monitor, you're already pulling lots of watts.

One caveat, vanilla 7970's are noisy, 670's are not. As for drivers? Single card is not a problem.

[razaron]

The GTX 670 is the best card for your res.

[BarbaricSoul]

Originally Posted by qubit

Since going nvidia about three years ago, I've had very few issues running games.

Very few? I personally haven't had any issues since I got my first 5870 in Jan 2010.

Originally Posted by razaron

The GTX 670 is the best card for your res.

You psychic? I don't see anywhere where the OP mentioned what resolution he is running.

Also, am I missing something? How is the GTX670 better than the 7970. According to Wizzards review, they are equal, with the GTX670 being better at lower resolutions, and the 7970 being better at higher resolution.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/N...TX_670/28.html

And before you say price, both are in the same price bracket. On Newegg, the 7970 ranges from $419 to $469(not counting the $500+ MSI cards) with the GHZ versions priced between $449-$469(which are equal to the GTX680 according to Wizzards review http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...dition/28.html ) and the GTX670 is between $399- $489.

[Frenzic]

I have been reading a few reviews of the 7970 with the 12.7 beta's and by the looks of things it equals the 680 in most benchmarks + most can easily hit 1 GHz+. I mite be wrong but 7970 + 12.7 look promising and i do like the 680/670's

[xxdozer322]

Asus 670. 10 for 10 in its review

[Hayder_Master]

670 for price, 7970 a bit better performance

[middydj]

GTX670 hands down.. Great card!

[jgunning]

Or if you wish to compare, this is a great site:

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php/

=)

[radrok]

GTX 670 if you are running 1080p or smaller, otherwise consider the HD 7970 for higher resolutions, especially if you overclock.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by BarbaricSoul

Very few? I personally haven't had any issues since I got my first 5870 in Jan 2010.

No issues at all? None? That's next to an impossibility on a PC, so I'm taking that with a pinch salt.

Also, don't forget that everyone's setup and usage is different, which will trigger different problems. Therefore, one person may experience very few problems while someone else considerably more. So, it's the average you tend to hear on the forums that matters more, not individual experiences. In my experience, I've seen fewer issues with nvidia, which is closer to that average, but that doesn't preclude others from seeing similar benefits with AMD.

[radrok]

To be honest nowadays AMD and NVIDIA are almost on par with driver support, provided you run with a single GPU configuration, and all the talk behind AMD being worse is just bad reputation of the past.

Now if you get into multi GPU configurations.... That's another story.

[BarbaricSoul]

Originally Posted by qubit

No issues at all? None? That's next to an impossibility on a PC, so I'm taking that with a pinch salt.

Also, don't forget that everyone's setup and usage is different, which will trigger different problems. Therefore, one person may experience very few problems while someone else considerably more. So, it's the average you tend to hear on the forums that matters more, not individual experiences. In my experience, I've seen fewer issues with nvidia, which is closer to that average, but that doesn't preclude others from seeing similar benefits with AMD.

I don't know. Maybe I've been lucky. But yeah, no issues. Since Jan 2010, every game I have played has worked just fine. I have had no video driver crashes not caused by me forgetting to turn up the fans before playing or OC'ing. Only issue I've had since I started running crossfireX was on the main screen of a old DX7 game. The game its' self worked fine though. I had the same issue when I was running SLI as well. Now I'm not saying everything worked at it's peak performance the whole time. I did see performance gains from driver updates, but everything did work.

[Frag Maniac]

Across a broad range of resolutions the 670 does have better performance than the 7970. At up to 1920x1200, it still has better overall performance. Even at 2560x1600 and 2560x1440, depending on the games tested, it can still hang with the 7970.

TechPowerUp's own W1zzard does some of the most trusted GPU reviews across a broad range of games. This is his consensus of the Gigabyte GTX670 OC's overall performance summary from his review on it. It's a non ref cooler card, but ref price, so I think it's fair to use it as a reference point:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/G...dforce/28.html

The only games the 7970 might exceed it slightly on are those whom need more than 2GB VRAM, esp if you run a res in excess of 1920x1200. I seriously question whether it's worth it to pay more and get less overall for those few games, and it's def not worth it if you play at 1920x1200 or less res.

@ Barbaric,
That is merely an early review on an Nvidia ref 670, which are typically the worst case scenario of the ref priced cards. You also yourself pointed out that the 670 starts at $20 cheaper than the 7970.

While it is unclear what actual display/res Bman is running, he's made enough posts here and in Gen Hardware indicating many of the parts he's looking at aren't top shelf gear. Typically one is not looking at $350 GPUs (7950) and such if they are gaming at 2560.

Aside from that, the arguments here pro 7970 are totally reliant on the claimed dominance being utilized at 2560, so if anyone's assuming, it's those advocating a 7970.

Personally I'd love to have even a Yamakasi Catleap 27" IPS 2560x1440 monitor to try out, but even at the relatively low prices you can get them on eBay (starting @ $318 w/ free shipping), it's still a luxury since A) it's takes fair GPU power to be future ready at that res, and B) it has no TV tuner, so can't function as an affordable all in one display.

So yeah, we are assuming too, but I'm willing to bet our res assumptions are more accurate than yours, given his questions lately.

[batman3009]

Originally Posted by Frag Maniac

Across a broad range of resolutions the 670 does have better performance than the 7970. At up to 1920x1200, it still has better overall performance. Even at 2560x1600 and 2560x1440, depending on the games tested, it can still hang with the 7970.

TechPowerUp's own W1zzard does some of the most trusted GPU reviews across a broad range of games. This is his consensus of the Gigabyte GTX670 OC's overall performance summary from his review on it. It's a non ref cooler card, but ref price, so I think it's fair to use it as a reference point:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/G...dforce/28.html

The only games the 7970 might exceed it slightly on are those whom need more than 2GB VRAM, esp if you run a res in excess of 1920x1200. I seriously question whether it's worth it to pay more and get less overall for those few games, and it's def not worth it if you play at 1920x1200 or less res.

I have 23 inch led monitor,what graphics card you recommend for me?

[radrok]

Originally Posted by Frag Maniac

Across a broad range of resolutions the 670 does have better performance than the 7970. At up to 1920x1200, it still has better overall performance. Even at 2560x1600 and 2560x1440, depending on the games tested, it can still hang with the 7970.

TechPowerUp's own W1zzard does some of the most trusted GPU reviews across a broad range of games. This is his consensus of the Gigabyte GTX670 OC's overall performance summary from his review on it. It's a non ref cooler card, but ref price, so I think it's fair to use it as a reference point:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/G...dforce/28.html

The only games the 7970 might exceed it slightly on are those whom need more than 2GB VRAM, esp if you run a res in excess of 1920x1200. I seriously question whether it's worth it to pay more and get less overall for those few games, and it's def not worth it if you play at 1920x1200 or less res.

You should take a look at the 7970 Ghz edition, the performance is higher than the 670.
Thinking about the 7970 with 925 core is not so representative of the actual potential in Tahiti GPUs, almost every 7970 clocks atleast to 1050 and when you reach those clocks the 670 falls behind especially because Kepler is voltage locked.

I think that this point must be brought up because this is an hardware enthusiast site and overclocking is a big part of the game.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally Posted by radrok

You should take a look at the 7970 Ghz edition, the performance is higher than the 670.
Thinking about the 7970 with 925 core is not so representative of the actual potential in Tahiti GPUs, almost every 7970 clocks atleast to 1050 and when you reach those clocks the 670 falls behind especially because Kepler is voltage locked.

I think that this point must be brought up because this is an hardware enthusiast site and overclocking is a big part of the game.

Except then you're talking about a card that is now $50 more than the ref price Giga 670 I referred to and requires some risk to OC as you mentioned, and still, the only lead it would likely show noticeably is on VRAM demanding games at 2560 res.

@Bman,
Your 23" LED is likely no more than 1920x1080 I'm guessing. The 670 would easily handle that, but I'd wait for the 660 Ti launch, which will happen in 1-3 weeks. Like I said, I don't feel it makes sense to shell out more than $300 for a GPU with Maxwell only 2 years away.

Then again, you're asking someone whom looks only at Nvidia's production cycles after having been through several aggravating years of two ATI cards with driver problems, stuttering, and AMD announcing the relegation to Legacy support of the last one I owned, which isn't much better than no support at all really. They've dropped support on one of their recent GPUs even earlier in it's life. I see green getting better while red is slowly fading away.

[raghu78]

If you want the best value for your money get a HD 7950 OC. The fastest clocked HD 7950 is the Sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition. comes with a HD 7970 PCB. good overclocker. easily overclocks to 1.15 Ghz with voltage tweaking.

SAPPHIRE 100352OCSR Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384-bit GDD...

At the same clocks HD 7950 is 3 - 5% slower than HD 7970.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/S...0_Flex/31.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...dition/31.html

BF3 1920 x 1200 4x AA

HD 7970 (925) - 64.6
HD 7950 (1025) - 69.7
HD 7970 Ghz (1050) - 72.3

Those HD 7950 overclock speeds are at default voltage. With voltage tweaking you can easily get to 1.15 Ghz and your card would be faster than HD 7970 Ghz edition.