"Beat".....as in the 670 doesn't even begin to compare to a 7970 in price + performance with the bundle I was referring to. If I have $400.00 in my pocket.....and buy an AMD 7970 , I'll get 3 full games at $50.00 a pop and 20% off another one......which all 4 of those games are ones that I want. That right there saves me $170.00 right out of my pocket. Which makes the $400.00 7970 cost $230.00.
It makes me chuckle as most people (especially at the high end) do not consider the bundled software(games in this case) as the deciding factor in making a
hardware decision.
If you were that desperate for the games, I hear kids use something called ThePirateBay (just saying what I heard...).
Actually the 670 is not that far off a 680s performance, especially under 1600p resolution. So in theory it is comparable to the 7970 (both performance and efficiency).
Reference cards mean just about everything when it comes to water cooling I guess , since you can't find water blocks for anything that is "non-reference". I believe with my cpu and Video cards....going water will let me take more advantage of OC on them by being able to push them slightly higher....but within a safe margin.
Reference cards and reference boards are not always the same term to be applied. A preclocked card is non-reference (at least as a loose terminology)
A non-reference board has physical changes to it, which means a water block MAY not work.
The products you were looking at seemed like non-reference cards, not non-reference boards.
This may be true.....but i see sets of cards still selling all the time in the market places on numerous sites like here , OC.net , Guru 3D and so forth. A person could still sell them individually as well I guess....but selling them as a set.....I would think two of the exact same cards may look a little better to the buyer correct?
You're thinking too far ahead really. This new setup should last you quite a while (few years?).
And yes, people try to sell them as sets, doesn't work out as well. It only looks attractive to people needing doubles. This is because most buyers are buying singles, it's just a numbers game.
All great points. And believe me....after hearing from a lot of different people , I may just go with one high end card and put a water block on it. All this water cooling stuff I had brought up is just something I was looking forward to doing this winter sometime. My CPU will be on water for sure.....so no matter what card I get , it'll be on water as well. I didn't think it was very logical to get a 2nd , 3rd or 4th fastest card and then turn around and spend another $100.00 on a water block for it. I want as much longevity out of that card(s) as I can get.
GPUs don't generally need to be liquid cooled anymore except in extreme usage cases. If you put the CPU and GPU in the same water loop, the GPU heat could really hinder your CPU's cooling performance. And since the CPU needs it more, that's obviously not desirable.
Not sure why you think longevity is a concern?
Back to the first question though......getting a 7970 instead of a GTX670 all came down to me being able to get the 7970 cheaper than a 670. Even without the game bundle.....the 670's usually run higher in cost. But not paying for 3-1/2 of those games? That's pretty damn cool right there. If you look at it this way.....if a person was oo buy two 7970's.....and be able to sell all 8 of those games and make some money back.....he could damn near have two 7970's for the price of one GTX680.
If you can get a 7970 cheaper (card vs card, not bundle vs bundle), than it's a fair deal. Doesn't mean it's the right option though.
Yes, you may make all the money back. Are you confident you can, is that your actual plan? Think about it. Do private sales of PC video games really do that well? Remember that thing ... Pirate Bay?
OH.....one more thing. I am planning on playing at 1080 right now. Since I only have one 27" Asus monitor as of right now. But I'm planning on getting two more monitors.
More monitors won't mean more horsepower requirements, unless you're going to use them in Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround? Then you'll most likely need two cards.
And, windowed mode and color profiles is still an issue - especially if you're using multi-monitor. If you want to use another monitor to browse the web or do something in Windows, you have to alt-tab out of the game. See previous post about all that and no Crossfire.
Also....I'm not ruling out a GTX670. But right now.....for the money I want to spend , I don't see how any 670 is going to give me a deal like that. And one GTX670 is not going to run games like Metro 2033 , Crysis 1 & 2 and a few other titles on 3 big monitors......at least i haven't seen or read of anyone being bale to do it with all the eye candy turned on.
No card (and even two cards) will dominate Metro 2033, even at 1080p, not with all the features turned on.
Crysis 1 (and especially 2) are easy cake now (maybe not on three monitors though).
For now, a single 670 vs 7970 vs 680 is going to be pretty similar across the majority of games at 1080p. The real difference is the miscellaneous features like heat, power, CUDA/Physx, future proof etc.
BTW.....since I'm about as noobish as any one person can be.....thank you for the explanation on the "Windows mode" thing. And what exactly do you mean by "color profiles"? Does that mean I can't adjust in game colors , tints , shades , ect......or something else?
Monitors have their own color gamut and settings (like TVs) when you buy them. Some of them have on screen displays which means you can adjust it to look as you want it to.
Some of these monitors, particularly budget or 'gaming' trimmed monitors do not have color adjustments available.
So you have to rely on Windows or other software to handle it. Which is fine, the computer will boot the right color settings, however when you start a game (in full screen), the monitor defaults back to it's hard coded settings(which you can't change).
The only work around is to play in windowed mode.
Edit : I forgot to add this in my earlier post. And it's one of the reasons I'm going to try and stay away from Nvidia this time around >>>
http://www.overclockers.com/nvidia-s...oltage-control
Do not worry about this. It's not as doom and gloom as it sounds.
Unless you're going for high overclock/synthetic benchmark testing, the way voltage works on Nvidia cards is not a problem.
