The New 7970 trading blows with the 680

[DrGuns4Hands]

The 7970 GHZ edition, with the higher speeds & a driver refresh seems to have really moved the 7970 back up into the fight.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...k,3232-19.html

[Urbanfox]

Si.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/r...-up-to-gtx-680

[Dil-tech]

Apparently the new NVidia beta driver increases performance by 10-15% on the 680, putting it back in the lead. The reviews didn't use said driver, even though the driver was available at the time of review.

Considering it uses more power and is WAY louder though, I'd still recommend the 680 in either case, especially since the performance is roughly the same. Pretty much any non-reference clock 680 will still beat it out of the box (which is the overwhelming majority). The KFA2 HOF 680 will literally smoke it stock OR overclocked.

[FX5200]

I know this is off topic, and sorry, but in related articles:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gig...gpu,15955.html

Umm, stupid much? :?

[Slizzo]

Originally Posted by FX5200

I know this is off topic, and sorry, but in related articles:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gig...gpu,15955.html

Umm, stupid much? :?

I wouldn't say, It must be a great cooler, however I'd be concerned at the noise that it could generate with those fans being so small. They look like your standard 40mm 1U server fans, and those are anything but quiet.

[DrGuns4Hands]

Originally Posted by Dil-tech

Apparently the new NVidia beta driver increases performance by 10-15% on the 680, putting it back in the lead. The reviews didn't use said driver, even though the driver was available at the time of review.

If you go to the Test Setup or Dueling Drivers sections of those articles, you'll see they are both using the latest driver 304.48, so that point is void.

Originally Posted by Dil-tech

Considering it uses more power and is WAY louder though, I'd still recommend the 680 in either case, especially since the performance is roughly the same. Pretty much any non-reference clock 680 will still beat it out of the box (which is the overwhelming majority). The KFA2 HOF 680 will literally smoke it stock OR overclocked.

On the power argument that'll depend if you leave your pc on all the time or only have it on when you use it. AMD's ZeroCore technology gives it the advantage in long idle situations. It does use significantly more power during load situations, but cost-wise it might be enough to buy you a happy meal by the end of the year(If you don't count the up front price difference of the 680). Now on the noise issue, if you get one of the 7970's with the non-reference cooler noise is equivalent to the 680.

Also a non-reference design 7970 is running about $450 vs $520 for a GTX 680. So for me personally, now that the gap is pretty well closed, I'll take the 7970 and OC it up to the Ghz version and save the money.

[Dil-tech]

The fastest single gpu solution right now still belongs to galaxy with their KFA2 680 HOF edition (Zotac has one at the same clock speed IIRC though), which sits at a 1202 mhz core (1267 boost). That'll beat a 7970ghz edition with it's eyes closed without questions asked. There is NO 7970, either reference OR non-reference, that can touch that. They also generally reach 1300mhz without voltage tweaking, which will beat the 7970 overclocked as well. If you can get your hands on the galaxy OC panel it'll beat the 7970 on any cooling that can be held for 24/7 clocking using just plain air.

The 7970 is looking better than it did, but the fact remains that the 680 is still the better card. There's not really anything stopping NVidia from releasing a faster clocked 680 with higher voltage and calling it the 685 though, seeing as how at stock voltage 1300mhz can be done, not saying it will happen, but nvidia has been very blunt saying we'll see new parts if AMD actually force their hand in releasing them.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...review-21.html

Take note of the percentages once AA is turned on. That's against a reference 680. That's using the 304.48 beta. Now keep in mind that a majority of the 680's are 1ghz+ not including boost, and you see why AMD hasn't taken the crown yet--they've merely made themselves a bit more competitive.

Either way, I'm personally stuck with NVidia here on out as I've got a 3d vision set up (waiting on the emitter now that I've found one). 3d is one place that AMD is FAR behind on, as tridef has a long way to go before catching 3d vision (or so I'm told, I'll be personally doing a comparison myself in my 3d vision review thread once the emitter shows up). My brother found out the hard way though, you can't even use multi-gpu in 3d with AMD as of yet as tri-def doesn't presently support it. That's a big deal-breaker as 3d practically cuts your frame-rate in half in some cases. Tri-def also has to support each individual DX version the game supports, so while a game may be DX11 you are sometimes stuck in DX9 or DX10 mode.

[DrGuns4Hands]

Not saying AMD has the better card just saying it's close enough that I'd take the lower cost option. 3d gives me headaches so that's not a selling point for me. From my understanding of 3d it does cut the frame rate in half because it has to show half the frames to each eye in an alternating fashion to create the image. I'm curious are you using dual 680's to do the 3d vision testing and what games are you testing on, or are you just doing movies?

[Dil-tech]

Originally Posted by DrGuns4Hands

Not saying AMD has the better card just saying it's close enough that I'd take the lower cost option. 3d gives me headaches so that's not a selling point for me. From my understanding of 3d it does cut the frame rate in half because it has to show half the frames to each eye in an alternating fashion to create the image. I'm curious are you using dual 680's to do the 3d vision testing and what games are you testing on, or are you just doing movies?

I presently have a single 480 (see sig). My brother has one set up with dual 7850's (how he found out XFire doesn't work in 3d) as well as well as a dual 560ti and a dual 280 set up, all on 3d screens (he buys whoever will give him the best 2 cards at the $200-$250 price range at tax time). Personally I just buy what's the absolute best bang for buck once I need more performance than I have (or if I can upgrade while barely spending a dime), and I managed to snag the 480 with Artic Xtreme Plus cooler already mounted on it (keeps the sucker in the 50C range fully clocked while gaming) as a trade for my GTX 460 + a corsair H50 since the guy who bought it found out it wouldn't fit in his case and his power-supply wouldn't handle the job. If I see a second 480 for $150 or less I fully intend on grabbing it though.

Also, while 3d generally cuts the frame-rate in half, there are algorithms that can be done to make it take a bit less than double the rendering time (hence why mafia 2 is more like a 30% decrease according to benchmarks).

As for testing, check the member reviews section of the site. As soon as my emitter comes in I'll be testing games for the community here. If you have something you'd like me to try, post over there and I'll happily add it to the list.