7870 or 7950?

First up, sorry if this seems like another post on the same subject, but I cannot seem to see a decent conclusion.

I seem to read confusing opinions about the 7870/7950.

I can get the 7870 for £168 with 5 free games or a 7950 for about £50 more.

I currently mainly game on PS3, so to be honest, unless I am getting blown away, I would rather just buy the game for PS3 or already own it in most cases.

Given this, my goal is running everything at max and at 1080p. I am drawn towards the 7870, but have read differing views on whether this can run games at a decent lick on Ultra. I couldn’t care less about 100+ FPS, I just want a decent steady frame rate of >30fps, ideally about 60.

Games wise, I will be looking at Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3 etc. and probably Skyrim/GTA IV/Crysis with some graphics mods.

Ya going to need to get some horsepower to gun FC3 on ultra matey... I'll leave it to other's on the decision between the cards though.

What spec system will this be going into? (may help decisions)

SuB said:

Ya going to need to get some horsepower to gun FC3 on ultra matey... I'll leave it to other's on the decision between the cards though.

What spec system will this be going into? (may help decisions)

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This is where I am getting a little confused, reading the reviews:

Battlefield 3 then, here's where we enabled that near silly Ultra quality settings mode and 4x AA. Now granted, the R7850 is on the edge here with 32 FPS on average, but the R7870 is kicking it loud with 40 FPS. With our IQ settings and chosen level these are downright respectable numbers compared to other products in the same price range.

Click to expand...

I am willing to knock down the AA a bit, so that should help a bit as well (p.s. the above is at 1920*1200, I am looking to play at 1080p max).

As for the rest of the system, I am looking at a 3570k with a mild overclock, 8GB of decent RAM, SSD and whatnot.

Budget really is the deciding factor mate, otherwise everyone will say 7950.

tinytomlogan said:

Budget really is the deciding factor mate, otherwise everyone will say 7950.

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True, truthfully there is no set budget, but I would like to keep costs as low as I can.

I guess the better question then is maybe how well in folks experience does the 7870 play the above games at as close to possible to max settings at 1080p.

If you want to max FC3 and BF3 you will defiantly need a 7950.

What you can do to get quite a big FPS boost and still run ultra though, is use something I recently found out about called SweetFX.

It uses something called SMAA which is another form of AA. SMAA is just as good as normal AA but it works as an overlay. So, you can disable in game AA so that your GPU isn't losing frames by doing the work needed for AA and let SweetFX and SMAA do the work instead, giving you a boost in FPS without loss in graphics.

You can also use some of the other features that come with SweetFX to ehance other things like contrast, sharpness and other things to make a game look even better than it looks out of the box.

Read this for more info on SweetFX
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/sweetfx_shader_suite_download.html
And this for more info on SMAA
http://www.iryoku.com/smaa/

Thanks, that looks really interesting, will definitely have a look at this.

Sorry to labour the point, but are you saying with this and AA turned down or off I could run BF on max at 1080p, I understand Far Cry 3 is something of a system hog so may be a different story.

If you really don't have the money for the 7950 or just don't want to spend it then a 7870 will be perfectly fine. Once you fiddle round with the aa etc in games, i use fxaa where i can, i can get 45 fps plus in pretty much every game. For example i get between 65 and 80 in bf3 on ultra just because i use fxaa instead . Then again if you can afford the 7950 then definitely get one.

Cheers, that's good to know. The primary purpose of this machine will not be a dedicated PC gaming rig, more just a really nice sideline, have heard rumours about AMD launching their next gen cards this year, so slightly reticent to drop big money at this stage. Aaaargh, so hard to come up with or stick to a budget when trying to spec up a PC, fun though.

SieB said:

If you want to max FC3 and BF3 you will defiantly need a 7950.

What you can do to get quite a big FPS boost and still run ultra though, is use something I recently found out about called SweetFX.

It uses something called SMAA which is another form of AA. SMAA is just as good as normal AA but it works as an overlay. So, you can disable in game AA so that your GPU isn't losing frames by doing the work needed for AA and let SweetFX and SMAA do the work instead, giving you a boost in FPS without loss in graphics.

You can also use some of the other features that come with SweetFX to ehance other things like contrast, sharpness and other things to make a game look even better than it looks out of the box.

Read this for more info on SweetFX
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/sweetfx_shader_suite_download.html
And this for more info on SMAA
http://www.iryoku.com/smaa/

Click to expand...

I'm at work so can't check properly yet, does this thing work with bf3? (without getting punkbuster bull**** and what-not)

SuB said:

I'm at work so can't check properly yet, does this thing work with bf3? (without getting punkbuster bull**** and what-not)

Click to expand...

Yep, it works with BF3 fine. It doesn't alter any of the game files so it wont get you banned.

Try my settings if you want, I used SweetFX to put some color back in BF3 and to get rid of the blue tint a little.

Download link at the bottom of my thread here.

http://gsngaming.com/topic/8023-bf3-color-tweakerfx/

Just put all the files in your main BF3 folder and you are good to go. You can also toggle the effects on and off using the home key on your keyboard.

You will need to disable in game AA and if you use FRAPS or MSI Afterburner OSD you will have to disable those as well because SweetFX wont work with any other overlays running.

FC3 is a high demanding game 7950

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lIkYMQxTZg

See the Guv discuss