HD 7950 vs GTX 660 ti

F

Froger

New member
Hi, iv been wondering and switching between the AMD HD 7950 and the GTX 660 ti, can someone give me pro's con's etc... this is for gaming such as BF3, plus BF4 ;) it will be going along side a i3 2120, but i will later upgrade to an i7 3770k, or i5 3570k, i have 4gb of 1600mhz ram at the moment but later going to about 8gb or 16gb at higher speed.
i will also be doing photoshop/ illustrator and some video editing (but not much)
i will be later be water cooling the cards once i crossfire 2-way or sli 2-way.
if you have some other suggesstions for graphics card then im open, but i am unsure as they are both the same price, my limit for buget is about 230 pound (can go up a bit if there is something alot better)
thanks for the help in advance, if you need more info to help then i will be happy to answer.
i need it to have a reference cooler for the waterblock i want.
 
7950 is a step above the TI. Both will be held back somewhat by the I3 *IMO*

The 7950 was faster than a 670 a while ago when AMD got their later drivers out yet from what I've seen from my 670s they seem to have either closed the gap or edged ahead again. Very hard to tell without new benchmarks which people hardly ever bother with.

So basically it's not a good comparison tbh. 670-7950..

Any way a 660ti would be good enough for any game at 1080p other than Crysis 3 which won't even run at acceptable levels on max on a 7970 or 680.

Now to address the last part of your questions.

SLI is superior to Crossfire in pretty much every way. Support is better, drivers are better, latency is lower (lower meaning good) and scaling on the Kepler GPUs is pretty much 100% at least in the benchmarks I've tried.

However Crossfire is usually far cheaper as there are less stipulations on motherboard specs. Either will be pretty fast if and when the drivers support it. However having ran many multiple GPU set ups over the years SLI wins hands down for me. It's just much better thought out and matured.
 
Thanks, i think il go for the GTX 660 ti, its hard to tell which is best because some are bettter than others so their is no diffinative winner on performance which was confusing me with people saying the 7950 beats the 660 ti etc... but thanks for the help.
 
Depends where you are in the world.

USA - EVGA and MSI.

UK - EVGA MSI and KFA2.

Just trust me, no 660ti is going to keep up with any 7950. Not even one of the older ones that aren't ghz editions. The 670 is six of one half a dozen of the other and I would be amazed if the 660ti beat the 7950 in anything.

Nvidia - better drivers, Physx, better multiple GPU, CUDA = more expensive.

AMD - incredible Directcompute performance, cheaper, fast, inferior drivers.
 
I can vouch for the 7950, but it is kept back by my 6100, which has similar performance to your i3, so don't expect it to do it's best before you get an i5. Drivers aren't bad at all actually, stable and fast, so no need to worry about that. They seem to come out slower than nVidia, but they aren't bad.
 
Yeah Id say the 7950 would be a little better buy since its slightly faster than the Ti and can be found for about the same price. They had one on Newegg a week ago I think for like $270 shipped! Look around and you could score.
 
You should rephrase the question to "300$ for a 660ti, or 300$ for an overclocked 670" Most people who overclock 7950's can get them to perform stable, at or above the level of an overclocked 670, which is a significant step ahead of the 660ti.

Froger. There is a definitive winner. Definitively not the 660ti you chose. Not by a long shot.

Also, as you plan on xfire/sli, another poor choice going with a 660ti. Lower memory.
 
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alxcsb said:
I can vouch for the 7950, but it is kept back by my 6100, which has similar performance to your i3, so don't expect it to do it's best before you get an i5. Drivers aren't bad at all actually, stable and fast, so no need to worry about that. They seem to come out slower than nVidia, but they aren't bad.
Click to expand...

the drivers are horrible. at least when you are interested in older games.
 
ok you have sorta changed my mind about it, but does the things like Physx and CUDA make any difference, especialy when i will be working with photo/video editing?
 
Rich_ said:
They cant be worse than nvidias.. i should know. Definitely not a walk in the park for older games :|
Click to expand...

had both a 670 and a 7950. none of the games i really love worked on the 7950, i.e. bfbc2, cod4 and quake. runs just fine on a 670. then again both should be overkill.
had way more trouble with AMD cards so far, they do better in benchmarks but just for everyday use i feel saver now with nvidia. if amd would just fix their drivers, i would never buy an nvidia card again.

Froger said:
ok you have sorta changed my mind about it, but does the things like Physx and CUDA make any difference, especialy when i will be working with photo/video editing?
Click to expand...

yes. it makes an awful lot of a difference if you work with adobe products. those are like 8x faster with cuda cores.
just for gaming, especially newer games AMD is the way to go atm.
 
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ok, if i was to buy a 7950, can anyone tell me which brands have a reference design cooler on them for watercooling?
 
SeekaX said:
had both a 670 and a 7950. none of the games i really love worked on the 7950, i.e. bfbc2, cod4 and quake. runs just fine on a 670. then again both should be overkill.
had way more trouble with AMD cards so far, they do better in benchmarks but just for everyday use i feel saver now with nvidia. if amd would just fix their drivers, i would never buy an nvidia card again.
Click to expand...

Honestly i wouldn't know. I've been using this gtx 560 since 2011 and every time it's been a problem, and there've been a few times, I've had to pull out my spare AMD 6750 which has never ever had an issue. I honestly think the whole nvidia driver hype is because people know amd performs better for the price, so they have to find some made up excuse to re-enlarge their e-peen. Never had problems with amd, it's always been there to fall back on when nvidia wasnt working, but then again, it's not my primary card.

Oh and BFBC2 - One of the games i had to fall back to AMD for a couple of a days on. Later BF3 did it to me :|
 
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ok, i have been looking around to see about fitting a waterblock to the HD 7950, but the one i want to use, it states that i will only fit a 7970 reference design, so i e-mailed the company, if they say that it will only fit the 7970 then i will most likely get the GTX 660 ti.
also, the HD 7950 has one DVI and one HDMI with two mini display ports, i would want to have one monitor with DVI another monitor with HDMI and another monitor with DVI/VGA, which means lots of adapters, which i should be able to get around.
 
Rich_ said:
Honestly i wouldn't know. I've been using this gtx 560 since 2011 and every time it's been a problem, and there've been a few times, I've had to pull out my spare AMD 6750 which has never ever had an issue. I honestly think the whole nvidia driver hype is because people know amd performs better for the price, so they have to find some made up excuse to re-enlarge their e-peen. Never had problems with amd, it's always been there to fall back on when nvidia wasnt working, but then again, it's not my primary card.

Oh and BFBC2 - One of the games i had to fall back to AMD for a couple of a days on. Later BF3 did it to me :|
Click to expand...

well everyone comes up with some stuff to let their e-peen grow a little. i was actually pretty happy with the 6870 i had before.
if those fanboys were just a bit intelligent they would just insist on their architecture, because the architecture of nvidia is by far superior, they are just not selling it because amd is crawling behind with their "we need more cores!" idea.
 
Froger said:
ok, i have been looking around to see about fitting a waterblock to the HD 7950, but the one i want to use, it states that i will only fit a 7970 reference design, so i e-mailed the company, if they say that it will only fit the 7970 then i will most likely get the GTX 660 ti.
also, the HD 7950 has one DVI and one HDMI with two mini display ports, i would want to have one monitor with DVI another monitor with HDMI and another monitor with DVI/VGA, which means lots of adapters, which i should be able to get around.
Click to expand...

Why not actually check a waterblock that will fit the 7950 instead of a 7970?
Also use the display ports for multi monitor is a must for eyefinity. No way around it.
 
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