MB Opinions

[Sparhawk]

Upgrading in January done alot of reading and video viewing. Trying to avoid Red and Blue for aestectic purposes. Was originally looking at the GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UP7, but due to the cost was also considering ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77. I would appreciate feedback and reasons why etc.

Thanks

 

[MacLeod]

The Sabertooth is my personal favorite. Insane build quality and durability and Asus' UEFI BIOS is the best in the business.

That said, I really like the MSI M-Power. It looks really sharp and seems to perform as well as any other top end board and is getting rave reviews. If I were building a new rig, the M-Power would be the board I'd choose.

 

[Feronix]

Yeah, the mPower is the best z77 board out there imo, and it's not red or blue ;D

If you don't like the yellow, go with the Sabertooth z77 as its neutral black and still an amazing piece of hardware

Edit; If you really want to go orange, I'd suggest the Biostar TZ77 XE4. It's actually a pretty good board from what I've read though it's not as good as the Sabertooth or M-Power.

 

[CPMFW]

+1 for the mpower

 

[Mix]

Are you sure you want to go with the 7970 all the benchmarks I have seen say the GTX 600's are better but the AMD's are cheaper so it depends on your budget I guess

 

[Wazup52]

+1 for the Asus sabertooth.

 

[MacLeod]

Are you sure you want to go with the 7970 all the benchmarks I have seen say the GTX 600's are better but the AMD's are cheaper so it depends on your budget I guess

The 7970 is a beast. Its faster than a GTX670 and is only slightly slower than a GTX680 despite costing $100 less. And if you overclock it, it'll outperform an overclocked GTX680.

 

[Sparhawk]

The 7970 is a beast. Its faster than a GTX670 and is only slightly slower than a GTX680 despite costing $100 less. And if you overclock it, it'll outperform an overclocked GTX680.

The 7970 is my current card, I have ordered a EVGA GTX 680 Classified 4GB to replace it. The tearing on triple screens is unbearable ( I currently run 3 1080P TV's on HDMI). Tested a friends classified with no tearing issues at all, both cards are great on single screen but really dissappointed with the AMD tearing issues in Eyefinity on desktop and games.

 

[jamesriley94]

Triple screen on TVs?
Never heard anyone complain about tearing when they're using TVs... I'm sure you'd see far bigger problems with input lag than tearing?

Anyway - mPower gets my vote!

 

[Sparhawk]

Triple screen on TVs?
Never heard anyone complain about tearing when they're using TVs... I'm sure you'd see far bigger problems with input lag than tearing?

Anyway - mPower gets my vote!

Dont seem to and have run tests. Problem changes with Driver updates and I can move the problem from screen to screen by changing the display port used on the card. A friend has the same set up and recently swithed to nvidia. Problem is gone and has been for a couple of weeks now. If anyone has other suggestions i would like to hear them. Tossing a 4 month old card is extreme and I would keep if I could solve this issue. Last beta driver changed the issue from 2 of three screens to one only, so i assumed its an AMD issue.

 

[jamesriley94]

What, so tearing only occurs on one screen?

I'm guessing you have one going through DVI to HDMI converter, one through HDMI and the last through DP to HDMI converter?

 

[Sparhawk]

What, so tearing only occurs on one screen?

I'm guessing you have one going through DVI to HDMI converter, one through HDMI and the last through DP to HDMI converter?

One through DVI to HDMI Converter. 2 through display ports. None through the HDMI Directly. Tearing was on 2 screens, the last driver update elliminated one. it changes with the drivers and its never the same port on the card have had it occur on all three.

 

[ThE_MuFFin_MaN]

I had nothing but issues with the Gigabyte Z68 board I used to have. I upgraded to a ASrock Extreme7 Gen3 board and I've been happy with it. Easy to overclock!

 

[findthecomputerroom6]

i'd go for the mpower

 

[iBeInspire]

+ 1 for the M-Power, looks better

 

[Windspeed36]

Asus P8Z77's as an alternate to the Sabertooth?

 

[WillSK]

As said by someone else earlier if I was building a new rig today I too would chose the msi Mpower. Great looking board and msi's Z77 offering has been very successful amongst the guys here in the forums

 

[Bang]

Not trying to thread hijack here but I see posts where people say the 7970's are so much better than 680's. Someone please show me some evidence that proves this http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
wrong.

 

[jamesriley94]

There's been various driver improvements since release for both cards, rendering most benchmarks wrong anyway, so evidence is pretty meaningless, when for example, the latest AMD drivers claim to offer 20% extra performance in certain games than the drivers at release did.

Also, I believe passmark probably looks more at 3D modelling and stuff rather than actual gaming, where nvidia may benefit from cuda cores. In gaming, results are different.

Also, your test puts a 670 above a 690? And a 480 above a 590, so I'm guessing all tests were done immediately after release where drivers were pretty terrible. things will have changed a lot since then.

 

[MacLeod]

Not trying to thread hijack here but I see posts where people say the 7970's are so much better than 680's. Someone please show me some evidence that proves this http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
wrong.

7970's benchmark better than GTX680's. Thats for sure but they dont play as smooth as 680's. HardOCP I think was the first to start reporting this and they caught some flack (I was one of the ones calling BS on it) and then The Tech Report I believe it was came out with the same thing and when you look at the frame rate graphs, you could see it. Huge swings in frame rates all over the place. Didnt do it in all games though but judging by the graphs, it would definitely be something noticeable. The GTX680 got lower average frame rates but their graphs were much more linear. I think this would make for a better overall gaming experience than the 7970's.

This really only seems to be a big issue when going Crossfire. Using a single card, there doesnt seem to be as many complaints about the stuttering and all.