Should i get a 670

[marco]

If you haven't got one yet here are some points for you to think about.

AMD pro's:
1. Normally cheaper by comparison, but- you get what you pay for.
2.err.......... ?
3.umm........ ?

AMD cons:
1. Slow/bad driver support, (common knowledge).
2. Red pcb's are old hat, fail.
3. It's AMD.

Nvidia pro's:
1. Drivers support latest and greatest games.
2. Generally less problematic and has much better reputation than AMD
3. Physx, 3d vision, Ambient occlusion in drivers, etc.

Nividia cons:
1. Renowned to be expensive, but at least you get what you pay for.
2. errm....... ?
3. ummmm......?

Easy, Nvidia all the way, and the 670 offers best bang for buck.

 

[iBeInspire]

If you haven't got one yet here are some points for you to think about.

AMD pro's:
1. Normally cheaper by comparison.
2.err.......... ?
3.umm........ ?

AMD cons:
1. Slow/bad driver support, (common knowledge).
2. Red pcb's, fail.
3. It's AMD.

Nvidia all the way.

Nvidia pro's:
1. Drivers support latest and greatest games.
2. Generally less problematic and has much better reputation than AMD
3. Physx, 3d vision, Ambient occlusion in drivers, etc.

Nividia cons:
1. Can be overpriced sometimes.
2. errm....... ?
3. ummmm......?

Easy, Nvidia all the way.

Fanboy alert - Shut em' down lads xD

If you've been paying any attention in today's market, you'd know that AMD are winning big time at most price points.

 

[marco]

Fanboy alert - Shut em' down lads xD

If you've been paying any attention in today's market, you'd know that AMD are winning big time at most price points.

Fanboy ? no not at all, I use both, I have a Powercolor HD 6870x2 and a GTX 670 in another rig, Its just plain simple, Nivida is better quality and offers more, and is less problematic, pricing aside. (I thought everyone knew this ?)
ps. i hadn't finished editing my post when you replied.

 

[iBeInspire]

Fanboy ? no not at all, I use both, I have a Powercolor HD 6870x2 and a GTX 670 in another rig, Its just plain simple, Nivida is better quality and offers more, and is less problematic, pricing aside. (I thought everyone knew this ?)
ps. i hadn't finished editing my post when you replied.

In your interest, I really hope your joking - Your making yourself look quite ignorant on a forum.
I would assume your bad experience is because of the ''x2'' on the end of that card. Crossfire (and indeed SLI) have their problems, and since that isn't a AMD designed card, the only people your can blame are Powercolor - You can blame them for that red PCB too.
You get ''bad driver'' horror stories from both camps, so that goes straight out the window.
There is nothing wrong with AMD, and their pricing is better. What's not to like..?

 

[marco]

In your interest, I really hope your joking - Your making yourself look quite ignorant on a forum.
I would assume your bad experience is because of the ''x2'' on the end of that card. Crossfire (and indeed SLI) have their problems, and since that isn't a AMD designed card, the only people your can blame are Powercolor - You can blame them for that red PCB too.
You get ''bad driver'' horror stories from both camps, so that goes straight out the window.
There is nothing wrong with AMD, and their pricing is better. What's not to like..?

"facepalm" don't start flame bateing please, obviously Ive had other AMD and nvidia cards in the past, i,ve been gaming since gaming began in the 70's and pc gaming since 1997, so i know how to state facts. op'er asked if he should get gtx670 answer is yes, Im done here.

 

[SeekaX]

If you haven't got one yet here are some points for you to think about.

AMD pro's:
1. Normally cheaper by comparison, but- you get what you pay for.
2.err.......... ?
3.umm........ ?

AMD cons:
1. Slow/bad driver support, (common knowledge).
2. Red pcb's are old hat, fail.
3. It's AMD.

Nvidia pro's:
1. Drivers support latest and greatest games.
2. Generally less problematic and has much better reputation than AMD
3. Physx, 3d vision, Ambient occlusion in drivers, etc.

Nividia cons:
1. Renowned to be expensive, but at least you get what you pay for.
2. errm....... ?
3. ummmm......?

Easy, Nvidia all the way, and the 670 offers best bang for buck.

as far as i know the 7970 GHz is faster than a 680. also i wouldn't consider buying a reference card, the 7950 i had, had a black pcb. also if you had paid any attention to recent drivers you would know that the latest nvidia driver is a complete and utter mess. and you forgot to mention that eyefinity is better than surround. so please keep the fanboy stuff down.
also this thread isn't about which card to get, it was more about which 670 since the 7950 doesn't work well with my rig for some reason. AMD has problems, but they are getting on par with nvidia.
/edit
oh and the term "best bang for the buck" and "nvidia" don't really work together with the 600 series. that is clearly AMD's territory.

 

[alienware]

oh and the term "best bang for the buck" and "nvidia" don't really work together with the 600 series. that is clearly AMD's territory.

Not at the start. The 6xx cards were pretty much the same price as the AMD ones and they were quite a bit faster then too (with the 670 outpacing the 7970).

It's only been recent drivers and the ghz editions that have seen AMD take a clear lead but their drivers still leave an awful lot to be desired.

Eyefinity is indeed better than Surround (or at least it was, you needed SLI just to run it until Kepler) but that isn't saying much. Even Eyefinity is woefully under-supported. At least with 3D nearly every game works and works well. With triple screen gaming there is a small handful that work with it and everything else needs to be hacked and stretched to make it work (with less than desirable results from my own experience).

That's the problem with stuff like that. Until the day comes where we all have 3 TVs in our living room and game across all three support just won't be there. Sure, with certain titles like the Dirt series (2 onward) there is native support for Eyefinity and Surround but titles are so thin on the ground I couldn't even count ten of them.

 

[SeekaX]

Not at the start. The 6xx cards were pretty much the same price as the AMD ones and they were quite a bit faster then too (with the 670 outpacing the 7970).

It's only been recent drivers and the ghz editions that have seen AMD take a clear lead but their drivers still leave an awful lot to be desired.

Eyefinity is indeed better than Surround (or at least it was, you needed SLI just to run it until Kepler) but that isn't saying much. Even Eyefinity is woefully under-supported. At least with 3D nearly every game works and works well. With triple screen gaming there is a small handful that work with it and everything else needs to be hacked and stretched to make it work (with less than desirable results from my own experience).

That's the problem with stuff like that. Until the day comes where we all have 3 TVs in our living room and game across all three support just won't be there. Sure, with certain titles like the Dirt series (2 onward) there is native support for Eyefinity and Surround but titles are so thin on the ground I couldn't even count ten of them.

i have two monitors and i am thinking about a third, but still i probably wouldnt run it in eyefinity or surround or 3D. i'm just too much of a framerate whore

 

[alienware]

i have two monitors and i am thinking about a third, but still i probably wouldnt run it in eyefinity or surround or 3D. i'm just too much of a framerate whore

You'll find that the games that support it natively run surprisingly well tbh.

When I used Surround I had to run Quad SLI as it was my only option. I bought my first EVGA 295 single PCB for £100 shipped and my second for £70 (my friend bought it from EVGA B stock USA for $100).

In Dirt 3 I was CPU limited as I was running an old 790i ultra SLI (EVGA) with a Core 2 E4500 clocked to 3.4ghz but I did get acceptable frame rates with everything on max and 4xFSAA. Mind you I did my homework and opted for three 1366x720 monitors so the resolution was low even on all three monitors.

I've seen Dirt 2 ran on Eyefinity on a 5770 :lol: wasn't that bad either, certainly playable.

 

[Destro521]

In comparison to the 670/7950 comparison im running mine in CFX with both my cards running at 1200 Core and 1575 memory and they are stable. The performance on mine is so nice .
I will say go which ever side you want as I myself wanted a 670 SLI setup but could only afford reference

While I am not sure what the performance would be of a single 7950 I will say that if you ever choose to get another it will be worth it

 

[Charliew87]

My brother recently got a 7970 vapor-x and Im using a EVGA GTX 670.

I cant really comment on performance THAT much because we simply run most of everything on max. Synthetic benchmarks aside, performance is about equal. I win in Unigine 4.0 and he wins in 3dmark etc.

BUT.

He has coilwhine, he can expect Xfire issues that SLI wont get if he upgrades, his card is more powerhungry AND I beat the living daylights out of him on stock volts with overclocking. I run at 1280 coreclock for benchmarking. On stock volts we got his card to 1125 coreclock but a pretty big memory clock. His card runs warmer, louder and is a powerhog compared to my 670.

Sure he has more VRAM, and sure he can get higher clocks if tweaking his voltage (which the 670 can do too mind you).

AND; Have you SEEN how friggin beautiful an EVGA GTX670 FTW with a backplate is?

In short; Im still an Nvidia fanboy, after seeing both 7970 and 670 in action .

 

[Destro521]

is the 7950 meant to overclock then because im getting 1200/1575 and I haven't touched volts or power target% ?

 

[Charliew87]

is the 7950 meant to overclock then because im getting 1200/1575 and I haven't touched volts or power target% ?

Are they under water? My brothers card sounded like the japanese were coming down on us when it hit 55% fanspeed.

 

[Destro521]

not under water no. Just aircooling with a custom fan curve. I don't really mind the noise because I have noice cancelling headphones.

I can probably say I got lucky
Only bad thing is that I received just the never settle on both cards. was hoping for 1 never settle and 1 reloaded

For temps I get 50 degrees each card ( I don't even know how) on games that utilize CFX well otherwise card 1 is around 60-80.

Performance wise: on Battlefield 3 Msi AB shows 30% usage both cards with 50 degrees max with 125 Fps yet again I have no idea how

 

[Charliew87]

not under water no. Just aircooling with a custom fan curve. I don't really mind the noise because I have noice cancelling headphones.

I can probably say I got lucky
Only bad thing is that I received just the never settle on both cards. was hoping for 1 never settle and 1 reloaded

Since you have some brutally clocked 7950s, bench unigine 4.0 stock presets and 3dmark11 on performance on a single card, and Ill put it up against my 670 ftw and 670 gigabyte wf3.

Worth noting might be that my cards are running in my 2 room appartment, and since Im a late nighter and my girlfriend needs to go to work at 05:00 every morning I need to run my cards silent .


EDIT: This is not to say AMD is better than Nvidia on next-gen stuff per-se. Its just that benchmarks that only measure the DX11 capabilities of a card while using their memory bandwidth etc really isnt optimal when measuring a 256-bit membus card vs a 384-bit membus card. This is sort of proven when Titan comes into the picture, roflstomping all AMD competition.

 

[Destro521]

whats your firestrike extreme bench results? I had 6500 combined and have no idea if thats good

 

[Charliew87]

Not sure tbh, but since thats a benchmark for next-gen stuff where AMD really beats Nvidia on the head thats not really important is it?

Run 3dmark 11 and Unigine 4.0. None of them are better for nvidia / amd as far as I know. Link your scores so we can see the Graphics score in 3dmark11 since the total score will be higher what with your 3770k beating the crap out of my 2500k .

 

[Destro521]

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6100191
not sure whether that is good or bad :O but I downclocked my cards to 1100/1350 as they were running hotter than usual which is annoying because they didn't cap 90 degrees on flame strike but did on this. I will probably have to look into why it happened.

 

[Charliew87]

To remove all xfire scaling (and the fact that I cant sli atm ) you have to run a single card, should help with your heat issues too .

Ill run my fan at 80% or something to make sure I dont hit 70c and downvolt my card.

But I dont quit untill 17:00 today so itll take a while.


EDIT: Thats in 2 hours, GMT+1 yeah.

 

[Destro521]

yeah
Im using the asrock oc formula mobo so I have around 1 inch of space between the cards and literally have no room for any sound card unless I want to block my bottom card so the temps are a bit high but nothing a few extra fans wont fix