Should i get a 670

[SeekaX]

So basically some of you may have seen my threads / rants about my ASUS HD7950 Direct CUII TOP V2, now that everything seems to end in the ultimate failure, wasted money, i am considering to just try to get my money back and get a 670 instead.
I am completely fed up with what i went through the past 6 weeks, especially the past 2 weeks where i had to contact AMD via twitter or in the forum EVERY time to get an answer. the first time after 1.5 weeks, and then every two days again. they just kept forgetting me.
also it turned out that they only know that it is probably driver related and that there won't be a fix any day soon.
I won't sit on a GPU worth 300€ if i can't use it. I already laid eyes on some of the EVGA cards, unfortunately i can't get an MSI card because the store i am buying it from doesn't have any MSI products (no there is no options to order it somewhere else). They had the ASUS DCII cards as well, but they are just stupidly priced, look like crap (whoever designed the V1 must be blind) and perform worse than the EVGA cards. atm i'm looking at the FTW signature 2 card, but it doesn't have a backplate, well i guess i could just buy one afterwards, going to put it under water some time this year anyways.
The shop has Asus, EVGA, Gainward, Palit (the jetstream card looks kinda cool, but i read that it gets very hot), PNY, Point of view, Sparcle and Zotac. any recommendations?

/edit
what's kinda bothering me with the signature2 card is that it only has 2GB memory instead of the 3GB of the 7950 (i know i won't be using that on one monitor, but who knows what the future brings to my desk) and ofc it just doesn't have the looks to compete with the DCII V2.

/edit the gainward phantom looks nice, it's also a lot cheaper than the Signature2. opinions?

 

[alienware]

Hey.

Whilst the 7950 may be faster on paper than a 670 there's no difference in gaming. They will both do the same job. Granted the 670 uses a little less power to get you there, but both are very good 1080p cards and it's very hard to choose between them.

But.

The 670 does have its merits, even though it costs much more than the 7950. They are as follows.

3D. I don't know if you have tried it or intend to run it but I've ran 3D on both solutions and AMD's idea of 3D leaves a lot to be desired. Firstly they don't care enough about it to actually invest so they leave it to Tridef who couldn't organise a drink up in a brewery. I was on Tridef for about a month before I threw in the towel, mostly down to poor game support and mostly down to them being a bit noobish. But either way 3Dvision is where it's at by a country mile. It's absolutely brilliant and works with near on everything.

SLI. Is still light years ahead of Crossfire X in terms of support and compatibility. Whilst at times I have laughed at Nvidia for investing into pointless technology I must say I am incredibly impressed with their driver support for SLI. The 690 is the most likely cause for this, but in a recent showdown Bit-tech put SLI against CFX and SLI worked in 19 out of 20 titles. Crossfire X worked in 13, woefully short of SLI supported titles. This is mostly down to AMD not bothering much about CFX now given that they don't have a single card solution of their own (7990) that needs it. As thus support has slipped whilst Nvidia had to be on the ball to keep their flagship at that time (690) working well.

So obviously if you are going to consider SLI or 3D at any point in the future you can forget buying an AMD card IMO.

I have owned a 7970 and it was the biggest PITA I have ever had with any GPU ever. My 6970 had annoying driver issues but the 7970 I had was plain borked. Had I not tried it in another PC I would have sent it back, but oddly in another PC I had no issues. Basically I would get artefacts on my start bar and strange lines going down my screen. If I put the GPU to sleep (Zerocore) it would awake with the bottom half of my monitor being a black hole. I would have to reboot, which was really annoying for a £439 card.

Now before any one accuses me of being a fanboy I'm not. I'm a 40 year old man with 35 year's worth of computer experience. I'm just pointing out the 'other side' which people may not bother to do.

BTW stick to either Gigabyte EVGA or KFA2 for warranty. KFA2 are basically BFG (Galaxy bought the plant in Wales) and they have the same UK based RMA that BFG did. Gigabyte are the best with KFA2 running a close second (Giga are also UK based).

Please remember that EVGA are in Germany and MSI are in Holland. If you are UK based an RMA gets quite costly as both force you to send recorded RMSD (otherwise they reject the RMA) and that cost me £18 to send back to MSI. Now MSI did upgrade me for free and I was very pleased, but £18 takes the biscuit.

ALL OTHER cards (Palit, Asus, XFX, Gainward ETC) need to go back to your retailer (IE Scan) and they have their off days. Then they need to return them to Croatia, China, Hong Kong etc and the turnaround can be months.

Stick to the ones I suggested as failure rates on Kepler were quite high to begin with

As for the Jetstream getting hot? well I have two and the top card idles at 27c and maxes out high 50s low 60s. So that's completely not true. They do, however, needlessly use up three slots which can be annoying. Personally had I not got them cheap (£308 on launch for my first card in a one day Scan sale and £250 for one from Amazon) I would have taken my own advice but then I never could resist a bargain

 

[TristanDaVoulas]

I am writing this based solely on my experience with my 670.

My card OC's to 1240 out of the box automatically and with my tweaking I got it to 1300 MHz no problem, and see no need to go further. I haven't run anything I can't play at 60 FPS yet maxed besides Arma 2, and all I did was turn down a few settings and it runs great. BF3 flawless 60 FPS on ultra. I don't have THAT many games, but I plan to have this card for a long time now, and I completely think it's worth it.

Sucks you can't get an MSI card though Mine's really quiet and I can't seem to hear coil whine at all even on load.

 

[Crabs]

Ill answer your title. Yes. Stay away from reference as the coil whine is very noticable (any reviewers ever mention this?).

I just put mine under water with the xspc razor gtx 670 w/ backplate and it whines a whole lot. As does my caviar black but hey. Stick with FTW or the bigger PCB's for the better power delivery.

 

[Eztrcfyu]

I'm currently running an Asus GTX670 DCII and I think its great. Very quiet, runs great. Got it up to 1200Mhz last night with some fairly quick tweaking.

I like the looks TBH, although I wouldn't mind if it looked a bit more like the 7970 DCII, with the heatpipes hidden, although it really doesn't bother me.

The EVGA 670 FTW would be a great choice too, as it uses a 680 PCB, which means you have better selection for waterblocks if you ever go for watercooling. I'm not sure if there is a 670 FTW with a factory backplate, but EVGA have a good naming convention, anything with a + means it has a backplate, so if there is such thing as a 670 FTW+ it will have the backplate already.

 

[SeekaX]

BTW stick to either Gigabyte EVGA or KFA2 for warranty. KFA2 are basically BFG (Galaxy bought the plant in Wales) and they have the same UK based RMA that BFG did. Gigabyte are the best with KFA2 running a close second (Giga are also UK based).

Please remember that EVGA are in Germany and MSI are in Holland. If you are UK based an RMA gets quite costly as both force you to send recorded RMSD (otherwise they reject the RMA) and that cost me £18 to send back to MSI. Now MSI did upgrade me for free and I was very pleased, but £18 takes the biscuit.

ALL OTHER cards (Palit, Asus, XFX, Gainward ETC) need to go back to your retailer (IE Scan) and they have their off days. Then they need to return them to Croatia, China, Hong Kong etc and the turnaround can be months.

Stick to the ones I suggested as failure rates on Kepler were quite high to begin with

As for the Jetstream getting hot? well I have two and the top card idles at 27c and maxes out high 50s low 60s. So that's completely not true. They do, however, needlessly use up three slots which can be annoying. Personally had I not got them cheap (£308 on launch for my first card in a one day Scan sale and £250 for one from Amazon) I would have taken my own advice but then I never could resist a bargain

3D doesn't matter at all to me, never understood the whole hype about it, maybe when it doesn't require glasses anymore. Also the 7950 is not an option anymore, the card doesn't perform for me, it's just about wich 670 now.
also the great thing about germany is that we have warranty rights for 2 years by default, i don't care much about where my GPU has to go for RMA, that is my vendor's problem.
i didn't know that the jetstream was a triple slot card, that would be usefull for me since my 7950 covered 3 slots as well and i can't put the slot cover back on. overclocking capabilities?

I am writing this based solely on my experience with my 670.

My card OC's to 1240 out of the box automatically and with my tweaking I got it to 1300 MHz no problem, and see no need to go further. I haven't run anything I can't play at 60 FPS yet maxed besides Arma 2, and all I did was turn down a few settings and it runs great. BF3 flawless 60 FPS on ultra. I don't have THAT many games, but I plan to have this card for a long time now, and I completely think it's worth it.

Sucks you can't get an MSI card though Mine's really quiet and I can't seem to hear coil whine at all even on load.

1240 stock clock? all i found was 1006MHz stock clock, haven't checked the more expensive cards though. which one do you have?

i think i will go with the sig2 because of the 680 pcb, also it is supposed to be really quiet on the contrary to the palit and very cool on the contrary to the phantom. my only problem is that german hardware shops are retarded, you can't get anything here. i want the Card and backplate, but the only way to get one here is to buy the card with the backplate wich would be 100€ more. i won't pay 100€ for something that is 20€ worth. i have the same problem with the CM Storm Quickfire TK Blue and the Corsair custom sleeved cables for the ax750. might as well import that stuff from the UK, but the shipping fees are annoying.

 

[Charliew87]

When people say blabla stock clocks they talk about their Keppler boost which is different for every card.

Im going to vote for gigabyte GTX 670 here because nvidias drivers and nvidia contorl panel are just plain awesome. Never seen a tool other than nvidia control panel that can lower my 120hz monitor to 60hz for games that require it using DP cables. Also, adaptive vsync really is great. No inputlag when using vsync can be a lifesaver.

My girlfriends Geforce GTX 670 clocked itself to 1280mhz on stock...
The card is retarded, and Ive heard bad stuff lately on another forum about them but its worth trying to get a golden sample. Im using EVGA GTX670 FTW myself and Im more than pleased, although its a lot hotter than the Gigabyte and doesnt reach the same clocks, its powertarget more than makes up for it.

Motivation for Gigabyte GTX670 :

i think i will go with the sig2 because of the 680 pcb, also it is supposed to be really quiet on the contrary to the palit and very cool on the contrary to the phantom. my only problem is that german hardware shops are retarded, you can't get anything here. i want the Card and backplate, but the only way to get one here is to buy the card with the backplate wich would be 100€ more. i won't pay 100€ for something that is 20€ worth. i have the same problem with the CM Storm Quickfire TK Blue and the Corsair custom sleeved cables for the ax750. might as well import that stuff from the UK, but the shipping fees are annoying.

At least her Gigabyte is using the 680 PCB too .


Gigabyte GTX670 WF3

EVGA GTX 670 FTW

 

[SeekaX]

When people say blabla stock clocks they talk about their Keppler boost which is different for every card.

Im going to vote for gigabyte GTX 670 here because nvidias drivers and nvidia contorl panel are just plain awesome. Never seen a tool other than nvidia control panel that can lower my 120hz monitor to 60hz for games that require it using DP cables. Also, adaptive vsync really is great. No inputlag when using vsync can be a lifesaver.

My girlfriends Geforce GTX 670 clocked itself to 1280mhz on stock...
The card is retarded, and Ive heard bad stuff lately on another forum about them but its worth trying to get a golden sample. Im using EVGA GTX670 FTW myself and Im more than pleased, although its a lot hotter than the Gigabyte and doesnt reach the same clocks, its powertarget more than makes up for it.

Motivation for Gigabyte GTX670 :

unfortunately the store i will buy it from only has AMD windforce cards. also i don't really like the looks of the windforce card.

 

[Charliew87]

unfortunately the store i will buy it from only has AMD windforce cards. also i don't really like the looks of the windforce card.

The looks of the FTW is unbeatable. Sig2 for white rigs, "Sig1" for black ones. Its not as much a personal preference as an absolute truth.

Sorry everyone else.



EDIT: I spell like a 12yearold.

 

[SeekaX]

The looks of the FTW is unbeatable. Sig2 for white rigs, "Sig1" for black ones. Its not as much a personal preference as an absolute truth.

Sorry everyone else.



EDIT: I spell like a 12yearold.

the sig1 would be nice, but sadly i live in germany, and german shops have the general rule to screw specifically me over. that is the fourth time in less than a month that i lay eyes on something and it turns out i can't have it / have to pay tremendous fees to get it shipped. first the AX750 Blue sleeved cables, then the CM Storm Quickfire TK Blue (amazon.de only has the red one, which doesn't fit in my colour scheme), the GTX670 FTW Sig1 and finally an EVGA backplate for the 670 FTW. it's cheaper for me to actually fly over to the UK, buy the parts there and fly back instead of having them shipped.

/edit
but i think the sig2 will look just fine, a nice accent to the overall black and blue scheme. also the sig1 looks like someone smeared chocolate all over the top.

 

[Charliew87]

I actually bought the backplates from EVGA itself, wasnt too expensive, about 12 dollars shipping an make sure to buy SLI bridges and thermalpaste, its almost free (like 1or 2 euros per part). The card itself is expensive as heck on EVGAs homepage tho... but I thought germany had cheaper prices and bigger stocks than swedish stores :S.


EDIT: there we go
http://www.meinpaket.de/de/22780952...be_dpcom_00059_00001_Pteaser&affmt=2&affmn=52

 

[SeekaX]

I actually bought the backplates from EVGA itself, wasnt too expensive, about 12 dollars shipping an make sure to buy SLI bridges and thermalpaste, its almost free (like 1or 2 euros per part). The card itself is expensive as heck on EVGAs homepage tho... but I thought germany had cheaper prices and bigger stocks than swedish stores :S.


EDIT: there we go
http://www.meinpaket.de/de/22780952...be_dpcom_00059_00001_Pteaser&affmt=2&affmn=52

unfortunately the store will only give me a voucher, so i will buy it from them, and they don't have a backplate there is no sli bridge in the package? that is weird, but the MSI 7870 Hawk didn't have a cf bridge either. i mean they can expect people to cf/sli the card and the bridge doesn't cost a fortune.

also i just RMA'd the 7950, farewell, i will never forget you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPAhWn0Ds0M

 

[alienware]

3D doesn't matter at all to me, never understood the whole hype about it, maybe when it doesn't require glasses anymore. Also the 7950 is not an option anymore, the card doesn't perform for me, it's just about wich 670 now.
also the great thing about germany is that we have warranty rights for 2 years by default, i don't care much about where my GPU has to go for RMA, that is my vendor's problem.
i didn't know that the jetstream was a triple slot card, that would be usefull for me since my 7950 covered 3 slots as well and i can't put the slot cover back on. overclocking capabilities?

Card one (the one I bought at launch) does 1250 easy. Card two I can barely get 50mhz out of over the 1085 factory boost, it really is poor.

It doesn't matter to me because I'm running SLI, but I would imagine that's why it was initially returned to Amazon (I got it for £250 as a return with full warranty).

It's the same as any other card from any other maker really, all comes down to the silicon lottery.

The back plate isn't triple slot, just the regular dual slot* but the cooler is around 2 and 2/3 slots big so will eat into slot three too much to be able to use it.

Basically the board and back plate are pretty much stock, with the cooler added on.

I would imagine there are better PCB designs out there (I like the 670 FTW by EVGA as it uses the 680 PCB) and I always had a thing for the TFIV power edition though they were considerably more expensive when I got mine and initial cards were absolutely terrible, failing to even make stock boosts without crashes and artefacts. I'd imagine they're far better now though..

As for 3D? well, as a wise man once said (me :lol: )

Until you've thrown a pipe bomb in 3D in Left 4 Dead (1&2) and stood in close proximity ? you ain't lived.

It's just something every one needs to see

BTW if you're in Germany it really is a no brainer ; EVGA every day

 

[SeekaX]

BTW if you're in Germany it really is a no brainer ; EVGA every day

EVGA is actually not really present in germany. you can't even buy anything directly from them, if no vendor has it you have to import. you sure EVGA is based in germany? i doubt it.

 

[alienware]

EVGA is actually not really present in germany. you can't even buy anything directly from them, if no vendor has it you have to import. you sure EVGA is based in germany? i doubt it.

They were when I last looked. They do sell stuff from their website which was all in Euros and they wouldn't ship to the UK.

http://eu.evga.com/products/prodlist.asp

And

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=995760&mpage=1

The only downside i can think of is having to ship to Germany

 

[SeekaX]

They were when I last looked. They do sell stuff from their website which was all in Euros and they wouldn't ship to the UK.

http://eu.evga.com/products/prodlist.asp

And

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=995760&mpage=1

The only downside i can think of is having to ship to Germany

they have a lot of stores selling their stuff, but none of them has the backplate don't want to pay 12€ just for shipping for a backplate worth 20€.

 

[alienware]

they have a lot of stores selling their stuff, but none of them has the backplate don't want to pay 12€ just for shipping for a backplate worth 20€.

Yeah it's a pain that. They've been working at cutting out the middle man for ages so I don't understand why they don't just put a small office in each Euro country and sell stuff from there.

 

[SeekaX]

well. at least after these 6 weeks of torture i got into overclocking some more and i got bioshock infinite and crysis 3 for free! that's at least something. even though i dislike crysis 3 and bioshock isn't even out yet.

 

[Charliew87]

Do what I did and order 2 backplates then, just to force yourself to go SLI down the road

 

[SeekaX]

Do what I did and order 2 backplates then, just to force yourself to go SLI down the road

i'm planning on that anyways by the end of the year. i will probably just wait a little longer with the backplate, i plan on watercooling my PC in summer / autumn, maybe i get a waterblock + backplate.