Should i get a 670

[Charliew87]

Gigabytes cards and Asrocks newer cards have 2 slots between the top cards, which should be mandatory for all cards that dont go 4x sli compatibility imo : /.

 

[alienware]

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.

Then he's doing something badly wrong as Heaven was always about AMD. Even when the drivers were crap and the 6xx cards were beating the Radeons in games the 7 series always worked really well in Heaven.

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

Every OEM for the 7 series have different 'stock' volts. For example Asus and Gigabyte use much higher voltages for the basic clocks so you don't have to touch them until quite late on when overclocking. I had an XFX that was on 1050mv whilst the equivalent Asus card was 1174mv. Quite a difference !

I could only get to about 1025mhz on 'stock' volts but considering how low they were that was pretty impressive.

 

[Charliew87]

Then he's doing something badly wrong as Heaven was always about AMD. Even when the drivers were crap and the 6xx cards were beating the Radeons in games the 7 series always worked really well in Heaven.



Every OEM for the 7 series have different 'stock' volts. For example Asus and Gigabyte use much higher voltages for the basic clocks so you don't have to touch them until quite late on when overclocking. I had an XFX that was on 1050mv whilst the equivalent Asus card was 1174mv. Quite a difference !

I could only get to about 1025mhz on 'stock' volts but considering how low they were that was pretty impressive.

Yes but if we just run stock on an overclocked version vs stock on the EVGA GTX 670 things get unfair. I know the AMD cards are made to be overclocked in a bigger sense than the GTX 670s. Hell my card runs over 1200mhz on stock settings with keppler boost.

Thats why this test should be made with a decent overclocked 7950 vs a decent overclocked GTX 670. Ill even throw in the misses GTX 670 Gigabyte edition with a slight overclock so we can compare apples to pears in a legit way.


The vast majority of 7970 buyers wont go above 1,1v, the vast majority of GTX 670 buyers wont overvolt their cards. So stable as slight overclocks are the only real comparison you can make. Otherwise well get into the whole "its just as good because the blabla can be overclocked to blablas stock performance", which is just stupid.


Random decent 7950 vs random decent 670 is a fair comparison in my book . And I WILL post my unigine 4.0 score here as well as 3dmark11 scores.

 

[alienware]

Yes but if we just run stock on an overclocked version vs stock on the EVGA GTX 670 things get unfair. I know the AMD cards are made to be overclocked in a bigger sense than the GTX 670s. Hell my card runs over 1200mhz on stock settings with keppler boost.

Thats why this test should be made with a decent overclocked 7950 vs a decent overclocked GTX 670. Ill even throw in the misses GTX 670 Gigabyte edition with a slight overclock so we can compare apples to pears in a legit way.


The vast majority of 7970 buyers wont go above 1,1v, the vast majority of GTX 670 buyers wont overvolt their cards. So stable as slight overclocks are the only real comparison you can make. Otherwise well get into the whole "its just as good because the blabla can be overclocked to blablas stock performance", which is just stupid.


Random decent 7950 vs random decent 670 is a fair comparison in my book . And I WILL post my unigine 4.0 score here as well as 3dmark11 scores.

No 670 owners will overvolt their cards as it's completely locked. It's down to Kepler already being at the maximum voltage when they released it. Not sure if you heard of the '60% bios' but rumor has it that they were initially to be clocked around 600mhz or so. Nvidia then realise how well Kepler 104 clocks due to the manufacturing process and nm, bingo bongo stick on a bios that doubles the initial clock speed.

That came at a price though. Because the card would literally blow up with any more voltage they simply locked it out completely to prevent a chit ton of RMAs. The only card that has been released in the Kepler range was the 680 Lightning and it wasn't long before Nvidia forced MSI to stop selling cards with unlocked voltages and made them go back to a locked bios.

There is a lot of mystery surrounding Kepler but it's all easily worked out if you put your Scooby Doo hat on. 104 was the successor to the GTX 560TI, hence 104 Kepler was going to be a mid ranged card. They were going to release a 650ti, 660 and 660ti. It was only when AMD released Tahiti and they realised Tahiti was a bit of a Fermi type fail* that they changed it around to a 670 and 680. Otherwise what is now known as Titan would have been the 670 and 680.

* When AMD released Tahiti Nvidia made a statement to say that it was completely underwhelming. Basically Tahiti is very similar to Fermi in many ways, the most being that it contains a whole load of stuff that is completely useless to gamers (the directcompute stuff for example). It's hot, and, on the core technology in nm it uses an awful lot of power and gets pretty hot.

Nvidia didn't have any of those issues because Kepler 104 was always designed to be a mid ranged part. Once they started clocking it they soon realised just how far you can clock a card that doesn't have loads of server and workstation 'kitchen sink crap' bolted on.

On paper Tahiti should absolutely demolish 104. But it doesn't because it has tons of useless crap bolted on like Fermi that does nothing when translated into gaming engines other than get very hot and use lots of power.

 

[Charliew87]

No 670 owners will overvolt their cards as it's completely locked. It's down to Kepler already being at the maximum voltage when they released it. Not sure if you heard of the '60% bios' but rumor has it that they were initially to be clocked around 600mhz or so. Nvidia then realise how well Kepler 104 clocks due to the manufacturing process and nm, bingo bongo stick on a bios that doubles the initial clock speed.

That came at a price though. Because the card would literally blow up with any more voltage they simply locked it out completely to prevent a chit ton of RMAs. The only card that has been released in the Kepler range was the 680 Lightning and it wasn't long before Nvidia forced MSI to stop selling cards with unlocked voltages and made them go back to a locked bios.

There is a lot of mystery surrounding Kepler but it's all easily worked out if you put your Scooby Doo hat on. 104 was the successor to the GTX 560TI, hence 104 Kepler was going to be a mid ranged card. They were going to release a 650ti, 660 and 660ti. It was only when AMD released Tahiti and they realised Tahiti was a bit of a Fermi type fail* that they changed it around to a 670 and 680. Otherwise what is now known as Titan would have been the 670 and 680.

* When AMD released Tahiti Nvidia made a statement to say that it was completely underwhelming. Basically Tahiti is very similar to Fermi in many ways, the most being that it contains a whole load of stuff that is completely useless to gamers (the directcompute stuff for example). It's hot, and, on the core technology in nm it uses an awful lot of power and gets pretty hot.

Nvidia didn't have any of those issues because Kepler 104 was always designed to be a mid ranged part. Once they started clocking it they soon realised just how far you can clock a card that doesn't have loads of server and workstation 'kitchen sink crap' bolted on.

On paper Tahiti should absolutely demolish 104. But it doesn't because it has tons of useless crap bolted on like Fermi that does nothing when translated into gaming engines other than get very hot and use lots of power.

But we can bios-mod our cards to run at 1.212 and above. And it works really well apparantly. And Im thinking that people who have the cohonees to roll around at 1.25v 7970s/7950s would probably be perfectly fine with modding their 670s to 1.212v.

Im not one of those guys.

If you look at a stock gtx670 pcb and compare it to some of the bigger 680 pcb versions its just silly to think that both cards hit their absolute peak at 1.175v. If all cards could take the exact same overclock at every instance, all the 7950s would be 1250mhz stock at 1.25v or something. And you stated why, the RMAs would be horrendous.


Anywhos, in the end all we can do is compare what the average user would get from a 670, and what the average user would get from a 7950/7970. So post em up. Get yeerrrr benchmarks.

Youre a 670 guy too, just throw em in there.

 

[alienware]

It's a brave man who overvolts 104 tbh. One of my cards just about manages to work properly on the stock clocks and boost. The other clocks like a demon.

I would start a benchmarking thread but I cba updating the scores :lol:

Once I get a full copy of 3dm13 I'll give them a benching.

 

[Charliew87]

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6102320 10674 graphics score.

EDIT: Max temps 67c, max fanspeed 70%.

 

[SeekaX]

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6102320 10674 graphics score.

EDIT: Max temps 67c, max fanspeed 70%.

lol that reminds me of my 7950 DCII. max temps (oc) were 65°C at 25% fanspeed. the cooler was amazing.

 

[SeekaX]

the sig2 just jumped 20€ in price. nopeing hard. now its either the gigabyte or the palit card, both 340€. opinions?

 

[Charliew87]

Dude, are you stuck with a single vendor? Arent there a ton of hardware-sellers in germany?

Anywhos, Id recommend the Gigabyte FAAAAAR over the palit card. Ive had 1 palit card and bought 4 gigabyte cards, the Windforce cooler is in my oppinion the best on the market. My girlfriends card does 1350mhz on the core before hitting 70c on "okay" fanprofiles.

 

[SeekaX]

Dude, are you stuck with a single vendor? Arent there a ton of hardware-sellers in germany?

Anywhos, Id recommend the Gigabyte FAAAAAR over the palit card. Ive had 1 palit card and bought 4 gigabyte cards, the Windforce cooler is in my oppinion the best on the market. My girlfriends card does 1350mhz on the core before hitting 70c on "okay" fanprofiles.

unfortunately i am because the money i get back for the 7950 i get as a voucher and i cba to reroute that money on the bank account. also it's pretty much the cheapest store with good quality customer service. the palit one isn't really an option anyways, a waterblock on that small PCB would look pathetic. just one last question, is the noise level of the gigabyte card acceptable?

 

[Charliew87]

unfortunately i am because the money i get back for the 7950 i get as a voucher and i cba to reroute that money on the bank account. also it's pretty much the cheapest store with good quality customer service. the palit one isn't really an option anyways, a waterblock on that small PCB would look pathetic. just one last question, is the noise level of the gigabyte card acceptable?

Id wager you cannot get a more quiet gtx 670

 

[SeekaX]

Id wager you cannot get a more quiet gtx 670

then i'll go for one.

 

[SeekaX]

nvm. they don't have it on stock and i don't want to wait. the sig2 might be expensive now, but the ftw is 360€. the palit 350€, same for the gigabyte, but like i said i'd have to wait for at least a week. i'm going to put it under water soon anyways, so should i go for the FTW?
/edit also the gigabyte pcb looks pretty terrible imo, i can get a fitting backplate for the EVGA card and i had the neat idea of maybe embedding the waterblock into the case of the GPU, would look nice.

 

[alienware]

FTW and IIRC the Sig 2 both use the 680 PCB so the water block may possibly cost more due to the size?

I know that the 670 water block is about half the size lol.

 

[SeekaX]

FTW and IIRC the Sig 2 both use the 680 PCB so the water block may possibly cost more due to the size?

I know that the 670 water block is about half the size lol.

imagine having a watercooled gpu in your rig that is as big as a 650, looks like hell.

 

[berthez]

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.

Looks like you already have made a decision man, go for the 670, I currently have Nvidia aswell and its just solid perfomance all the way. Im not a fanboy of amd or nvidia, so i dont care if I have eighter of the brands, all I look for is good performance, quality, a card to match my build and pricing. I also use 3d vision 2 a lot, its a lot of fun
Good luck to you man

 

[marcus1987]

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?

i have a gigabyte gtx670 and it gives me full spec on every game but i will say now people cant make your mind up for you trust. i had the same problem and once people said u have to find one that will go with what u have already it was easyer. but i did not even do that lol i went for looks and also 3 big fans to keep it cool well any way i love mine good luck any more info please feel free to pm me mate will help the best i can