GTX670 or 7970 For THIS Game?
 

670 is better than 580 right ?Is the 6990 more trouble than its worth with dual gpu setup?Thanks.

670 is faster than the 580. As far as i know the 670 is not far from the 680.

As far as the 6990 goes, i would say its more trouble than its worth in any game (any dual gpu). One should always choose the single gpu option if its possible.

S!

As above. I would choose a good single GPU over a dual-GPU.

I have just upgraded from a 4870x2 to a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 Windforce 3X 2048MB(this is the fastest 670, even faster than a 680). While the ATI card improved in this latest patch I am really impressed with this new card. At a resolution of 1920x1200 I have everything on maximum settings apart from effects which is on medium. It never dips below 30FPS for me.

You asked for the decision between 670 and 7970 in your topic line. It is for sure 7970!!!! In this game, you will have less problems and it is as fast as a 680. Latest driver improvements and other things made a lot of tech-pages in the internet let revise their decision about the fastest card on the market. With some new overclocked versions of the 7970, you can see that they are nearly equal, bit ati got back the lead with the fastest single card.

It is cheaper, has more vram (which is an essential thing -> for cod, you should have more than 2.5gb preferrably). And if you are a guy, who sticks with such games and not only with casual games, I would prefer the 7970.

As I have it too and I am a guy playing games like sims, pc exclusive games and some streaming engine games like arma, I love this card, although I am normally also on the nvidia side.

This time (for now) ati got a very good card and if I review technically, I come to the result, that the 680 is fast but lost features. It is simply a potentially good card, which was thrown on the market to hold the fanboys, but technically insufficiently featured. The 7970 has all up-to-date features, a high quality bill of material and a better performance for the money.

Thats my current opinion and I never thought, that I would say that one day: ati has the better card, especially for cod! ;)

S!

Both nVidia 6xx and AMD 79xx series will run CoD sufficiently. Which is better is up to the gamer to decide ;) I am happy with my 7970HD as it runs every game I play (WoT, EVE, IL-2 CoD, Arma2 and it's mod DayZ, Iron Front etc.) with great performance. And I bet nVidia 6xx series will do that as well :) Interesting to see what the 12.8 drivers for AMD will do, being released this week..

In normal resolutions like 1080p, they are close together, but already having stutter @ the 680. If you go further, it will get worse for this card except you get a +680 with more vram, than stock.

Seeing big vram getting more and more important, the hd7970 could be a better choice. And with working sli and crossfire, this card will match better as well, because the vram is getting even more important in that. It do not double vram in sli and so you could still have the problem with stutters on a 680.

For most games, this is not important, but for cod in its current, demanding state, it should be taken into account in my opinion.

S!

Slapped the 7970HD with GHz Edition BIOS and it made a difference for me. Can't wait for the 12.8 drivers and see how they fare :)

+1 Baron.

Stublerone seems to be convinced (as in another thread, not even going to answer his ranting ) he knows it all, but hey....what does one expect, he's a "pro"-gamer, and people with a 670 just belong in the casual corner of shame.

Im sorry, what?

First of all, i have 1280 Gb memory and i never run out on high settings in loD, heck iv managed just fine on 1024 Gb if i lower just a couple of settings from unlimited to high . Standard memory on any GTX 670 is 2 Gb.

Second: Gtx 670/680 is gaming cards, not a jack of all trades. The technical features you speak of is irrelevant and never ever used by 95% of the costumers. ( mining etc.)

Third: The only reason Ati can claim the throne (hmmm) is because the launched a card thats oc`ed to the hilt straight from the factory, not the partners like Gigabyte, Asus etc, but from ATI themselves, witch is unheard of and only shows that.....well, i wont go into that.

Fourth: Gtx 670 is as fast or (most of the times) faster than the 7970, even in Battlefield on Ultra, with its insufficient memory mind you. (and im not even talking about the 680 here) if you dont count the "all new" Gigahertz version from Ati, witch in reality, is a oc`d stock 7970 with differant bios, as i already mentioned.

Fifth: Gtx is cooler, less noisy, and draws less power than the 7970 and essentially costs the same (10 euros here and there)

I dont mind you recomending what you see as a good card but keep to the facts please, its the OP money and he is the one about to spend alot of it. I always use what i like and owned Ati cards to, but the fact of the matter is that Ati was left behind this time around. (7*** series vs 6** series).

Btw, what problems with NVidia in CloD do you speak of? As far as i know Ati owners is the ones who have had problems with CloD since its release.


the OP now got 2 different opinions, lets not take it further and let him find out what's true and what's not by googling. :wink:


P.S NedLynch, accidentally deleted my first post, dhu.

You can find a ton of reviews which will show one brand beating the other, but at the end of the day I go with what I find is best value for money for my needs.

I was planning on getting two 670s because I wanted to try out nVidia after years of buying ATI, but here in Australia both the 7970 and 670 are virtually the same price, the 680 is about $200 more on average. Because I have triple screens and the 7970 as more VRAM it was my choice.

If you're looking at the 670 or 7970 and have a single screen, even a 32", either of them would be good cards for CloD.

P.S. As for overclocking, if the manufacturer decides to increase the clock speeds of the reference cards, then the new speeds become the standard. The point is the 7xxx range of cards have enormous overclocking headroom compared to the 6xx nVidia cards, also the nVidia cards automatically overclock themselves when under load, so the argument about either brand not sticking to defaults clock speeds is mute.

that is a pretty good summary :)

i have just been doing some window shopping for these high end cards, and reading reviews and comparisons online to bring my information on them up to date (hope in the next couple of months to get a high spec'd gfx card and a new cpu), and concur with your summary.

however good the 7970 looks on specs and performance, it does it at the cost of significantly greater heat and noise. having the card so firmly oc'd also would shorten its lifespan (might not matter for frequent upgraders). its better performance for running multiple screens however is a big step in its favour, and would matter for me in making my final choice.

Omg, okay. It seems, there is bashing around and you don't want to read all I have written. My card is running on 1080p with up to 2.7gb vram usage, at least 2.4.

Some other people also report this and we are now talking about "crank up means only high?". If I talk about crank up the system, please totally crabk it up, not half!!!

I just see our beloved gtx 680 users taking part in stutter discussions. This is not only, because the drivers are bad for it. Or do you still believe in santa claus? It is lag of memory!! -> that means, you cannot run it cranked up and you COULD get stutters.

Crazy, that lynch is writing something about pro gamer and that I said, that you are all casual gamer. Never talked about that. You just have to avoid mentioning games, which are definetly built to be used with low ram to serve all systems. I never talked about you, i talked about the games, which you are comparing with clod.

The sentence " why is clod running so bad and skyrim not?" just feeds me up and I cannot believe, that someone of this com really wrote that!! Sry, bit that is sad.

I also never talked about the 680 is worse. I said, that the 7970 with its vram should have less problems. The opinion, that even 670s are running faster than 7970 is simply not true.
Bf3 is an nvidia game and the 680 initially was not faster, which was a shocking moment for all nvidia guys. They now solved it with bf3 patches and nvidia patches. Some of you should be aware of that tactics, working closely together with the game developer and solve out the competitor. Giys, who are into it, know that this was often the case in the fight ati/nvidia. Just wanted to mention that.

Noise, heat and evetually life time lose from overclockinf are just weak statements out of the brochure.

80% of the gamers, deciding to buy one of these cards, will overclock it. Ati has the better bill of material and you will not reduce life span on both cards, except you want to run your card over 6 years. All cards are consuming power and noone in high end will care. It is not much and the standby power consumption is nearly the same.

I do not want to discuss the whole thing. I stated, which is the better card in my opinion and comparing 670 and 7970 is nuts. Take out the boost in the 670 or overclock the hd 7970 will cause, that hd7970 is simply faster!

Btw: I never heard of ati user having generally more problems. Il2 1946 was ati game and clod is also ati game in its current situation, if I just do a wild shot into the dark. Never heard a 7970 user taking part of stutter discussions...

I am no pro gamer, just a guy who really read alot of the situation between 680 and 7970. Only few sides really switch on their minds and benched the cards realistically. What is realistically? High end card users will tweak and overclock. So the only comparison to do is: overclock both cards to its stable maximum and than compare. You can see, that they are closely together and when it com to real high resolution, the 680 in its nvidia nature just cannot compete anymore. High res is not 1080p btw....

Just my opinion, but I dont want to discuss it, as it gets boring. Buy a half kepler, quickly released to avoid damage and be happy.

Hi Stublerone, Il2 was always better on Nvidia cards due to it's better drivers/handling of openGL. With the two new cards to choose from it depends on what games you want to play but both do well enough to make it not matter. In the Toms Hardware list they come out equal due to the nature of the different cards working better with different games. You can get a per game speed test on Anandtech if you want to investigate further.

Sorry but this whole rant is nonsense, he claims to have experience in the technical side of computers, building them and an understanding of the hardware involved. He clearly doesn't have clue and and isn't very experienced in the matter, he hasn't read any hardcore computing magazines that review the whole computing industry and devoted to hardcore gaming or been to any technical websites/forums and devoted to debating at length stuff like this. Since the new nvidia cards have come out AMD, and now no longer ATI as AMD took over the ATI company completely in 2006 for 5.4 billion dollars, has been on the back foot. The nvidia cards are a whole redesign of the Fermi architecture which they began with the 500 series of cards. Overclocking kills cards plain and simple and his statement that overclocking doesn't kill cards shows his complete ignorance on the subject. Overclocking stresses the components and puts them under greater strain to perform, which causes heat and which puts the fans and cooling system under more strain to deal with said heat. Running any sort of rig under those conditions even if your cooling system is a water system eventually those components are going to wear out, and playing demanding at high settings will lower that that threshhold even more! The rreason he doen't want to discuss it anymore is proof he hasn't got a clue about the subject he's talking about and subsequently wouldn't like to show his ignorance! I've been playing IL-2 from the very beginning way back in the days of the IL-2 Sturmovik beta, which I still have somewhere on disc, the nonsense he said about nvidia users having issues with forgotten battles and not ATI users is complete and utter nonsense. I remember discussions going on for hundreds of pages at a time on this forum and also over at the ubisoft forum about graphical issues that ati users encountered with every patch, and discussions at length how tweak the config.ini for a work around! Remember when Pacific Fighters rolled out and the problems ati/AMD users had with the new clouds and water settings? Sorry but don't listen to his half arsed attempts to sound knowledgable. From a computer geek and MCSE/ACMT professional! Oh and stublerone MCSE stands for Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and ACMT stands for Apple Certified Macintosh Technician go look them up ...

S!

Well, AMD had problems with original IL-2 that were FIXED! I know that for sure as I used both AMD and nVidia in IL-2, since beta as well. And I tested beta on TNT cards, Kryo cards etc. to get feedback to Oleg's team. Talk about a swap-o-rama and numb arse testing! ;) :D

nVidia and AMD both make good hardware that run any game today. Even I could not use Water=4 straight with AMD there were ways to get around it, but for me FPS was more important than some a bit shinier water ;) AMD gave me a solid 60fps with VSync, that is all that mattered at the time. So did nVidia cards I owned(up to 580GTX). So better not say AMD was nothing but trouble with IL-2.

What annoys me is this nVidia lobbying "let us give you some money to game developing..in exchange we give code that gimps AMD and you have to add that TWAT logo spinning at start up"..Every freaking game nV is involved with has something extra installed that AMD can not use..look at Skyrim and some other titles. PhysX is just a gimmick, won't go into that. AMD is not any better in this regard either so "pot and kettle" ;)

I pondered hard if I should go for 680GTX over my current 7970HD. I did not as it does not offer anything SIGNIFICANTLY better in IQ or performance in games I currently play. And those titles are not seen in the hardware reviews, go figure. In CoD for example AMD and nVidia are equally good performance wise..if nV offers me only very little increase in FPS the cost difference for that is too big IMO, even the card itself is a good one. So I settle with 7970HD for now..next time I will review need for a new card is when the 8xxxHD and 7xxGTX series come out next year. No need to slap ePeens around which one is better before that :)

Like i said, i didnt want to start anything and like you say, the closest truth is that both 7970 and 670 is good cards.

The thing i reacted to was the complete misinformation provided.

And to Stubleron: I really dont know how you manage to use up 2.7 GB memory. I myself run on 1920x1080 and my memory usage peeks at 1061 MB (Black Death) with everything set as high as it goes and i use NVidias FXAA to, witch works like a charm im glad to say.

I,m no expert.

But I got a Jetstream 680 gtx with 2g DDR3 at it runs Clod just fine at max with just AA at X2.
No stuttering exept at 1st loading up,then smooth as silk.

i5 2.9 Quad,
Gigabyte GA-h61 chipset,
8g 1300mhz Ram,
Palit Jetstream 680gtx 2g DDR 3,
microsoft FF2 Stick,
CH pro Pedals.
750w PSU Icecooler.
2x Sata HD,
HP Dvd 1260 Sata Drive.
X4 Cooling fans.

When talking about the current generation of GPU’s, that’s not necessarily true.

With the fact that the GPU vendors have released “OC” versions of the 7xxx, and the fact that nVidia will automatically “overclock” their GPUs via their GPU Boost functionality, AND still provide a warrantee, means that these new GPUs can be “overclocked” and still remain with in their tolerances.

With this round of GPU’s the term “overclocked” or “superclocked” is a smoke screen, it’s marketing pure and simple. These puppies can go much higher in terms of raw clock speed and heat and still live to fight on.

Indeed they will, but constantly put under such stresses will eventually wear them out, that's what I'm saying, saying that'll never take damage when clocked is not what happens in reality ...

Well nothing is ever designed to last forever ;)

There are still games, which forces the nvidia cards to run at boost all the time. Misunderstandings happen here. The topic: "better buy 7970 or 670 in THIS game" means for me in zhe current state clearly: buy hd7970 as it provides you enough under ALLL circumstances! Multi monitor or other higher resolution = less possibilty of stutter, caused by vram issues. And YES, here are people talking about stutters on 680, which for sure is mainlycaused by the current driver, but the possibilities to run out of vram is still there.

Walshy, please don't get personal and stop to make yourself so big. You can be expert of whatever you want, but this is currently not changing anything in my result to give the initial poster the information for THIS game!

You are right with problems in il2, but nvidia had issues, too. Workarounds were normal, especually in these days without that regular support activities from the hardware companies. It was less frequently and so, you had issues more often.

I never meant to say, that overclocking do not stress, but the BOM of the ati card is quite a good quality and the card materials compared to the nvidia are more expensive. I do not say that it directly causes better performance, but the card itself has good materials. Gpu is "underclocked" as ati also say with the fact, that new cards are revised and got the name 1ghz editions. You and me are simply not able to say anything about lifetime in this case.

I just do not have a sufficient link, but a simple magazine, i do not care. Some big magazines already revised their benchmarking methods and also had to say, that their initial test reaults are too much "pro" nvidia. The whole results, which came out on release of the 680 were some kind of weird. And I only saw 1 or 2 websites with a reasonable testing. Reasonable to me is the following situation:

Nvidia uses boost and it uses it, when needed. So, in benchmarks it will use it very often or nearly always. So, we cannot compare the cards directly. So, we have to find a solution for it and as they are high end cards for enthusiasts, who know how to get all out of it, we should take a look over stock cooled reference cards, overclocked to its stable maximum.

This test was made by only a few websites. The result, comparing the 680 overclocked (currently do not know the spec on that, but it was even higher than the overclockings of some big magazines) and the hd7970 @1200/1500 was very interesting and showed, that it is close together, but the whole package of features provided by ati was better, so that ati got the lead and their award for the fastest card. You never can say, that it is all true, but this was the only good benchmarking at release in the whole web.

Overclocking leads to shorter lifetime-> not comparable as you just do not know all influences and material behaviours. You will have to look on your warranty. After this period, the card can break any day and you are not able to do anything. They could also have implemented life time dependend parts, which simply forces the card to die after some years. This is known from lamp or mobile phone lifetimes, which are more and more designed to die in a certain timeframe, to sell new products.

It is just dumb NOT to overclock your card, if it is needed. That is my opinion. Or do you try to use a card more than 4 years? Perhaps your next solution is to undervolt all components to safe equipment lifetime.

BTW, my hd7970 do not get over 45 degrees overclocked. You have critical, lifespan reducing temperatures on the components, which is simply not reached by both: nvidia and ati. You will get graphic problems and instability, before you reach temperatures over the components specs.

Do not take it so serious. It isn't necessary to talk about arse ... Just my opinion. And please do not read between lines to strengthen your diss. Keep it cool. And to shoot back a bit:

If you were working in my company and I see your statement of your jobs, I would fire you. This is unprofessional attitude and you jobs have nowhere near something to do with graphics cards or shouldn't state it in private opinion in a gaming forum, if you do not officially write for your company. BTW, I am asdfjkl engineer in rijfndk ltd. and I have the longest! :) what a crap!!! Really!!!

Hi Baron, you are just right over the whole matter. Both cards are good, but I just wanted to say, that vram is getting more and more important and that this is a clear advantage of the ati, especially when talking about higher reaolutions. Think abou tv's getting 4k resolutions and think about the current way of pc monitors to stay on 1080p, although we were playing games in a higher resolution 10 years ago. In this case or in case of multi monitor usage, you could perhaps run into problems in the next years. And the fact, that sli do not help you to get more vram to load textures fluently without problems, will also not change this.

But you are right, both cards do a good job.

To your vram statement: tell me your trick ;) Please have a look at phats testings, which are near to mine. It was a thread " recommended settings..." or so.

The more vram you have, the more it could be used potentially. That could also be a reason, that our loads are varying.

I have actuall a GTX 680 and I think for CoD this card works much faster than a 7970. For Rise of Flight it is vice versa!

You cannot say that. Why do you say it. They are equal on 1080p but with higher resolution and better texturesetting, the gtx simply cannot handle the game anymore without stutters. That is simply the current nature! Looking independend from vram load they are both nearly performing same. But you will run into problems and on high resolution, e.g. on a triple monitor setup, the ati will naturally be in front. And even if you put 3 680s together in sli. You will gain more fps for sure but this will not solve stutter from loading. You can get 30 680 cards and still have not enough usable vram.

It is just as simple as that. They are both nearly the same with the small but tall advantage of the 7970 to have sufficient amount of vram. If we speak about another version of the 680, this thing could be solved, but we are currently talking about 680 with 2 gb vram.

The game could also solve the problems with high vram load a bit by itself, so that this discussion isn't necessary, but in the current state, it is simply as described.

So, 680 is NOT performing way better. Simply not true... :)

No need to be sorry - just keep the nonsense to yourself... Not running out of VRAM with 1280 on max??? If you play on 640x480 with settings on low you may be right. Ever even tried to run on max? Because I and some others DO run out of VRAM http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=33540 :rolleyes:
This is also brand independant - as I run both ATi and nVidia cards...

Even with engine fixes - in 1 or 2 years this issue will be back! Get VRAM. 2.5+!



Just one piece of general advice: just set a limit of money you want to spend and get the best card over all for the money.
There are way too many fanboys and pseudo experts involved here - your best bet is to read general reviews on tech sites.
Both brands are really very much equal - it's +/- 10% typically. It's not worth the fuss about it really.

S!

Agree with Madfish here. I am by no means an expert with computers but can hold my own while configuring a gaming rig. So I use a simple phrase for my friends who want to buy a computer: If there is the word "gaming" in the requirement list, forget cheap."

Just saw latest nVidia video sponsoring Borderlands 2 using PhysX. Must admit they can their stuff in marketing, but saw some glaring things that mean the video was just that..a marketing video oozing with gimmicks, but the devil is in the details and anyone with keen eye can see them ;)

+1, I am also in the same position as you both.

If my friends ask me, some of my clanmembers or some other experienced jg friends about clod, we will say the same. And that is what the question was: hd7970 or 680 BEST in clod = both are nearly the same fast:-, but we definetly recommend the hd7970 for more variability and less problems in nearly ALL conditions in summary. Everything is well possible with it and there are situations, where you simply cannot run a 680 or they just will get frustrated ( example: triple monitors).

Thx, that 2 guys are facing in the same direction as me and other gamers of sims, who found out the strengths and weakpoints with these cards and can sum up effectively.

S!

And have to remember that in most reviews they use only FPS games and a few RTS. Very seldom they use any flight sim or similar. The AAA titles are heavily leaning to the brand or another due their popular nature and this will never change. Therefore I test both brands on games I play to get a picture of the performance rather than blindly believe the reviews. So far neither brand has dissapointed me. Now in the AMD camp, next generation card be nV or AMD depending on how they will perform at time of their release. So no real preference here nor foam mouthed fanboi mentality :D

I am very brand skeptic, what it boils down to as which is on top in terms of tech reviews, and in pure speed terms AMD cards have slightly pushed ahead but that's only with being able to flash the bios to get that extra ooomph, as to what is the better card all round is goes to nvidia at the moment. In terms of who is using newer chip designs sorry Stublerone it's nvidia as the chip that AMD uses for it's card is now really long in the tooth as it's actually getting on for 5 years with the evergreen codename of cards and that is old tech sorry but AMD lost the plot with it's processors and it's cards as it was still pumping out variations of it's AMD64 processor for far too long after that tech should have been relegated to the dustbin! Sorry but for all your AMD pr boosting nvidia is actually using newer tech!

Same to me, flanker. This my second ati after some years of nvidia 4200, 6800, 8600, 285. I had some experience with a 4890 and the other name I don't know :)

So normally I stick with nvidia due to the fact, that I do not care about money, when I am interested in a new card. Just looking at 285 and 4890, there were many games running better with the 4890, but my brother couldn't use it very good for his games.

After reviewing and really taking care about it and talking to many people, doing benchmarks with all different parts all day long, I decided to buy a 7970. The initial benchs of the 680 were hardly discussed for hours and it was simply a horror show, that happebed also at some independant magazines or websites. Some really good sites really did a bad job, mostly reviewed some weeks ago. Now it is all good but this hype was crazy and unfair. Both cards are now equal for my games with a little advantage for my hd7970. I am still glad to have it and I am still convinced, that it is the card of the current generation up to date. I wondered about the good results of the 680 and was impressed, except the point, that they seem to sell a product, which was not fully ready. More features like computing were surely on their plan, but they simply cancel and nevertheless sell it as fully featured (same with bios probs and newest pci-e support not activated, although stated on the package).

Nevertheless there is nothing to argue about. No need of laying his computer engineering balls on the table :)

Newer tech with not enough vram to solve stutters. I never talked about technology topics. An electro car is also newer tech with higher efficiency, but a porsche is still the car, which has the balls. Senseless to talk about newer tech, because it can also happen, that the newer tech is having start up problems, which costs money. Nvidia for sure did a tech switch and did it good, but we are still talking about the thread topic: Which card is best to use in clod. My answer: 7970 (full stop)!

I am also aware of your topics. I am not a super engineer, but I am not dumb. I am currently not for one manufacturer and promoting this only. A gamer, who plays multi platform games and do not want to additionally work on cooling, quietness and uses it stock out of the box, I would recommend the 680. But who is spending so much bugs and just let it be the card, as it is? This is, what makes the difference between tech interested enthusiasts and bling bling kids showing balls, which they bought in a store.

You know, what I mean. Such a card is too expensive to be used by kids, not knowing, what it is. Just bought the most expensive one and do not take care on their demand.

My demand: a watercooled card with high vram to be well equipped for some new projects like higher resolutions and triple monitors. So, this is my decision and it is the best currently with such variables and the best for clod, to prevent any stupid and annoying fact to turn out as a huge problem for you personally. I would bite myself in the ass, if the stutters won't be solved for my 680. And I would be very pissed, if the driver stutters are solved and I still have stutter caused by vram.

That is, why I am currently not recommending the 680 as the best card for clod! ;)

Nvidea!