GTX670 or 7970 For THIS Game?

[Stublerone]

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!

[Flanker35M]

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..

[Stublerone]

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.

[Flanker35M]

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

[Baron]

Originally Posted by Stublerone

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!

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.


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

[Codex]

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.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Baron

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.

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.

[Stublerone]

Originally Posted by Baron

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.


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

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.

[Meusli]

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.

[Walshy]

Originally Posted by Stublerone

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.

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 ...