So guys what's the general consensus here regarding HD 79xx cards and BF3? Do they suffer from any kind of issue(s) like NVIDIA cards do? or is the experience pretty much flawless? (no stuttering, etc, etc) I'm asking because I'm currently contemplating switching sides. The HD 7970 would be my top choice of course, but I could get down to a HD 7950. Thanks in advanced!
smooth as butter, no, beyond smoothlike bf3 here and tons of frames. stuttering is unknown on this game on ultra
Had a Kfa2 gtx 680 @ 1280/6500 Now got a 7970 @ 1268/6000 The 7970 is about 10-15 fps better on crucial min fps. Its basically the difference between x2 msaa on the 680 vs x4 msaa on the 7970 for smooth vsyncd gameplay
all maxed here with 4xmsaa you see 70+fps most of the time. with 2xmsaa it's over 85. drops sometimes, but so does on nvidia. great performance.
Smooth as butter. Ultra at 1080p with FXAA as I am not too bothered about MSAA. Can even Vsync it to 60fps and not have a single drop.
Quite frankly, and without making the actual fps important, my 7970 make it seem like bf3 is an old title. It's that smooth.
Some people here claim they play with VSync on, yet when I enable VSync or any form of frame limiting with RadeonPro I get noticeable input lag with every combination of renderahead/triplebuffer. It really feels like what is being displayed is behind what I would expect with VSync off. Once VSync is off it really a smooth ride, minimal tearing, barley noticeable. I get a minimum of around ~50 fps in some areas of some maps but well over 60 fps in 90% of the cases. The worst case seem to be the Back to Karkand maps, sometimes the minimum fps is around 40 but I think it has to do more with my ancient i7 870 at stock frequencies. I don't use MSAA and the settings are a mixture of medium/high/ultra as I prefer a minimum framerate as close as possible to 60 fps.
yeah, that cpu @stock will hold you back in BF3. The OP has a 2500k so he shouldn't have any problems.
I know what you mean, try to cap FPS at refresh rate (60Hz?), you will directly feel the VSync-induced input lag greatly reduced. Render Ahead, keep to 0 or 1, and Triple Buffering enabled. Use RadeonPro for these as it allows you to enable and disable those features with hotkeys. Useful for performing direct comparisons on vs. off.
Excellent feedback all around you guys thanks!. So I guess going red this time around is the right move. NVIDIA is having some serious issues with certain games right now. More frustrating is that none of their reps are even acknowledging that these issues even exist. Again thanks for your feedback, hopefully I'll be hanging out with you guys sooner rather than later with a brand new 79xx card in my rig.
Be sure to avoid voltage locked 7970s, Gigabyte and XFX. There might be some others too. Go for MSI, Sapphire, or reference Diamond (preferably one of the first two).
Errr few little points. Ati users have our fair share of issues aswell. I wouldnt bother getting a 7950 if you already have a 670 ftw. Go for a 7970 and one which isnt voltage locked, these cards come alive at > 1200mhz Good luck !! Also