I am thinking about getting one of these 3 cards for a new system and would like some advise on which would be the best value for the money. My monitor is 1920x1080. While I am willing to buy an overclocked version of the card, I will not be doing any overclocking once I get the card. Initially I was leaning towards the 670 card, but now I'm wondering if the cheaper 660 or 7950 might be a better option. However, everything I read about the 7950, overclocking is mentioned and I can't seem to find any opinions about it without overclocking. Is the boost worth it in the 7950 cards? These were the two 670 cards I was initially considering: EVGA GTX670 FTW http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130787 GIGABYTE GV-N670OC-2GD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125423 Thank you for you help
When you factor in overclocking, the 7950 wins no contest. The WF3/VaporX and DCII have a lot of OC headroom, that's why the words "overclock" and "7950" are almost always used in the same sentence. Take your pick: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127667 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202007 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202003 ^This one has the best cooler I believe. If you don't want to overclock then flashing a 7950 w/ a ghz Edition BIOS will still yield great results. You'd be shooting yourself in the foot though buying a 7950 and not OCing. My card cost less than a 660Ti yet outperforms a 680 and 7970...if that's not value for money then I don't know what is... The 660Ti is not a card I would recommend, especially at 1080p.
I'm inclined to agree with the above. The 660ti is stunted by comparison and shouldn't even be mentioned along side a 7950 outside of price comparison. Since the newest drivers hit the 7950 is near enough to being equal to a 670, let alone when factoring in an OC.
If you're going to overclock much, go with 7950. If not so much, 660 Ti or 670, depending on your budget. 7950 Vapor-X seems to have handpicked GPUs so should overclock better than regular cards. At least I haven't seen any Vapor-X having lower ASIC Quality than 85%.
If you're OCing (which is stupidly easy.. all you have to do is a few clicks and you've got a 30% performance boost for free), then 7950 no question. If not, then definitely 670. Out of 7950s: either Twin Frozr III, WF3 or Vapor-X.
Thanks for the replies, sounds like the 7950 is the way to go. If I decided I wanted to do some mild overclocking (i.e., not having to add any extra cooling), how much could I safely do? What are the differences between the 2 sapphire cards? Would they be a better choice than the gigabyte or msi 7950? SAPPHIRE FleX 100352FLEX-2 Radeon HD 7950 3GB SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100352VXSR Radeon HD 7950 3GB Stitchmanz
Sapphire are AMD's #1 board partner and my brand of choice for ATI cards. Every ATI card I've owned from X1950 XT on has been made by Sapphire. I don't know much about MSI and Gigabyte but the other guys could tell you I'm sure. GPU Info. Flex - Can support 3 monitors out of the box without needing a display adapter. Has 7+2 phase VRM 6+6 pin PCI-E Dual-X twin fan cooler with 4 heatpipes. 860/1250 clocks (925/1250 boost). Good overclocking. Vapor-X- V2 version is Sapphire's newest model. 3 monitors needs a display port adapter. 8+2 phase VRM with Diamond chokes 8+8 pin PCI-E (on new V2 models, original has 6+6) Vapor-X cooler (water cooled). 850/1250 clocks (950/1250 w/ boost). Excellent overclocking on V2 models I have the Vapor-X Vapor-X is Sapphire's best cooler, designed with overclocking in mind. At 1200mhz/1650 overclock and slight vcore bump the card sees 60c tops. Insane cooling. The VRM temps will hold you back before the gpu temp. No two GPU's will overclock the same, but you could expect ~1100/1500 at stock voltage. Here are some 3DMark11 benchmarks I did at various clock speeds. Look at the GPU score, not the P score. Now we're cooking with gas; faster than an overclocked 680
Beautiful sight Pill, I must say (esp the one where it beats an overclocked GTX 680). Yeah, I myself have the Gigabyte 7950 WF3 model, this one does 10068 graphics score smoothly @ 1100/1400, which I'm pretty pleased with. But I would go with what Pill suggested, the Vapor-X v2. 1100/1400 - 10068 gfx score - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4737061 1215/1590 -11090 gfx score - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4731525 edit: godamn I just looked at the fps bumps, they're massive. :3eyes: Pill, very interesting, take a look at the fps numbers in our best results.
Don't knock the 660 Ti too much. It's not as good as the 7950 or 670, but it's a very powerful card. Single 660 Ti http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5002931 SLI 660 Ti http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5002993
OCed CPU back to 4.6 and got this http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5003255 More GPU OC http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5003284
Hello PillMonster, I almost bought the Vapor-X because you recommended and then I stumbled upon these benchmarks. Radeon HD 7950 VS Geforce GTX 660ti I was amazed, how true are their results? some people say is unbiased, either way sorry to high jack/revive this thread but will the GTX 660ti perform better than the 7650 on the upcoming display BenQ XL2720T monitor 3D Envision Ready
The Tech Report article is bullshlt and goes against every other review on the internet. Furthermore they used an overclocked 660Ti vs stock 7950 AND one of the tests had PhysX enabled which of course gave Nvidia the advantage. Just read the comments and see how many people call BS on those results. 7950 is better than the 660Ti in every way, and when both are overclocked the 7950 is untouchable. It seems TR has an axe to grind against AMD for some reason.
my vapor-x asic is below 70%, can't remember exactly the exact value. still overclocks great, I can get 1200mhz out of it at 1.25v, I just choose to run lower clocks at low voltage.
Most of the games chosen in this review do not represent a tough selection of games to run. Hitman and Sleeping Dogs, ok. But the rest, meh. This review was meant to highlight the issue of frametimes on Radeon graphics cards, something which was mostly fixed in newest Catalyst 13.2 Beta drivers (you'll find the follow-up review on the Tech Report as well). You might want to look at Anandtech's performance charts, for example. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/647?vs=645 I doubt these charts even use the new 12.11 or later drivers on the 7950, as in this review, 660Ti > 7950 in BF3, which simply isn't true (as you'll see in other reviews). The 12.11 Betas gave a pretty big boost to 78xx and 79xx(particularly) performance.
Will the upcoming BenQ XL2720T monitor 3D Envision Ready work better with the Nvidia card instead of the Radeon 7950 right?
