What driver sets were those benchies performed with ? I can confirm that my experience with far cry 3 on the 310.90 drivers was a steady 60 fps constantly (probably more, I played with vsync on). Ultra quality preset, 4x AA (standard Alpha to Coverage) HBAO and FOV around the 100 mark. 1080p resolution
According to hwheaven: ASRock X79 Extreme9 Intel Core i7-3960X @ 5.0GHz 4x 4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR-2133 Corsair H100 Liquid CPU Cooler Corsair AX860i PSU Corsair Force GT 240GB SSD Corsair Vengeance Keyboard, Mouse and Headset Windows 8 Pro 64-bit Forceware 310.90 Catalyst 13.1 with Latest Cap -- As i said before, the standard 7970 (925/1375 core-mem) already outperforms the GTX 670, in this case we're talking about a heavily OC'd version (FTW SIG2).
what about game version? I was running 1.04 although ubisoft doesn't generally release performance updates. Didn't really bother checking changelogs anyhow EDIT: I just saw the benchmark myself, FOV was around 75. It's impossible, my 670 definitely got way better numbers than what is shown
Also in that review TPU used the CAT 12.7, the big performance boost came with the 12.11 http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_7950_Vapor-X/31.html
My bad... I was running the game using the farcry3.exe instead of the dx_11 extension one.. I suppose the numbers are legit after all. I wasn' t aware the original exe runs in DX9 mode even if DX11 is selected in the video settings. Bummer. My 670 sucks :bang:
I had a 6970 from ATI before getting the 670 GTX. All I can say is I had horrible experiences with ATI drivers on the 6970. First, because of atikmpag.sys I was getting blue screens, had to go in safe mode do driver cleaner, and delete all instances of that file. Second problem, in Dota 2 if you have dual monitor setup, your mouse cursor becomes unusable at random times with ATI 6970. You have to reboot the computer or reset the displays to get it back in normal shape. I don't know about the 7xxx series, but I'll never buy ATI again after that. I know sometimes Nvidia has driver issues, just haven't encountered any as bad as the ATI ones. My 2c. Edit:spelling.
There's nothing wrong with AMD drivers. You're assuming the BSOD was a driver issue without really knowing. In fact it was more likely to be an issue with your hardware. Fwiw I owned a 6970 for over a year and never had a single BSOD and never had a BSOD with my 7950 either.
A point to make is. TWIMTBP is fading away, bigger fish swimming the see of optimization. Never settle bundles from AMD's gaming evolved campaign is something too watch. Three new consoles and all the games will adopt this strategy of AMD optimizations. TessFX, need I say more. It has begun. I would say AMD if you want better performance and value for the money. I personally will be switching to Nvidia for better 3D support. But that could change!
All I know is it worked without any issues until I updated to some driver version. That file had some problems, I found a thread somewhere related to this file, it appears AMD at the time botched something with that specific version, and it was a pain to fix. Didn't get any more blue screens... if you google for that specific file you'll find plenty of people complaining. Card runs fine, after driver update starts BSODing, then clean everything (i think I was about the reinstall the OS at some point), and it works fine. Seems like a driver issue to me, then again not a specialist. And the dota 2 cursor problem was very annoying.
While normally I would say get a 7970 I wouldn't be so gung ho about it after my recent experience with a customer when building him a rig with a 7870. Had tons of trouble with the card not running at proper clocks and upon googling found it was a pretty rampant issue. I also had loads of issues with my Radeon 4850 and 4890 with drivers. I have had problems with NVIDIA cards as well but the issues are def not nearly as many as I have had with my AMD cards.