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7950 vs 670

A

arcaneinsomniac

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Jul 22, 2011
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The reviews & benchmarks are not very consistent. I can find reviews that indicate the 7950 can keep up with 670, as well as reviews that indicate the 670 will absolutely dominate.

For instance:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22922/5 <-- in favor of AMD
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga/11 <-- in favor of Nvidia

I think part of the issue with these benchmark numbers is not knowing what clock speeds the cards are set at.

I mostly plan on playing BF3 but I'm gonna be playing a lot of the newer games also.

I think if I were to average together all these reports to get an idea of what I should expect, a 670 may be just slightly faster at stock. With 7950's having better cooling solutions (670 reference cooler is terrible) and far superior compute performance, it's a wash.

The information I'm interested in (and many others are too, I'm sure) are:

Overclocked performance (7950 OC vs 670 OC)
Overclocked power consumption (7950 OC vs 670 OC)

The reason is, I want to decide which card to keep based on its performance to power ratio.

I have a Gigabyte Windforce 7950 (with the triple fan cooler) that's gonna get here in the mail on Monday. I only have a 1920x1200 display at the moment. I know I'm gonna have issues with the noise and quality of the stock 670 cooler and to get a non-reference board 670 with a proper cooler would run me $450.

Note that the TR benchmark uses a 7950 @ stock 800Mhz (my card comes stock OC @ 900 with a beefy cooler that should take it to 1100 easy). If it really performs like that I'll never look back, but Anand's and Tom's 670 numbers make me uneasy.
 
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if you mostly play bf3 670 > 7950. 670 overall is better than 7950 as it should be since its 50dollars more. i personally would go gtx 670, its the best performance/dollar in the mid/highend range atm even if you consider oced results
 
I am leaning towards the 670 myself right now. If amd does another price drop, i may end up going with 7950/7970. I will try to wait another 5 dyas or so before purchasing anything :/
 
arcaneinsomniac said:
With 7950's having better cooling solutions (670 reference cooler is terrible) and far superior compute performance, it's a wash.

I know I'm gonna have issues with the noise and quality of the stock 670 cooler and to get a non-reference board 670 with a proper cooler would run me $450.
Click to expand...

I dont know what makes you think that the 670 cooler is terrible.. Every review I have including the [H] had nothing bad to say about it.. Its nearly inaudible even after gaming for long periods. My 6870's with non ref XFX cooler I just sold were at-least 2 to 3 times louder at load then the 670 stock cooler.

I have the EVGA ref card (non SC) and I cant hear it at all at idle & I have to try to hear it under load. This is by far the quietest video card I have owned since they started putting fans on them.

Edit: Fromt he AT article you linked above

NVIDIA&#8217;s power target once more makes itself known here, thanks to which power consumption and thereby heat generation increases very little compared to what we saw under Metro. This widens the gap between the GTX 670 and 7900 series, which is now at 5.2dB and 6.2dB compared to the 7950 and 7970 respectively. Or compared to NVIDIA cards this is 1.4dB quieter than the GTX 680 and nearly 6dB quieter than the unthrottled GTX 570.

Meanwhile there&#8217;s something very interesting going on with the GTX 670SC that&#8217;s a wider reflection of the GTX 670&#8217;s reference fan. The fan speed went up but objective noise (A-weighted) went down. Why? That low-pitch hum we mentioned diminishes with a higher fan speed, and as a result the fan gets quieter once it passes a certain threshold. Subjectively we agree with our sound meter: the GTX 670SC sounds quieter here than it does as the lower fan speed it uses for cooling during Metro. We haven&#8217;t experienced anything like this with the GTX 680, which makes us further doubt that the fans are identical between the GTX 680 and GTX 670. Close no doubt, but not the same.
Click to expand...
 
I'm sure max overclocked 7950 and 670 are pretty even. The 7950s have a ridiculous amount of headroom.
 
bastage said:
I dont know what makes you think that the 670 cooler is terrible.. Every review I have including the [H] had nothing bad to say about it.. Its nearly inaudible even after gaming for long periods. My 6870's with non ref XFX cooler I just sold were at-least 2 to 3 times louder at load then the 670 stock cooler.

I have the EVGA ref card (non SC) and I cant hear it at all at idle & I have to try to hear it under load. This is by far the quietest video card I have owned since they started putting fans on them.

Edit: Fromt he AT article you linked above
Click to expand...

Several reviews have mentioned that the 670 reference cooler at idle makes a low noise that is not necessarily a problem. So maybe I wouldn't notice it. Still, I'd definitely go for something a bit better if only for OC headroom. I couldn't make a buy decision the past couple days so now none of the nice 670's are in stock anymore.

At 800Mhz stock the 7950 comes up short against the 670 in almost every benchmark, however going from 800Mhz to 1100 (and a comparable RAM speed increase as well) is almost a 40% increase! That should put it way ahead of a stock 670.

I will actually pick one of them up (a non-reference GTX 670) when they come back in stock hopefully within a week or so. I'm looking to get one of those >60Hz overclockable 2560x1440 displays and the AMD cards apparently have issues driving that res higher than 80Hz.
 
A 7950 OCed to the max isn't that far behind a 7970 OCed to the max, depending on how well you fare in the silicon lottery. I haven't even spent very much time tweaking mine, and it will run at 1250/1450. My core is a bit better than average, by my memory a bit worse than average, most people seem to be able to get a few hundred mhz higher on the memory.

Given the price difference, that's the way I would (and did) go.
 
Wow 1250 is pretty damn good there. You know that's a 56% overclock. :eek: Which model do you have?

I reckon my 7950 won't lose its resell value very rapidly in the coming months. And I believe Gigabyte does 3-year serial number warranty. I think I'll be happy with it.
 
arcaneinsomniac said:
Several reviews have mentioned that the 670 reference cooler at idle makes a low noise that is not necessarily a problem. So maybe I wouldn't notice it. Still, I'd definitely go for something a bit better if only for OC headroom. I couldn't make a buy decision the past couple days so now none of the nice 670's are in stock anymore.

At 800Mhz stock the 7950 comes up short against the 670 in almost every benchmark, however going from 800Mhz to 1100 (and a comparable RAM speed increase as well) is almost a 40% increase! That should put it way ahead of a stock 670.

I will actually pick one of them up (a non-reference GTX 670) when they come back in stock hopefully within a week or so. I'm looking to get one of those >60Hz overclockable 2560x1440 displays and the AMD cards apparently have issues driving that res higher than 80Hz.
Click to expand...

Anything with a fan is going to make some noise at idle.. I couldn't hear it above my case fans (which are all 140mm & slowed via bios controls).

I dont at all mind the dual fan coolers, as long as the board is completely reference. I know the gigabyte used a 680 pcb, but even then its not apples to apples if you want to buy another later.
 
arcaneinsomniac said:
Wow 1250 is pretty damn good there. You know that's a 56% overclock. :eek: Which model do you have?

I reckon my 7950 won't lose its resell value very rapidly in the coming months. And I believe Gigabyte does 3-year serial number warranty. I think I'll be happy with it.
Click to expand...

I have the Sapphire OC edition. I've seen people do significantly better memory clocks than mine will do, I may try tweaking the memory voltage a bit, but it runs everything great as is.

Core voltage is 1.26v. The keep it stable, and maintains temps under 60C even at 100% load.

It's quiet to boot. I can't hear it over case and radiator fans even with the fan turned all the way up.
 
i have mine sapphire 7950 oc on 1200/1600 @ 1.25v 100% stable, but it goes to 75C after 2-3 hours of battlefield (which is not bad) so i have hard time believing that yours doesnt go past 60C, unless you have fan on 100% or custom cooling.

anyways, I pick 7950, not 670 because its better when overclocked at atleast 1100mhz which every model can achieve and has 3gb ram. 2gb is too low for high end card even with todays games.
 
I think I definitely got kinda crappy memory. 1450 mhz isn't bad, but it seems like most people are getting much higher than that. 1450 is still faster than a reference 7970, and a touch above the Sapphire OC 7970, but I'd love a bit more. Anything above 1550 and the card crashes almost immediately, and much above 1450 and it gets unstable at very high loads (like Crysis 2 with all the goodies).

What version of catalyst are you running? Did you tweak drivers at all?

I'm quite happy with my 1250 core clock, but it seems odd that the core will clock so high yet the memory won't do nearly as well.
 
I can't get my ram above 1400 either. I don't know how people are getting that high memory clocks with CRC.
 
dblinkhorn said:
I can't get my ram above 1400 either. I don't know how people are getting that high memory clocks with CRC.
Click to expand...
I think some people just got lucky with memory binning. I obviously got lucky with the GPU, it can keep stable at clocks higher than most of the 7970s that [H] tested.
 
I don't have a 670 but I do have an old 580 and an OCed 7950.

My 580 is actually 5FPS faster in min FPS in Skyrim cities using the straight ultra preset @ 1920x1200 than my OCed 7950. It's also smoother outdoors.

I've the 7950 in my AMD computer and 580 in my Intel. When I compared them in Skyrim I tried them both in my AMD comp so I would be testing them with the same CPU|ram.

I'm a little mystified.

Of course the OCed 7950 will bury my 580 in something like the AvP or Heaven bench.
 
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aintz said:
i loled. most of us are on 19*10 2gb is more than enough.
Click to expand...

Everything I have ever read also says its more than enough for 2560X1440 performance (27" monitors) and just right for 30" (2560X1600) monitors. My 560 ti 448 with only 1.25GB was running everything smoothly although I am excited to jump up to 2GB with my new GTX 670.

The ONLY gaming you need more than 2GB for is multi monitor gaming which not too many people have, If you do, wait for the 4GB versions to come out soon...
 
Why not get the GB Windforce 670? I bought one last week and am extremely satisfied. It was only $399CAD as well, same price as the reference cards but the cooling is superior (quiet and runs very cool). Power consumption is very low. Was thinking about a 7950 for $349 but am glad I didn't! BF3 performance is phenomenal.
 
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