I currently have the gtx 570 which I love. However the card is crippled by the lack of vram especially @ 1920x1200; This bugs me. So I think I'm going to make the leap to a 7970 and would love to here about what your experiences have been like so far. Personally I was considering the 670 but only 2gb of vram will come back to haunt me in a year or so in my opinion. Ive never owned an AMD card so I'm nervous. Hook me up with some dirty deets about your experience with your 7970 so far
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7970 Owners
- Thread starter dremic
- Start date
Suggest you speak to user sonda5 who has the sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition. uses ref HD 7970 PCB. 8 pin + 6 pin power. almost identical to sapphire HD 7970 OC Dual X. overclocks like a champ. clock for clock HD 7950 is close to HD 7970, maybe 3 - 5% slower. Price USD 390 at amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-PCI-...3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1339032385&sr=1-3
here are some pics , OC speeds that sonda5 posted
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1695577
he clocked 1200 mhz easily.
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Suggest you speak to user sonda5 who has the sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition. uses ref HD 7970 PCB. 8 pin + 6 pin power. almost identical to sapphire HD 7970 OC Dual X. overclocks like a champ. clock for clock HD 7950 is close to HD 7970, maybe 3 - 5% slower. Price USD 390 at amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-PCI-...3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1339032385&sr=1-3
here are some pics , OC speeds that sonda5 posted
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1695577
he clocked 1200 mhz easily.
oh thats sick... save me 100 too... hmmm.
here is the one i am considering
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125413
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-radeon-hd-7970-oc-windforce-review/8
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
killernerd
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2012
- Messages
- 215
as long as you don't go crossfire with these cards you should be fine.
Why do you say your GTX 570 is being crippled by VRAM? When I had one it ran BF3 perfectly fine at 1920x1080 with the AA off.
I wouldn't base your decision betwen the GTX 670 and 7970 purely on the amount of VRAM, the 7970 doesn't have enough GPU power to utilize that 3GB anyway. The two cards are very close in performance even at 5760x1080 which proves the extra GB VRAM on the 7970 is pretty much useless in single card configurations. No way would I buy that 7970 you linked to for $500 when the 670 is $400.
I wouldn't base your decision betwen the GTX 670 and 7970 purely on the amount of VRAM, the 7970 doesn't have enough GPU power to utilize that 3GB anyway. The two cards are very close in performance even at 5760x1080 which proves the extra GB VRAM on the 7970 is pretty much useless in single card configurations. No way would I buy that 7970 you linked to for $500 when the 670 is $400.
at my resolution which is 1920x1200 which is a higher resolution than 1080p with MSAA I am absolutely crippled by vram.. some people think AA isn't necessary I would disagree completely. MSAA > FXAA in BF3
and the point being is the future... BF3 uses up to 2gb now what happens in a year? Plus I heard you can overclock the 7970 to 100mhz higher than a 680s core clock without bumping the voltage and that is a common overclock not just a few getting lucky
featsdontfailme
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- May 14, 2012
- Messages
- 411
I have a setup with two 7970s in CF running Eyefinity (share it with my son.....so I get to play once in a while.... )
I found the beta 12.6 Cats to be not so good.....but the 12.4 Cats are just fine.
I OC my cards to the absolute limits in the CCC without a problem.....unfortunately, there are no great third party utilities for going beyond in CF. Afterburner just wont do it, and Sapphire Trixx doesnt have all the tools Afterburner does.
That being said, I like these cards just fine, and I think they can duke it out with a 680 pretty well.
)I found the beta 12.6 Cats to be not so good.....but the 12.4 Cats are just fine.
I OC my cards to the absolute limits in the CCC without a problem.....unfortunately, there are no great third party utilities for going beyond in CF. Afterburner just wont do it, and Sapphire Trixx doesnt have all the tools Afterburner does.
That being said, I like these cards just fine, and I think they can duke it out with a 680 pretty well.
I'm sure the drivers would limit the vram usage to fit and the user would have no idea.
Ok 1920x1200 is 11% more pixels than 1920x1080, it's not like we're talking 2560x1600 or 5760x1080 which will be significantly more impacted by VRAM. But the point is I'm not sure what you're experiencing is lack of VRAM, it's just lack of power from your GTX 570 to power BF3 maxed with 4xAA. If it was VRAM limited you'd see less than 10fps. This review shows a good example of VRAM limitation, with Metro 2033 maxed with full AA there is 1fps difference between the 1.25GB and 2.5GB GTX 570 at 1080p and only at 1600p the 1.25GB becomes totally VRAM bottlenecked.
Not trying to put you off the 7970, I have one and it OC's very nicely but in BF3 at 1920x1200 and 4xMSAA the GTX 670 outperforms the 7970 while costing less and drawing less power. People theorize over VRAM limitations but at the end of the day it's the raw facts that matter and IMO the GTX 670 is the better buy at current prices.
Have you ever experienced a VRAM limitation? Its not a framerate decrease its a frame rate disappearance. If I up the settings and my card its powerful enough to keep a decent frame rate what happens? my framerate lowers on average.
when vram is a limitation your framerate doesnt lower it drops to 1. literally 1 fps. this reoccurs frequently while playing aswell.
nobody isnt say 670 is a steal at that price in this market. however I would rather just shell out a little more money for better performance ( mostly when overclocked ) and a longer life time because 2gb prolly good for now but there will be a new game next year and my 7970 will still be aight
Have you ever experienced a VRAM limitation? Its not a framerate decrease its a frame rate disappearance. If I up the settings and my card its powerful enough to keep a decent frame rate what happens? my framerate lowers on average.
when vram is a limitation your framerate doesnt lower it drops to 1. literally 1 fps. this reoccurs frequently while playing aswell.
nobody isnt say 670 is a steal at that price in this market. however I would rather just shell out a little more money for better performance ( mostly when overclocked ) and a longer life time because 2gb prolly good for now but there will be a new game next year and my 7970 will still be aight
Devs likely won't push beyond what the largest segment of the high end market has, which is probably going to be the 670.
Handbrake doesn't support OpenCL yet, its still in work. And there are lots of apps already that have CUDA support so AMD is in the dark there. In fact, there are many more apps that have CUDA support than OpenCL. That being said, I would rather all apps support OpenCL and Nvidia drop CUDA and adopt OpenCL also.
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2009
- Messages
- 8,424
I don't know. Wasn't that long ago at all that 1GB was plenty. The majority of cards still today are 1GB. Devs don't seem to be pushing the boundaries of graphics as GPU muscle is far outpacing video game demand but it does seem like there are more and more games coming out where VRAM is important and 1GB isn't enough anymore for the highest settings.
suiken_2mieu
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2010
- Messages
- 2,911
Is it worth getting any non Reference cards? I'm currently gaming at 7680x1600.
Love my reference Sapphire 7970. It does 1200/1719 using Afterburner.
I did too, loved my Sapphire that OC'd to 1300/1800@1.225v and then died on me. May it rest in peace or in a new home after Sapphire fixed it. My new Sapphire maxes ccc@ default voltage (~1.175) but I haven't gone further yet.
SicKlown42012
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2008
- Messages
- 3,319
I love my Sapphire Dual-X. It's the reference PCB, but with an usually empty phase filled and a much better cooler. Mine runs at the CCC limits with the default 1.12v, and I've had it to 1225/1650 at 1.2v.
Bees
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2011
- Messages
- 1,208
I've got an XFX Double D Black Edition which has a base clock of 1GHz, so I'm just under par with the upcoming 7970 1Ghz editions - Got it used for under 400. Haven't tried OC'ing it yet, but it's a nice bump up from my unlocked 6950 - comparatively quieter, too.
Haven't benched much with it yet, but on 4xMSAA, DX11, 1920x1080, I hit just under 120FPS max in Arkham City, with a minimum FPS of 53 or 57 (can't remember which). Hell of a card.
Haven't benched much with it yet, but on 4xMSAA, DX11, 1920x1080, I hit just under 120FPS max in Arkham City, with a minimum FPS of 53 or 57 (can't remember which). Hell of a card.
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I am a big fan of "Go big or go home" when I do hardware upgrades. But at 1920x1200 I don't think you will need 3GB of RAM unless you're into Skyrim with their high resolution textures and such. Or you're going to make the jump from 1920x1200 to 2560x1600.
Don't be scared by making the jump from Nvidia to AMD. I didn't have any issues on my HD 5970. I would still be using it if not for the jump to 2560x1600 and memory limitation. EVGA will be releasing their GTX 680 4GB soon if you really want the latest greatest GPU with high amounts of video RAM.
That Evga 680 4GB card has been out now for a couple of weeks.. still even though its out its hard to snag up. Best option is to get on there email alert list and snag it asap when you get notified of stock. They will sell out within a few mins.
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=04G-P4-3688-KR&family=GeForce 600 Series Family&sw=