GTX 680 vs. Radeon HD 7970 - Multi-Display Showdown @ [H]

FrgMstr

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GTX 680 vs. Radeon HD 7970 - Multi-Display Showdown - It is time for us to expand upon our Fall 2012 GPU Comparison to include SLI, CrossFireX, Eyefinity, and NV Surround. We will see how AMD and NVIDIA compare using the latest fall drivers, in a multi-display configurations and multi-GPU configurations when pushing an extreme amount of pixels.
 
Very good review! Keep up the good work :)

I am personally running 2 Sapphire 7870 Ghz Flex editions @ 1150 / 1275 @ 5760 x 1080 and these cards are running awesome!
 
Very nice!

I wonder what smoothness is..?

Smoothness is an interpretation by feeling and sight of the detection of time or some other variable between frames or frame time.

As with any other sense, some are more sensitive to it than others and can detect it while playing. Having played on both SLI and CrossFireX a LOT, I can detect the differences between both technologies, and there is a distinct smoothness advantage with SLI. That is my personal experience. I am not alone in this experience. Others can detect it as well. However, if you cannot, then it is a factor that won't determine your gaming choice. But I bet if you set both systems side-by-side, and you went between both systems playing, you might detect it as well. I often use the term "feel" it, because it is a combination of what I'm seeing, and what I'm feeling as I play.

It is fact though that NVIDIA does use some algorithm in its drivers that smooths "something" is that frames, or frame time, I don't know, but they do factually employ technology to make the experience smoother.
 
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Smoothness is an interpretation by feeling and sight of the detection of time or some other variable between frames or frame time.

As with any other sense, some are more sensitive to it than others and can detect it while playing. Having played on both SLI and CrossFireX a LOT, I can detect the differences between both technologies, and there is a distinct smoothness advantage with SLI. That is my personal experience. I am not alone in this experience. Others can detect it as well. However, if you cannot, then it is a factor that won't determine your gaming choice. But I bet if you set both systems side-by-side, and you went between both systems playing, you might detect it as well. I often use the term "feel" it, because it is a combination of what I'm seeing, and what I'm feeling as I play.

It is fact though that NVIDIA does use some algorithm in its drivers that smooths "something" is that frames, or frame time, I don't know, but they do factually employ technology to make the experience smoother.

I have taken the pepsi challenge and I haven't been able to differentiate between SLI and CrossFireX, but maybe its just me.
 
I have taken the pepsi challenge and I haven't been able to differentiate between SLI and CrossFireX, but maybe its just me.

me as well... i am interested in learning more about this personal observation of smoothness is it a scientific observation? or feelings and if their is any nvidia tech involved behind the scenes that make it smoother and exactly what it does.
 
me as well... i am interested in learning more about this personal observation of smoothness is it a scientific observation? or feelings and if their is any nvidia tech involved behind the scenes that make it smoother and exactly what it does.

It is fact though that NVIDIA does use some algorithm in its drivers that smooths "something" is that frames, or frame time, I don't know, but they do factually employ technology to make the experience smoother.

They are doing something in the background over there. Its one thing to say "I had an AMD setup and then decided to switch over", and another thing to have two systems side by side and be able to differentiate between the two.

The fact that all of the [H]ard Editors noticed the difference says alot.
 
i was just told by my good friend that also does hardware reviews something fun about the green camp and i quote

"they have a hardware buffer in SLI that does that. It is slightly slower, but it gives consistent results. So, it does actually feel smoother."


so your feeling is actually correct

 
It should be noted that I have been able to make up for this smoothness issue by giving CrossFireX more frames. I.e., where SLI might feel smooth at 40 FPS, to get that same feeling with CFX I need to play at 60 or 70 FPS.

It seems lower framerates are more tolerable with SLI, and feel smoother than CFX's lower framerates. When the framerates are really high, 60+ at all times, it feels ok on CFX, for the most part. Game depending.

So I find with CFX I have to maintain higher FPS in order for it to feel as smooth as SLI.
 
i was just told by my good friend that also does hardware reviews something fun about the green camp and i quote

"they have a hardware buffer in SLI that does that. It is slightly slower, but it gives consistent results. So, it does actually feel smoother."


so your feeling is actually correct


The keyword there IMO is "consistent" for as long as I can remember we've found SLI more "consistent" and have published this exact word, over and over, in SLI/CFX reviews, as long as these technologies have been out we've been talking about SLI being more consistent.

All of these things added up continue to support the feeling that SLI is smoother than CFX.
 
Smoother or not, it can't be ignored that AMD provides higher framerates for a lower cost.
 
Lower cost? Did the review not show that you could buy both setups at the same price..?

You mean the one that had benchmarks for the stock 7970 that you can get for 359 AR right now from newegg, then proceeded to link to the overclocked version for 419?

Reading helps.
 
Smoother or not, it can't be ignored that AMD provides higher framerates for a lower cost.

And this goes back to what is more important to you, flat out higher framerates, or the actual experience of gaming on the platform.

IMO, framerates are not everything, higher framerates don't necessarily = a better gaming experience.
 
And the winner is obviously the [H]ard|Enthusiast.

Uhmm I see a 2nd gtx680 under the tree!
 
You mean the one that had benchmarks for the stock 7970 that you can get for 359 AR right now from newegg, then proceeded to link to the overclocked version for 419?

Reading helps.

Reading does help!

He reviewed the GHZ edition card, which is in fact $419 AR. The $359 card you called out is not a GHZ edition card. And no - you cannot assume that its the same thing because overclocking was not taken into consideration at all in this test. You also cannot guarantee that EVERY non-ghz 7970 will be able to OC to ghz levels. The "boost" mentioned in the description does not make it a GHZ card. Its not branded as such for either for it doesn't even boast a 1ghz core clock from stock.

If you take OC into consideration, its very likely that AMD will pull further ahead in raw FPS numbers, but sadly, this wasn't tested.

Reading rocks!
 
Not sure about the "smoothness" thing myself. I'm wondering if "knowing" that Nvidia uses some special algorithms to enhance smoothness makes you automatically notice it. It's the same thing you have in audio called psychoacoustics where you think you hear something that's not actually there but somebody told you it was there so you convince yourself you hear it. The only way to actually know for sure if it's there is to test blind as in sit down in front of 2 rigs that you don't know what's they're running and see if you can pick the Nvidia system. I just have a hard time with "AMD is a lot faster but Nvidia is better." Wut?
 
Yes I agree this so called "smoothness" should be put to rest, oh oops I meant test! :D
 
I have a feeling alot of performance hit for nvidia comes from memory limitations. Seeing the difference in performance widen when using older AA technology that is more memory intensive.
 
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You can find a Galaxy GeForce GTX 680 down to $419 after $20 MIR right now, which is an incredible price and the lowest we've seen yet and this price includes a free copy of Borderlands 2 and Assassin's Creed 3. This puts reference clocked GTX 680 SLI performance in your pocket for $840 with the possibility of selling $100 worth of games if you happen to already have these titles.

Lets be fair now, I love Borderlands 2, but a game key is not worth $50 by any stretch. It is commonly on sale for $30. The going rates for the BL2 game key is closer to $25.

Not sure how much AC3 is worth, but I doubt it's over $50.
 
I'm not calling BS on it cause I know AMD drivers are legendary for micro-stutter and issues like that especially with their Crossfire drivers but I just think that it could also be suggestive and wonder if its people noticing its there because its "supposed" to be there.

There's a good video on Youtube that demonstrates it. They play a song backwards and it just sounds like a song played backwards. They add subtitles and you all of a sudden hear the devil telling you to kill babies or whatever.
 
I call BS on the ''smoothness'' thing. But I'm just a reviewer of high-end projector/displays (and even own a 4K projector) and high-end players. I even have access to some native 4K material, that is unbeleivable on a 8 feet wide screen.

I'm sure everything is sooo much smoooooother on a 200$ 24'' LCD display. :)

I've played with 4X680 Quad-SLI and 4X7970 Quad-Fire, both at 7680X1600 (3X30'') and there was no ''smoothness'' difference. Quad-SLI was pathetic. Plain and simple.
 
Lets be fair now, I love Borderlands 2, but a game key is not worth $50 by any stretch. It is commonly on sale for $30. The going rates for the BL2 game key is closer to $25.

Not sure how much AC3 is worth, but I doubt it's over $50.

I put that line in there. If you bought two cards, you would get 4 games, I valued those at $25 each per a private sale.
 
We presented our readers with the hard data and we presented our readers with our personal subjective opinions and framed those conclusions as such. Your mileage may vary.

FWIW, I can have either CFX or SLI in my personal gaming rig; I have SLI installed.
 
Great review. This mirrors what I have been seeing for a long time between CFX and SLI, before I knew any kind of special sauce was being included on the Nvidia side. Back when I had SLI 570s and CFX 6970's the Nvidia setup simply felt better to play even with the limited Vram. I compared them in the same system with the belief that the AMD cards would be better and was surprised to find that it was not playing out that way for me.

Some people care more about frame rates, possibly for first person shooters or just plain bragging rights and AMD is the clear winner there. I want my experience to be as smooth as possible personally.
 
use radeon pro to cap the frame rate at the average. This is how you get the smoothness of a single card with muti gpu, Amd Crossfire.

you guys should check it out.
 
use radeon pro to cap the frame rate at the average. This is how you get the smoothness of a single card with muti gpu, Amd Crossfire.

you guys should check it out.

+1

Have any of the [H] editors tried RadeonPro? Might be a quick and easy solution to the smoothness issue.
 
We don't use any third party utilities to change the out-of-box experience between NVIDIA and AMD GPU performance/gameplay experience. We feel it is up to AMD to implement these features to improve its platform, if it so chooses, if it doesn't, well then we are left with what we are left with as the experiences between both. If we use a third party utility for AMD, then we'd have to use one for NVIDIA, and then its just not fair.
 
Great Review, thanks for this. I'm running eyefinity 3240x1920 and getting another 7970 is a no brainer for me.

Also, have you tried Radeon Profile Tool to help with the microstutter on these cards? Might be something worth checking out.
 
We don't use any third party utilities to change the out-of-box experience between NVIDIA and AMD GPU performance/gameplay experience. We feel it is up to AMD to implement these features to improve its platform, if it so chooses, if it doesn't, well then we are left with what we are left with as the experiences between both. If we use a third party utility for AMD, then we'd have to use one for NVIDIA, and then its just not fair.

Would it be worthwhile to do a specific review to compare a popular AMD third party utility to a popular nVidia third party utility? that might be interesting to see the results.
 
The latest Radeon Pro is really night & glass butter smooth day, especially with a crossfire setup (similar to a nvidia cap), but I can understand [H]ard keeping to the same "out of the box" parameters for testing.

Wouldn't want hardware vendors to rely on them to get any more lazy with their drivers... (except maybe hiring them!)

That goes for both vendors.

Ooh, and good review!
 
should really look at the differences once you hit 3 GPUs

I've noticed that the third GPU acts like the third leg on a stool when ti comes to smoothness and microstutter (on both Nvidia and AMD)

Nvidia though tends to handle it better on 2 GPUs, but with 3 GPUs there is no noticeable difference

so basically I always recommend like this

1GPU: AMD
2GPUs: Nvidia
3GPUs: AMD

(When pushing your setup to the limit anyway)
 
why not give the 7970 Gold?
It doesnt seem to matter what it scores on your tests or how much faster it is.
Almost every article with the 7970 winning, has no choosen winner at the conclusion.
This baffles me.
Radeon Pro is AMDs special sauce.
why not compare the two (SLI CFX) with the Radeon Pro software correcting this "problem" that you "feel"?
I mean we are the [H] no one here would bitch about setting some profiles up in Radeon Pro if it meant the best performance.
So why not?

If you asked me what I would personally put in my system this holiday season for gaming, I would go with GTX 680 SLI. The price is right, and you get that sweet smoothness advantage that only NVIDIA seems to be able to provide in multi-GPU configurations

Thats not true. It should state that only Nvidia delivers out of the box.
 
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This review mirrors the experience I had testing nvidia vs amd a few months back. Before the latest amd performance drivers were made available, reviews showed the gtx 670 running equal or slightly above a stock 7970. I was curious and tested this theory with the system in my sig. I tested both Max Payne 3 and sp BF3 at 5760x1080 in a few areas I knew to be hard on the framerate. The 2 cards I compared were the asus 7970 dc2 and gigabyte windforce gtx 670oc.

My main concern was minimum framerate. To my surprise, I found the stock 7970 to be quite a bit faster than the 670 (10-20% were the results I was seeing). However, when overclocked, the margin widened even more. I overclocked the gtx 670 and 7970 ~30% to 1300/can't rememeber ram speed for 670 and 1200/1600 for 7970. Quite surprising since both these games are twimtbp titles. I would imagine the use of a gtx 680 would have narrowed the gap about 10% or so, but the 7970 would likely have still been faster. My testing also showed the 7970 benefiting from oc quite a bit more than the 670. Overclocking the gpu on the 7970 showed an almost perfectly positive correlation between clock rate and framerate. Overclocking the ram showed little improvement. Overclocking the gtx 670 did show an improvement in performance, but nowhere near the 30% increase I saw on the 7970.

In the end I chose the 7970 and this was before the game bundle was being offered. I chose the asus dc2 7970. This card got a bad rap when it first came out, but I've had good experiences with it. I was actually able to purchase it at my local bestbuy for 380$-20$mir (CAD). Card is really quiet, supports 6 screens and does 1125/1575 no sweat on stock voltage or 1200/1700 with a slight voltage bump via gpu tweak 2.2.1.4. Took a LOT of research to actually find a version of gpu tweak that would allow voltage tweaking, but in the end, I'm happy with the card (which is very rare since I'm so friggin picky) :)
 
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