I Have Gone Red! 680 Owner

A

Arthur Hucksake

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2010
Messages
373
Yup, AMD's marketing and persistant allegiance with game devs has drawn me to the dark side.

I have just ordered a Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X.

Sleeping Dogs
Far Cry 3
Tomb Raider
Crysis 3
Bioshock Infinite

All gaming evolved titles, and that does carry some weight in my book. It means drivers are likely to be ready for said games and after the mess of waiting weeks for nVidia to sort Tomb Raider out I am glad to make the switch.

What am I likely to see performance wise in comparison to a Gainward Phantom 680 GTX?

I do acknowledge this as a tactical sidegrade though.
 
Welcome to AMD. I don't really know how this is the dark side, i consider Nvidia the dark side. Though in terms of star wars light saber colors i can understand. The only time I ever went to Nvidia was the 8800gtx . Both give comparable video gaming performance, but even i admit that ATi's takes a bit of time on their driver development compared to nVidia.
 
I don't really understand your reasoning. You are interested in those games and assume that AMD drivers will be better ready and perform better as they are Gaming Evolved titles? However with the exception of Bioshock Infinite all of those other games have been out for awhile and so the performance data is already out there along with "ready" drivers. Historically speaking games under either sides branding do not necessarily result in better performance or drivers for either side either.

Also according to the game specific performance articles on HardOCP the GTX 680 performs better with the exception of Sleeping Dogs (AMD faster) and Bioshock Infinite (not yet tested). Nvidia also already released drivers specific to Bioshock Infinite and the GTX 680 also seems to be testing faster on those as well according to another site.
 
^ @ limited

Tomb Raider = better on 680 than 7970? If so, I missed that headline.
 
I wouldn't consider it so much a side grade either. If you can get a good overclock from the 7970 then it, for all intents, pretty much kills the 680. It's the reason why I went from a GTX 580 to a 7970.
 
Xinmosni said:
^ @ limited

Tomb Raider = better on 680 than 7970? If so, I missed that headline.
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To be accurate I wouldn't say it definitively faster - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/20/tomb_raider_video_card_performance_iq_review/3

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/20/tomb_raider_video_card_performance_iq_review/5

So it is faster depending settings and situation. I'm assuming the more settings tax memory bandwidth the better it is for the 7970.

But the actual point is that it doesn't really make sense to buy a 7970 simply due to assuming it might be faster due to these specific Gaming Evolved titles when they are already released with data available.
 
I agree with that, limited, just making sure I was clear on the Tomb Raider issue.

I was going to write the same thing you did, which is that 680 <==> 7970 (either way) is a sidegrade and nothing else. You'll now get to enjoy a very minute upgrade in some games and a very minute downgrade in others. And by minute I mean not even noticeable outside of benchmarks unless there's a driver issue or you're talking PhysX (which basically = nVidia funded game, similar to AMD and TressFX).

For GPU compute such as Bitcoin? 7970 beats the 680 hands down, no contest, and so on and so forth. But he didn't mention that.

The upside to this is that he may have put more money in his pocket if he sold his old 680 and bought a 7970 used, but otherwise... pointless.
 
limitedaccess said:
To be accurate I wouldn't say it definitively faster - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/20/tomb_raider_video_card_performance_iq_review/3

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/20/tomb_raider_video_card_performance_iq_review/5

So it is faster depending settings and situation. I'm assuming the more settings tax memory bandwidth the better it is for the 7970.

But the actual point is that it doesn't really make sense to buy a 7970 simply due to assuming it might be faster due to these specific Gaming Evolved titles when they are already released with data available.
Click to expand...

I like to get a new game on launch, play it at reasonable levels at this time and finish.

Over the past six months, most new games ive had to wait a month or more to play games at a decent level on the 680. (Waiting for new drivers)

With the rise of all these AMD GE titles, I feel more comfortable in knowing the games are more likely to be ready the day they drop.

Sleeping Dogs has only recently become playable on the 680 due to one driver issue or another.
 
I hope you get your games. That promo is what made me get the 7950 for my son instead of a 660 but it's been nothing but misery trying to actually get them redeemed.
 
DoubleTap said:
I hope you get your games. That promo is what made me get the 7950 for my son instead of a 660 but it's been nothing but misery trying to actually get them redeemed.
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The 7950 is a better card though, so don't feel too hard done by. I'm sure he appreciates it.
 
I didn't know about so many driver issues regarding 1x680 play, so I guess I can see why you felt the need to move.

7970 owner here, so... :D
 
DoubleTap said:
I hope you get your games. That promo is what made me get the 7950 for my son instead of a 660 but it's been nothing but misery trying to actually get them redeemed.
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If you have problems post it on the AMD forums. Or email the amd support. They will usually get it through though it took a little bit longer than I expected. It is due to supply and demand and sometimes they don't have a sufficient amount of keys so it takes a little bit longer. It took me a a week after i registered to get my keys. I got the tomb raider key at 10PM on release date so it was 23 hours after it was released. I got the Bioshock the Friday before released date so its not bad just shoot them an email.
 
There's good reviews of Far Cry 3, Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider on [H]. Short answer: Nvidia has a minor edge at 1080p, AMD has a minor edge at 1600p. As for driver quality.... ? I've never seen either be ready on launch day, though Nvidia has been worse of late.

DoubleTap said:
I hope you get your games. That promo is what made me get the 7950 for my son instead of a 660 but it's been nothing but misery trying to actually get them redeemed.
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Did you buy from Amazon? I bought mind from NCIX and have already received two Tomb Raider and two Bioshock codes.
 
Overclock that bitch to 1200/1600 @ 1.25, see if it is stable and go from there. Overclocking and high res 1200p+ is where the 7970 really break away from the 680.
 
Xinmosni said:
....For GPU compute such as Bitcoin? 7970 beats the 680 hands down, no contest, and so on and so forth. But he didn't mention that.

The upside to this is that he may have put more money in his pocket if he sold his old 680 and bought a 7970 used, but otherwise... pointless.
Click to expand...

The Bitcoin thing is interesting. I&#8217;ve been running the mining software for a few months now and made only a few coins but as of this moment they are worth $90 each. It is difficult to change them into cash but I found the Bitmit site the other day and got Dishonored, Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Rader for less than one coin. They have some guys selling the free game cards that come with some of the video cards. I know the games will go on sale at some point and the dedicated mining hardware is poised to destroy the market but it&#8217;s still kinda cool to have my GPUs buy me more games.

If there was a cheap & safe way to cash, out I&#8217;d have enough to buy 2 or 3 7970s. :)
 
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Arthur Hucksake said:
Sleeping Dogs has only recently become playable on the 680 due to one driver issue or another.
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Uhhh...what?

I played through the game on release just fine on my 680. In fact I've experienced zero "unplayable" games on my 680 since getting it around when it was launched.
 
Tanquen said:
The Bitcoin thing is interesting. I&#8217;ve been running the mining software for a few months now and made only a few coins but as of this moment they are worth $90 each. It is difficult to change them into cash but I found the Bitmit site the other day and got Dishonored, Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Rader for less than one coin. They have some guys selling the free game cards that come with some of the video cards. I know the games will go on sale at some point and the dedicated mining hardware is poised to destroy the market but it&#8217;s still kinda cool to have my GPUs buy me more games.

If there was a cheap & safe way to cash, out I&#8217;d have enough to buy 2 or 3 7970s. :)
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There is, just use a bitcoin exchange like MtGox. They are the biggest and most reliable. I transfer funds out using Dwolla (fee only .25 cents) and have moved over $1k with no issue... just takes awhile for them to verify new accounts (about 10 days). But, the difficulty has now hit a point where it no longer makes sense to mine unless you don't have power costs to worry about.
 
Welcome. I run both AMD Crossfire and Nvidia SLI - it is all the same to me.
 
I just jumped the other direction. After many AMD (and ATI) cards, I finally got tired of the driver headaches so I went with a GTX670 this time around. Ill still keep using AMD processors so I can still claim AMD fanboy cred. :D
 
x3sphere said:
There is, just use a bitcoin exchange like MtGox. They are the biggest and most reliable. I transfer funds out using Dwolla (fee only .25 cents) and have moved over $1k with no issue... just takes awhile for them to verify new accounts (about 10 days). But, the difficulty has now hit a point where it no longer makes sense to mine unless you don't have power costs to worry about.
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But they have been hacked a few times already and you have to give them your bank and personal info which I want to give out as little as possible if ever and I keep finding bad info on Dwolla and how long it takes. The difficulty has gone up but if you can get $75 - $100 for a coin it is still worth it-ish. If you already have all the equipment for gamming anyway. I also thought it was much more than 25¢. Read so much I forget where but I thought they said don&#8217;t bother with transactions under $75 because by the time the banks and MT.Gox took their cut you would not have much left.

Can you layout you last transaction in time, cost and fees?

I&#8217;m trying to sell them one at a time on eBay and got $127 for the last one but they and PayPal take a cut and give no protection.
 
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For single card game I left AMD for Nvidia. Is one better than the other NO but killers in this generations and both have great drivers . Actulay AMD became faster after I sold my card lmao
 
the_real_7 said:
For single card game I left AMD for Nvidia. Is one better than the other NO but killers in this generations and both have great drivers . Actulay AMD became faster after I sold my card lmao
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And I have a feeling they still have room for more perf with all the work that is ongoing regarding latency/stuttering/time intervals and their memory rework which is upcoming.
 
Tanquen said:
But they have been hacked a few times already and you have to give them your bank and personal info which I want to give out as little as possible if ever and I keep finding bad info on Dwolla and how long it takes. The difficulty has gone up but if you can get $75 - $100 for a coin it is still worth it-ish. If you already have all the equipment for gamming anyway. I also thought it was much more than 25¢. Read so much I forget where but I thought they said don’t bother with transactions under $75 because by the time the banks and MT.Gox took their cut you would not have much left.

Can you layout you last transaction in time, cost and fees?

I’m trying to sell them one at a time on eBay and got $127 for the last one but they and PayPal take a cut and give no protection.
Click to expand...

I have been using them since 2011. They were only hacked once and no users actually lost money -- some BTC was stolen but refunded. If anything the hack forced them to face the reality of securing their system so I feel a little more safe with MtGox than the other exchanges, actually.

Anyway Dwolla is definitely only .25c, I just used it a few days ago. Moving money out from gox to Dwolla once you are verified only takes a few hours in my experience, then 2-3 business days from Dwolla to your bank. There is a trading fee on mtgox but that's only 0.6%. The only pain is the initial verification process like I said but once you are through with that it's easy and fast.

They have other methods of transferring money as well, so it's possible those have the higher fees you're mentioning, but Dwolla has always been .25c.
 
how many games did it come with?
I thought you got 2 lol

sorry when I read your post at first I thought you were saying you got all those games with the card.
then it would be a good reason to mess with their bloatware stuttering drivers. :)

just kidding
 
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