Is a 7970 or 670 worth it considering my CPU

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korranth

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I'm looking to upgrade my video card so I can play Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite and Crysis 3 comfortably @ 1920x1080.

I've got the funds for a 670 or a 7970 but it's a bit of a stretch. Am I wasting my money looking at those cards with the CPU I have?

Current Specs:

i7-920 @ 2.66 GHz
Asus P6T Motherboard
6GB DDR3 RAM (can't recall the type while I'm here at work)
GTX 285
750 Watt PS
32" 1080p HDTV which i use at 1920x1080
 
7970 for sure. The I7 is still a beast, so I don't think it's a waste of money at all.
 
I'm playing with an i5-760 with crossfire 6950's, haven't found myself to be CPU limited at 1080p yet. I consistently get good frame-rates with very high detail settings. This setup is around the same performance as a 7970, so I'd say it's fairly close.
 
WaTaGuMp said:
Crank that CPU up, give it some more life.
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I'm a bit hesitant to do that with my stock cooler on it. I probably need to research what's safe for that processor OC with stock cooling. I do seem to recall the talk about that CPU when I bought it that it was a really good overclocker.
 
korranth said:
I'm a bit hesitant to do that with my stock cooler on it. I probably need to research what's safe for that processor OC with stock cooling. I do seem to recall the talk about that CPU when I bought it that it was a really good overclocker.
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Get better cooling, the 212 EVO can be had for $30 at Microcenter.
 
korranth said:
I'm a bit hesitant to do that with my stock cooler on it. I probably need to research what's safe for that processor OC with stock cooling. I do seem to recall the talk about that CPU when I bought it that it was a really good overclocker.
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The cooler i recommend is the artic cooler 7 pro rev 2 usually $25-30
 
wow i'm so noob

I'm guessing since it's square you can point 'em w/e way you want so which way to do you point those things. down towards the bottom of the case, up towards the video card or front or back facing.

Up towards the video card seems like a bad idea
 
Due to motherboard positioning the heatsinks can generally only be mounted one of two ways. In a conventional case, you can usually only mount it blowing left or right, horizontally.
 
lol I didn't realize I've had that 920 for about 4 years now it's like a dinosaur is in my PC
 
korranth said:
wow i'm so noob

I'm guessing since it's square you can point 'em w/e way you want so which way to do you point those things. down towards the bottom of the case, up towards the video card or front or back facing.

Up towards the video card seems like a bad idea
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My old motherboard only allowed my Tuniq Tower 120 to be mounted pointing with the fan up or down. It didn't affect temps in any way for me.
 
Not unless you overclock it. I think that you might be better off buying a $200 video card and putting the rest towards an upgrade or just overclocking that cpu to something reasonable like even 3.6ghz.

I know that even with a GTX570 I saw a large difference when overclocking an i7 860.
 
I had an Exos and Danger Den water block on my 920. Had it OC'd at 3.8Ghz.
When I made that my 2nd box, I changed to a Corsair 60 single fan, and the 920 OC's at 3.2 at stock voltage, 27 degree Celsius idle. Have a EVGA 650 TI in it now, just for a decent 3D vid (have 3D 27" Monitor and 3D Blu Ray drive).
At 3.2Ghz, it certainly will do well with a decent card at 1900x1080.
My main box is a 3770K at 4.4Ghz OC and a EVGA 660 Ti 3GB. It plays every game I load up at max settings at 1900x1080.
 
I've been running my i7 920(co) at 3.99 ghz since launch and I haven't felt any need to upgrade yet, the only game it's noticeably held me back in is GTA IV. If you don't have space for a big air cooler you could look at some of the self contained water coolers, the corsair h60 seems to go on sale for fairly cheap on a regular basis(also nice if you have tall heatsinks on your RAM).
 
I upgraded from a 5870 to a 670 on my PII 955 BE machine. In BF3 alone, I went from FXAA and no MSAA at 25-45 FPS to to FXAA + 4x MLAA at 45-60 FPS. Roughly speaking.

Also, in Tomb Raider, I went from ~40 FPS average with no tesselation and lower SSAO and another setting (can't recall which) to ~55 FPS average with everything maxed except TressFX.
 
For price per performance, from what I've seen, the 7970 would be the way to go. I've seen some of them go for pretty cheap!
 
I went from 2xGTX285's to a single 670 and noticed quite a difference (performance, temperature, noise) with my i7-920 @4.2GHz. With my SSD, this "old" machine is still super snappy. Going from 133MHz to 200MHz Bclk alone is a nice change, and coupled with a mild oc to 3.6+GHz, you'll be in for a treat. :)

7970 vs 670 is a different topic altogether, but they will both play very nicely with your current setup.
 
Rockin 2x 7970's on my [email protected]. I noticed a big diff from 1 to 2 7970's. I won't get rid of this system unless something smokes this out.

Just overclock a bit and you'll be laughing :)
 
williacm said:
For price per performance, from what I've seen, the 7970 would be the way to go. I've seen some of them go for pretty cheap!
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No way - as far as bang-for-the-buck goes the award goes to the 7950!

~$100 less, and the article that [H] published with respect to drivers showed that 7950 performance has increased the most over time with driver releases during 2012.

I'd take tri-fire 7950 over duo-fire (hehehe) 7970 any day.
 
I've been debating whether the better driver support and features of the 670 would outweigh the sheer potency of the 7970. I bought a 7970 and was thinking about returning it, especially after finding out it was voltage locked and the beta drivers were horrendously unstable. BUT, I figured out it was a software problem and changed OCIng tools from Sapphire's Trixxx to MSI's Afterburner. Afterburner runs great and has a lot of cool features like an ingame monitor and a lot more control on power modes and voltage.

I've got my 7970 at 1200MHz/1600MHz/1.25v, and currently testing its stability.

670 will be a lot better in Nvidia specific games like BF3 but for most other games (like Skyrim, Metro 2033, Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3,...) and future games the 7970 takes the cake.
 
That's_Corporate said:
No way - as far as bang-for-the-buck goes the award goes to the 7950!

~$100 less, and the article that [H] published with respect to drivers showed that 7950 performance has increased the most over time with driver releases during 2012.

I'd take tri-fire 7950 over duo-fire (hehehe) 7970 any day.
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Haha! I will agree with you there but when I said best bang for your buck I meant within the high-end cards spectrum. 7970s are only getting cheaper and triple crossfire and triple SLI just don't seem to be worth it. So to meet the performance of a 7970 you're going to have to get two 7950s. Then, in my mind that is, you're stuck. So the 7970 is the best way to go big without going home broke.
For me, I think you should just save some dough and get what you really want. I've always figured what's the point in spending $200 on something that you're settling for. Just save for another couple of months and get something that you'll truly be happy with instead of wiping your butt with your cash.
 
Tri-fire and tri-sli scales very well. It may not in games that don't take advantage of the extra horsepower but a little more AA will usually fix that. I love to use SSAA.
 
my i7 920 clocked at 4.2ghz runs Black Ops 2 at 200fps at 120mhz refresh on a GTX 690. In Tomb Raider it benched at 170fps and these are settings at max but no AA.
 
williacm said:
Haha! I will agree with you there but when I said best bang for your buck I meant within the high-end cards spectrum. 7970s are only getting cheaper and triple crossfire and triple SLI just don't seem to be worth it. So to meet the performance of a 7970 you're going to have to get two 7950s. Then, in my mind that is, you're stuck. So the 7970 is the best way to go big without going home broke.
For me, I think you should just save some dough and get what you really want. I've always figured what's the point in spending $200 on something that you're settling for. Just save for another couple of months and get something that you'll truly be happy with instead of wiping your butt with your cash.
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do you even know what you are talking about :confused: HD 7970 is 3 - 6% faster than HD 7950 at same clocks. HD 7950 (1100 Mhz) = HD 7970 Ghz (1050 mhz) . once you get a HD 7950 running at 100 mhz faster than HD 7970 it will overtake the HD 7970 easily in all games.

so without a doubt the HD 7950 is the best bang for buck high end card. in fact clock for clock HD 7970 > HD 7950 > GTX 680 > GTX 670 when compared across a wide range of games. the Tahitis HD 7970 / HD 7950 can match their Kepler counterparts GTX 680 / GTX 670 running at 100 - 150 mhz higher clocks.
 
raghu78 said:
do you even know what you are talking about :confused: HD 7970 is 3 - 6% faster than HD 7950 at same clocks. HD 7950 (1100 Mhz) = HD 7970 Ghz (1050 mhz) . once you get a HD 7950 running at 100 mhz faster than HD 7970 it will overtake the HD 7970 easily in all games.

so without a doubt the HD 7950 is the best bang for buck high end card. in fact clock for clock HD 7970 > HD 7950 > GTX 680 > GTX 670 when compared across a wide range of games. the Tahitis HD 7970 / HD 7950 can match their Kepler counterparts GTX 680 / GTX 670 running at 100 - 150 mhz higher clocks.
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I guess not :/
 
Overclock your CPU m8, mine is the i7 930 d0 and is overclocked to 4.2 easily, just bought an evga 670 ftw sig2 and is running smoothly, just played bf3
 
My i7 920 blows :(. I must have gotten the biggest lemon of that batch. About 3 months ago I tried everything I could and couldn't get a stable overclock even at very mild settings at all out of it.

It is a first run chip, not a d0. Fortunately even at stock it is a solid cpu. I know its off topic but if anyone has suggestions of a rock solid guide to (preferably) a mild 3.0-3.6 OC (since I am on air cooling with a pretty weaksauce chip) I'd be willing to take another crack at it. Just pm it at me.
 
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