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Which one should I buy?

A

Astralogic

Gawd
Joined
Apr 24, 2012
Messages
581
Hi, I'm looking to buy a new video card, something along the price range of a HD 7970 or GTX680 but I just don't know which one will give me the best performance. I'd even like a more higher end card second hand. Or even a different one all together if it's better.

Benchamrks are confusing some say one is better some say another is better. Help me out?

Edit: According to passmark the 680 wins by a considerable amount. The GTX770 looks good too.

Thanks
 
Go for the GTX770 which has improvements such as GPU Boost 2.0 which keeps your overclocks high and stable for more performance. Drives are also much better on Nvidia side from my experience. Since the GTX400 / 500 and now 600 series. Physx which some games use. Adaptive vsync. CUDA. and more.
See here for all the details: http://www.nvidia.com/gtx-700-graphics-cards

Ignore anandtech site as it's biased towards AMD for a long time now. Look at pcper.com or techreport.com or here for reviews and benchmarks to name a few.
 
I would prefer an nvidia card. I'll likely go for a 770 then unless someone gives me a good reason not to.

Edit: Are there any second hand 770's being sold here?

Edit 2: After looking at this review from techreport.com, it seems the 7970 and the 770 are evenly matched in performance. Is there any other factor besides performance that would make a 770 a better choice? (The 7970 is cheaper, so I may go for that). Klapcos, the info you gave is good and is saying me towards the 770. I just can't seem to make my decision yet.
 
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Plus it's not about more fps, faster anymore since graphics cards are being benchmarked the proper way now with frame pacing , frame times. If it ain't smooth the experience will be plain shit and from my experience with nvidia cards since my GTX460's SLI till now 680's SLI I have had very smooth experience across all my games. I can't say the same for AMD even with their frame pacing driver 13.8 beta I read alot of issues still present on the guru3d forums. I personally know 3 guys I work with who sold their 7950/7970's last and this year and gotten GTX680 and GTX770/780.
You don't have to believe me but I'm just sharing my experiences.

If you have watched the John Carmack 2013 keynote he has some things to say about AMD & Nvidia as well which makes perfect sense. Look at the 16:00 min mark for that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWA_9L70moE
Nvidia has a far better driver team and they really put a lot of money into it to make the experience on their cards better.
I'm at work and for some reason youtube is being a bitch and can't work properly here due to our proxy.
 
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Klapcos said:
Ignore anandtech site as it's biased towards AMD for a long time now. Look at pcper.com or techreport.com or here for reviews and benchmarks to name a few.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the laugh :)
More tests:

18 games benchmarked with 55 video cards:

1080p: http://ht4u.net/reviews/2013/55_directx11_grafikkarten_im_test/index29.php
1440p: http://ht4u.net/reviews/2013/55_directx11_grafikkarten_im_test/index30.php

V7fVjtl.jpg
0CmpVwt.jpg
 
AMD fanboy enough said. Recommending a 2 year old card (7970) lmfao. OP isn't buying a 7990 which nobody is buying anyway even with the price drop.

OP you want smooth experience with superior drivers go with Nvidia, even John Carmack said so in the video.
Want to read about all the problems people have with AMD 13.8 beta drivers go to http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=380080
Btw. it took AMD about a year or longer to come with a driver to sort that issue. And it's a software solution where Nvidia has this implemented hardware wise for a few years now.
 
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If you want to look for the best bang for the buck......why don't you just read the HardOCP reviews of the GTX 770.

That review covers all your questions.

I can assure you, if you choose a 770 you won't be disappointed, providing you don't game at insane resolutions.

The 770 will be all you need for single monitor 1080 or 1200p.

I like the 7970, but it is really getting long in the tooth.
 
The 7970Ghz costs less, and performs better. AMD have largely got their act together with regard to driver issues, and stuttering is not a problem with single cards. In fact, AMD recently improved their single card frametime performance such that they beat nVidia in a lot of cases (not that it *really* matters with single cards).

The 3GB vRAM may come into use down the line, but to be fair, 2GB is fine too.

You can't go far wrong with either card to be honest, but I'd go with the 7970 myself.
 
magoo said:
If you want to look for the best bang for the buck......why don't you just read the HardOCP reviews of the GTX 770.

That review covers all your questions.

I can assure you, if you choose a 770 you won't be disappointed, providing you don't game at insane resolutions.

The 770 will be all you need for single monitor 1080 or 1200p.

I like the 7970, but it is really getting long in the tooth.
Click to expand...

Well said Magoo :cool:
 
You really can't go wrong with either. The 770 and 7970 trade blows depending on games and resolution. There's no clear winner or at least not by much.

Even though I prefer nvidia, I think the 7970 gets the vote if only because of the games bundle.
 
What resolution are you using? If you're gaming at 1080p, I'd hang onto the 7850 a little longer (at least until the new cards come out in 2 months).

Do you plan on purchasing a 27" LCD that runs 2560x1440 at 100-120Hz (available for ~$300)?

People aren't selling their 770's yet because they're still so new. But I have seen some Radeon 7970's sell for <$300 used. Saving $100 and getting near the same performance is nothing to laugh at.
Also, there's some killer deals on Radeon 7950's, which can be overclocked to near 7970 performance for <$250. The latest deal is an MSI 7950 for $220 brand new. For that price, it's hard to argue in favor of the 770.
But you can buy used 7950's for around $220 that have better heatsinks. Or just get a new Geforce 760.

Just keep in mind the new Radeons are coming out in October, which isn't very far away.
If nothing else, it brings more competition and lower prices, and I hear they're going to do another gaming bundle with 3 great games (including BF4).


Here's a quote from Anand's latest Geforce 760 review:
To that end this launch is a great deal like the GTX 770 launch last month, with NVIDIA improving performance, lowering prices, and putting AMD on the defensive all at the same time. ...
At 1080p it is clearly ahead of both the stock and boost versions of the 7950, by 13% and 8% respectively. This is by no means a commanding lead and AMD still offers better performance in some cases, but on average the GTX 760 is faster, quieter, and $30-$50 cheaper than AMD&#8217;s closest competitor.

As a result the competitive landscape is clearly in NVIDIA&#8217;s favor for the time being.
Click to expand...

So you can safely ignore nvidia fanboy posts. Anand is not amd biased.
Klapcos said:
Go for the GTX770 which has improvements such as GPU Boost 2.0 which keeps your overclocks high and stable for more performance. Drives are also much better on Nvidia side from my experience. Since the GTX400 / 500 and now 600 series. Physx which some games use. Adaptive vsync. CUDA. and more.
See here for all the details: http://www.nvidia.com/gtx-700-graphics-cards

Ignore anandtech site as it's biased towards AMD for a long time now. Look at pcper.com or techreport.com or here for reviews and benchmarks to name a few.
Click to expand...
 
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OK, I'll certainly wait at least a couple of months before upgrading. Thanks for all the info guys.
 
Just keep in mind what J Macker said about your monitor's native resolution. For a monitor that is 1920x1080 or 1200 anything more than a GTX 760/7950 is overkill. For single monitor 2560x1440 or 1600 a 770 or 780/7970 will suffice.

For triple monitors you're talking about 7970 Crossfire, a 7990, 780 or Titan SLi for sure.
 
I'd agree with the comments above the 770 is a nice card and will serve you well if you go that route.

With the price drops and recent sales the 7970 is still a competitive choice give the price.
I've seen sales at ~$300 after rebate and then amazon's $250 used Gigabyte 7970 deal today
 
J Macker said:
So you can safely ignore nvidia fanboy posts. Anand is not amd biased.
Click to expand...

FYI Anandtech is AMD biased since I last was on there last year. If you haven't been around go over their AMD CPU & GPU reviews/ recommendations and forums and see the posts of people there discussing it.
To think people still don't see when certain sites are paid off.....:eek:
 
Klapcos said:
FYI Anandtech is AMD biased since I last was on there last year. If you haven't been around go over their AMD CPU & GPU reviews/ recommendations and forums and see the posts of people there discussing it.
To think people still don't see when certain sites are paid off.....:eek:
Click to expand...

I just quoted from their most recent review..... I don't see bias in that conclusion.
I haven't spent much time on their forum.

Overall, their reviews seem pretty neutral to me. Very technical
 
Every site has been accused of being AMD or nvidia biased. At one time or another the [H] has been accused of being both. :D:D
 
Klapcos said:
See comments section of one example I remember
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6985/choosing-a-gaming-cpu-at-1440p-adding-in-haswell-/9
Read what the "TheJian" has to say. Comments section 9 & 10.
I don't mean any harm just stating the obvious.
Click to expand...

I hadn't read this article before, and surely didn't see a comment posted 9 pages down.
But after having skimmed a little of that article, here's my take:

It's obvious that cpus are not the bottleneck at 1440p. Why did they use a GTX 580? That's dumb.

Even in that 1440p haswell review showed the 8350 at the bottom in most of the cases. Plus, we all know that the overclocked performance isn't nearly as good as an old oc'd 2500k.

Although that review is dumb because of the high resolution, it also has some value for that reason too. 1440p is the new hot resolution with all the cheap Korean LCDs. I read reviews and base decisions on the situation. I understand the majority is still using 1080p. So, reading this 1440p review you have to go in with a different mindset.


The recommendations from that article are:
1. Single gpu 1440p resolution:
A8-5600k ("price competitive choice for frame rates") namely because it's $110 and comes within near the same performance as Intel CPUs. I don't agree with this because I feel that anybody who's spending money on a 1440p and $300 on a video card should be willing to pony up a little more for a faster Intel cpu.

2. Dual gpu 1440p resolution: 2500k
3. Tri-gpu 1440p: 4770k (if I'm using tri-sli, I'd be running it in surround resolution, so this test is a little dumb)
4. quad-gpu 1440p (again, dumb) 3770k

So I disagree with ONE of their recommendations, and they only recommended it for 1440p because of price. To me, I don't read the conclusion that chooses intel/amd 3/4 times as biased toward AMD. I see the AMD recommendation as odd but for that scenario, it might be cost effective, but then I remember that the intel cpus will overclock very well and probably be much faster.

Then I go read another review.

Bottom line from what I take from that review:
Intel = 3 /4
AMD = 1 (barely a 1, only because of price, which I think is dumb for 1440p)

That doesn't seem like AMD bias to me.
So I move on and see that Intel cpus are faster, which I expected.
 
I was going to say the same thing. that site is a little bias towards amd for some reason. it even says a 7970 ghz is some what close to a 780. completely lie imo. I say get a 770, perhaps one like mine, the gigabyte 770 gtx (but get the 4gb version).
 
AndreRio said:
I was going to say the same thing. that site is a little bias towards amd for some reason. it even says a 7970 ghz is some what close to a 780. completely lie imo. I say get a 770, perhaps one like mine, the gigabyte 770 gtx (but get the 4gb version).
Click to expand...

I was a longtime reader of Anandtech and then they started doing this shit about 10 months ago. Started on the GTX660Ti and so forth. Like in my previous post if you check out http://www.anandtech.com/show/6985/choosing-a-gaming-cpu-at-1440p-adding-in-haswell-/9 the comments section 6 to 10 the user "TheJian" points out all the issues with Anandtech.
Couldn't stand their reviews and recommendations anymore so went to Pcper.com where Ryan Schrout does some amazing work and reviews with FCAT. Also I like it here for GPU reviews as well, techreport sometimes and Guru3D.
 
First things first:

Anand is a bit AMD biased, but that doesn't mean he isn't also being honest with the facts in his reviews. Every person has some bias one way or another. It doesn't mean they are always using their personal bias to shade their reviews and reports. I think Anand has generally been pretty fair. But why not just check out the reviews here then? I see lately that the 7970 with driver updates has done better than the 680 in many cases. The 7970 can generally be found for cheaper as well. You can also get the 7970 with more VRAM if you care about that.

My personal experience, I lilke Nvidia better, I have less hassles with drivers and gameplay feels more fluid. That being said, I have owned both and believe you should go with the best price/performance that fits your needs. Which in this case, I would probably recommend the 7970.
 
you guys are typing "7970" it's not 7970 the correct type is "7970 ghz" edition. the plain 7970 is equal to the 680 I think.
 
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