Given the choice again, I'd go for an Nvidia card. My 7950 seemed ace value though at £225... This is mainly based on experience in Skyrim. Although I think the cpu and mods may be the main culpirt now that I have the 7950 installed.
Would you mind expanding a little on the post above? I'm keen to understand what put you off the 7950 (or AMD in general).
I think Nvidia has better driver support these days, and is generally less obtrusive.. And Catalyst Control needs to be put down at birth.
Will be very useful to hear your thoughts bud. My 680 was quiet with the stock cooler, was quite impressed considering the performance it pushes. Now that I have my 4-slot MK26 cooler on it it's inaudible regardless of load. One reason I prefer the GTX 680 over anything AMD is that only Nvidia cards support the 2D lightboost trick for zero motion blur in fast-moving scenes on the new generation 120Hz monitors. Handy for non-IPS gamers.
This is exactly why I sit in the NVidia camp. I do also find their numbering system on their cards to be much easier to distinguish which card is aimed at which price point. x50 (low) ,x60,x70 (mid) ,x80 (best single GPU) and x90 (dual GPU card of doom). AMD did start this with the 3/4000 series, but after those ranges it got a bit blurry for me. I don't know whether it was because I wasn't in the market for a new card and gave up looking at new tech or whether it was because I'd already converted to the green camp and stopped looking at AMD cards altogether. I know they do have a numbering system, but they way they structure it seems to change every 2 generations. I'm also well aware Nvidia did this after the 9000 series, but in my opinion it's made a lot more sense since.
@benji 7970 the first 7 is the series of card the 9 is the main separator between the ranges. 9 is the high end, 8 is midrange, 7 is low-end, 5 and below is budget/non-gaming. generally the cards with the same number have the same gpu arch the second 7 is the card's place within the range. 0 is always 0 so right now there's the 7990, 7970 and 7950 all with tahiti gpus. the 7870 xt also has a tahiti gpu, but it's cut down. if they went by previous naming conventions it should have been called a 7890 or 7930, but for some reason they went with 7870 xt... the 7870 and 7850 have pitcairn gpus, the 7770 and 7750 have cape verde gpus
Thanks for all your input lads. I've just secured a 1 month old HIS 7950 Turbo locally for £170, collecting tonight. A bargain in my opinion! Plus it's silent and rear exhausting which is exactly what I wanted. Even better this one will do 1100MHz on the core (maybe a touch more), so looking forward to clocking it up later on I'll give half the leftover to my better half, and use the rest to treat myself to one or both of the games I would have got with a brand new one.
I play these type of games at 1080p and have a 7950. It maxes everything no problem. Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
I will go into it with an open mind. Always being an AMD man. I am actually quite excited and cannot wait to get home and I have a day off tomorrow, so will tinker with it tomorrow.
Sorry buddy. Didn't see you there. Well... I play skyrim a lot... and even with the latest beta drivers that are supposed to smooth the situation, I am still experiencing a lot of stutter running around the field near Whiterun. However, I haven't confirmed whether this is a lack of gpu grunt, cpu grunt or over zealous settings. You see techreports investigation of the beta drivers seem to say it is probably ok. I thought I'd be ok with this as it is a very big performance increase over a 460gtx. But I'm not. The only thing that stopped me from selling it was the added effort of selling it and the waterblock. Also, in the time I've had the card, I've once had to reinstall drivers after things magically just broke. This has never happened with my nvidia cards. (This is the first ATI/AMD card I've used.) Lastly, it seems like AMD are playing catch up on this whole frametimes thing... and really, waiting on drivers and knowing that AMD are taking it seriously isn't always enough. There is however some hope on the horizon. If the new consoles are running AMD architecture cards, then perhaps AMD are finally going to tip over the "way it's meant to be played" nvidia thing. All in all though, I could at the time have afforded the 670gtx and still could now with all the things I wanted, waterblock, extra rad etc and I think had I taken more heed of the frametimes thing I would be sat typing about my awesme 670gtx. Not that I didn't read up on it... just I didn't know my thresholds.... Edit: I run these mods in Skyrim: (Probably quite modest compared to a lot of people) Brighter MageLight cplesource Creepy Dungeons High res texture packs 1/2/3 Less Tint Warmer torches Whiterun lightning ZFixed lights Chewiemuse's Dense Grass Pure Waters getSnowy Xenius CHarcter Enhancements Better Dynamic Shadow At these settings: 1920x1080 Antialiasing 4x everything else as high as it can go Object detail fade disabled. Maybe my expectations are too high, but in Skyrim I was expecting to stay pretty close to 60fps all the time. I do, except for Whiterun.... so it may very well be the whole 100% grass thing that is ruining my performance rather than AMD. I'm not unhappy... and maybe the grass is just greener the other side sometimes.
Never thought I would see a 680 longer than a 7970 but for now I can honestly say the fans are quieter.
I would love to vga hotwire that GTX 680. Some peeps have mangaed 1500MHz core with 1.3v with the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme mobo. May have to look into finding out how to vga hotwire my EVGA Cheesecake cards.
I love my 7970. It was my first ever amd card, but at the time (and pretty much still is in my opinion) one of the best buys at the top end. I had heard rumours of dodgy drivers etc but i couldnt be happier. The drivers handle dual screens, with constant switching between tv and monitor. Amd the gpu itself has blown me away, it overclocks like a beast even with stock volts and under water it never goes over 49c full load. Of course unless your driving a 1440p display it might be a bit overkill, but for the money it will last you a while! P.s im not on either side of the fence, i just buy whatever gets me what i want within my budget.
I'm the opposite. I find nVidia's nomenclature scheme more confusing. The 560, 560SE, 560Ti, 560Ti 448 era was quite confusing for people who weren't au fait with each graphics card release. Also, GTX Titan is currently their best single GPU and it doesn't fit into the nomenclature scheme. The delta between a 680 and 7970 is about 5W and between a 680 and 7970GE is about 25W. The idle wattage is practically identical. So if you were to spend 40 hours a week gaming, the yearly cost difference (assuming each kWh costs the national average 15p): 680 vs 7970 40 x 0.005kW = 0.2kW per week x 52 = 10.4kW per year 10.4 x 0.15 = £1.56 per year extra for 7970 680 vs 7970GE 40 x 0.025kW = 1kW per week x 52 = 52kW per year 52 x 0.15 = £7.80 per year extra for 7970GE Of course, Battefield 3 is an example of a realistic maximum load but the point still stands. If your were to game for about 25% of each year, the difference would amount to around a tenner at most. Give the card an approximate lifespan of about three/four years before you upgrade, the 7970 or GE plus running costs still comes out cheaper than the 680 plus running costs. This is before you factor in the games that come with each card and the fact that the 7970GE outperforms the 680.
Reasons why I loved my HD7970M's in my laptop; It ran every game maxed out, I didn't have a single problem with them from day 1, they just worked with no fuss! Reasons why I got rid of my Desktop HD7970s; Complete oppersite to the above, but why?... Run Hitman Absolute maxed out with 8xMSAA and it would leak memory like a seive. Overclock and the screen would have refresh issues with screen tearing in the desktop. HD audio drivers kept flagging up as stopped working In device manager Now this all may be down to the XFX cards I had. But it was enough for me to get rid of them in less than a week.
7970s. I will say that you won't really lose out one way or another, but it seems that 7970GEs tend to net better framerates than GTX 680s. That said, either one should be great although the 7970 is cheaper.
Don't get me wrong Bobby i love my 7970 and have never had any hassles with the drivers. The only reason I got the 680 was to have a spare card just in case. You say I'm nuts just to have a 680 as a spare card well in saying that yes I am. But seeing the way games are going I think I will now wait at least a couple of years before i purchase another card. All I use my card for is Photoshop CS6, Black ops II and Joint Operations so i can wait a while for a new card now as I have a spare and at a good price as well.
