I know this is a dumb question and I should know this but I am little confused whether to buy a 670 or a 7970 (reference or aftermarket, I don't care which) I am looking to upgrade soon and I was initially going for an evga 670 but the prices of the 7970 have dropped and have similar prices as each other. Now this is what I don't get, in other forums (tomshardware) people are saying the 670 is better in performance (games in bf3 etc) but the 7970 is one of the top cards in the AMD platform (which obviously means it would outperform an "entry" high end 670) , this doesn't make sense? Is this true? Also, can anyone recommend me any cards? Thanks
I asked the same question a while back. In the end i went for the 7970. What swung it for me was the extra vram. I game at 1440p and i wanted to make sure the card could handle high res texture packs etc. To give a balenced view though, the 670 would still do a great job at this res even with less vram. Its a tough choice and the cards trade blows on different games. I havnt tried the 670 myself but i can say that 7970 maxes everything out.
I have a 670 at the same res (1300mhz mind) and i have no problems with anything other than Day-Z maxed (but maxing that engine will tax any card now or foreseeable future). Either card will be great, just pick the best deal IMO
I went for the 670, partly because the 7970 was about £40 more (but has dropped since - probably less than £20) and there's barely a ***-paper between them, performance-wise. What swung it was the reduced power draw and the tiny size of the reference 670, when water- cooled. Haven't noticed any problems gaming at 1600p either. I don't think there's much between them - just pick a colour, red or green; or whichever you can get the best deal on - you'll be fine.
7970 is faster in certain games but has the worse drivers. 670 is a more stable platform and is the one id go for personally.
Had the same choice about 2 months back, bought Gigabyte's 670 as Asus' was out of stock. Unless you use a super high resolution, the cards are pretty damn similar, except the 670 is cooler/quieter... Even if you do game across 3 screens, I think you'd be ok with the 670 tbh, although you may to forgo anti-aliasing or some such I'd pick the 670 were I to choose again, although there really is little between them
Also I'm not sure AMD's drivers can be described as less stable anymore, they seem to be doing much better nowadays
Okay cool, I was looking at the MSI aftermarket 7970. Does anyone have any experience with MSI at all?
I have had 3 MSI cards, all nvidia (though have a MSI laptop with a AMD 5870m) and have to say have all worked flawlessly. I have never had a problem or had to RMA with any MSI products (2 main boards, 3 GPU'S, and laptop)they run cool, O/C well Would recommend
