Right, having compared three factory overclocked GTX 670's, I'm debating which one would be the best upgrade to replace my 5870. Right now, it's between the Gigabyte Windforce 3x (great cooling, decent speed), the EVGA F. T. W. (cheaper, decent speed, not so great cooling), and the MSI (of which I haven't heard much about). Also, in your opinions, when is the best time to buy: approaching Christmas, after Christmas, or waiting another 6 months for the next cards to be released and hoping these ones do a massive price-drop. If anyone has any light to shed on a particular card I'd very much appreciate it!!
You do realize that in 2013 all you will get from NV is Kepler refresh, Maxwell will be released only in 2014.
I don't think current gen prices ever really drop much, only when they're right at EOL and there's not much stock left. Waiting for price drops because of new tech is pointless IMO, the drops never seem to come or if they do its negligible. Waiting for new products because your going to get one of those can make sense. Of those three I'd go for the Gigabyte, my Gigabyte GTX460 has been great, the coolers are excellent, and you'd probably be able to get some more OC out of it still. Didn't bit just do a review on the Gigabyte 670?
They will drop of course, but not by much, and you should expect the typical NVIDIA launch timing - that is GTX780 somewhere in may, then GTX770 in june, GTX760 in july, GTX750 and bellow in august. But at that time you could as well wait for Maxwell... And then for the next gen, and then for the next gen. If you need graphics card now, then buy it now from what you can buy now, and don't wait a half year for next generation, which will be replaced a year later. And which one from those ? Well, there won't be much difference in speed, so decisions shouldn't be based on that. What you should think about is : 1) how noisy the fan is 2) will you later try to use an aftermarket cooler or watercooling on it ? If yes, then it is usually better to choose a card with stock PCB. 3) are there some bonus items which can push you towards one of the cards (bundled games, software, longer warranty etc).
The Gigabyte is a fantastic card from personal experience! Also on offer over at Amazon.co.uk at the time of writing for £290.90... http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0080DXP...de=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B0080DXPHO
EVGA Cheesecake 670 on scan today @ £296.39 including two games. Assassin's Creed III and Borderlands 2
If you don't mind waiting, you can get some great boxing day / boxing week sales. I picked up my 6950 2gb from ncix on boxing day for something like 80 or 100 off, only issue I have with it is it's non-reference so I can't unlock it to a 6970. As others have said either check your favourite sites for daily deals or if you don't mind waiting, wait for some Christmas or boxing week sales.
That's actually some pretty sound advice. One more question: if I can get a PNY GTX 680 for £314, do you think it's worth doing? At standard clocks it should be marginally faster than MOST 670's, the only thing I'm not sure about is the brand itself. People don't seem to like their customer service.
Why has no one mentioned the HD7970 Ghz edtition? Which by shopping around, you can get it for£300 with 4 free games and 20% off Medal or Honor War fighter. Gigabyte Ghz edition I know what I would be doing with my money, especially with the release of the 12.11 drivers, w hich has made a big boost in performance in games.
Ah right not such a good offer then seeing as I would sell AC3 for £15 and keep BL2. Makes it around £10-15 dearer than buying it at scan.
I've had so much trouble running games properly on my AMD card that I'd rather change back to Nvidia, my experience with them was brilliant before.
I own a Gigabyte 7970 GHz. I'm able to run any game on it, without issue. No lag, and no compatibility issues. If you were having issues, I'd assume it's a driver conflict from an old GPU or the iGPU. Occasionally the display driver will crash if I'm mining BitCoins on it with a core clock of 1215MHz and I pull up YouTube or play Minecraft or something. But that's a 300MHz OC without a voltage mod being run at 100% doing encryptions and trying to run a video / game.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't so much the physical card itself, it's more due to game compatibility. One thing that comes to mind was when RAGE was released; Nvidia users were having a blast while AMD users were getting about 10fps for days until they finally patched it properly. It was a shambles, and this is just one of many times I ended up thinking "Screw you NVidia users for being able to actually play this game". Saints Row 3 is another fine example. I realise it's more the developers fault but I just want to avoid that from happening again. The only exception was Deus Ex, which ran flawlessly for me while everyone else was tearing their eyeballs out.
You shouldn't have any driver issues with the 7 series being over 6 months old with some really good drivers out now, which pretty much stomp down hard on nvidia's crotchal region. you can even save yourself a few quid and buy a base 7970 and flash it to the Ghz bios, although a lot of people prefer to keep theirs at stock for a more traditional flat rate overclock, rather than boosting.
