Graphics Upgrade from a HD6950

So it seems my old HD6950 is dying. I need a upgrade and have been looking at the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670 or the HD7970. I am however leaning to a NVIDIA card since I haven't been too happy with AMD. My budget is £300. Will be gaming at 1920x1080. I do like to overclock as well. Any ideas? thanks.

 

For £300 either a 670 or 7970 is your best bet, in terms of performance it is 7970 > 670 > 7950 > 7870 le > 660ti > 7870, according to most benchmarks and games so on that basis you get more for your money with amd but then saying that a 670 can overclock pretty close to 680 levels but a 7970 overclocks well too so it comes to preference of games you're going to be playing and drivers. E.g. Tomb raider and bioshock favour amd but every game with physx favours nvidia and the nvidia drivers are generally better. Having said that, I have a 7950 which has only struggled with crysis 3 so far with every other game maxed and running on my dell u2412m at a stable 60fps with vsync on.

 

Hmmmmm interesting. I play a wide variety of games. Crysis 3, Battlefield 3 & 4 when it drops. COD, bioshock, hitman.....I play a whole lot. The whole RAGE issue with AMD was awful though, texture pop was rife when I last played it. Think I'll read some reviews of both. Regarding brand, who do the best warranty? Not happy that my old Sapphire card started having issues soon after the 2 year warranty ran out.

 

INB4 everyone else. EVGA do great warranty. Looking at 670 as my next gpu.

 

Which one should I get?

£298.40 2GB EVGA GTX 670
£311.60 2GB EVGA GTX 670 For The Win
£329.60 2GB EVGA GTX 670 For The Win Signature 2 (2 Fans Instead of 1)

Edit: Why does the acronym for "For The Win" spell out cheesecake? lol

 

True Gamer should advise you from here on out as he has 3 670s. Two are Cheesecake. What you are paying for is factory over clock.

 

Wouldn't mind a bit of info from True Gamer about the 670's. Had to lol at "Two are cheesecake". Was looking at the "for the win sig 2" version only because a few reviews mentioned EVGA picking out GPU's that overclock well and it comes with two fans but yeah, would like to hear from some 670 owners

 

Ha, nope - 3 Are F.T.W and 1 SC for Quad SLI.

Hi mate,

The F.T.W cards are binned GPU's, so you get what you pay for. I would stick with the single fan for the simple fact, that all heat gets exhausted out the rear of the case, and so this keeps the rest of the case cool.

I would also be looking at 4GB version for 1080p and up, as games are starting to use all the VRAM on a 2GB card when you select high amounts of AA.
So unless your happy with running just FXAA which is a low impact on VRAM, then 2GB should be fine.

Once the new consoles come out this year, games will get ever more demanding, and so you need to think whether this is going to be a upgrade that you want to last a couple of years.

 

Gaming at 1080p? An HD7870 XT/Tahiti LE should be sufficient. Though if you're willing to spend a little more, the GTX 670 is a great choice. Either the EVGA GTX 670 Cheesecake or the GIGABYTE GTX 670 Windforce x3 are great cards

 

Thanks for the input. Planning to grab the EVGA 4GB GTX 670 F.T.W.+ £377 from scan on finance.

 

Good choice!

If you want me to send you my modded vbios, that will let the card boost to 1293MHz core and up the memory to 3500MHz (7000MHz) Then let me know nearer the time.

 

I'd love that, as long as it doesn't void my warranty

 

Hmmmm so my friend is trying to convince me to grab a 7970 3gb and I've noticed that a lot of them are actually cheaper than the 670 series from Nvidia. Not sure what to get now, although the high power usage from the 7970 ghz editions (upwards of 380+) are off putting.

 

your psu is more than fine

 

The 7970GE is a bit faster than a 670, but why waste the money on the GHZ Edition? Just get a regular 7970 and overclock it yourself; the actual GPUs are identical. Don't be fooled by the 'GHz Edition' appellation. You can go into Catalyst or AfterBurner and achieve the same thing yourself much more cheaply.

This Sapphire 7970 Dual-X 3GB is about £50 cheaper than the EVGA 670 4GB, outperforms it and comes with 3 games which can be sold at £20+ a pop.

 

I had looked at that earlier but EVGA's warranty options (3 years minimum + I could add an extra couple of years on top & the warranty is transferable when I decide to sell it in the future) seem awesome to me compared to Sapphire's 2 years warranty, non transferable, non upgradable. The fact that my Sapphire HD6950 started dying shortly after my warranty had expired is a bit off putting.