XFX 7970 ghz. edition vs asus Gtx 680 DCII TOP

I don't think any single card can run crysis 3 at max,1080p smoothly... By the way, there is no "ultra", very high is max.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-3-performance-benchmark-gaming,3451-6.html

The Asus TOP is the absolute best GTX 680 due to its very effective and very quiet cooler. It's going to be more refined, quieter, cooler, less power hungry, and with that high overclock, deliver top-level performance. As a bonus you'll get Adaptive VSync, PhysX, better drivers, and everything else that comes with the Nvidia ecosystem.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_680_Direct_Cu_II/32.html

Better drivers and hardware is the reason why the GTX 680 outsells the 7970 by 2 to 1
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

the 680 works better than 7970 ghz on crysis 3, but if you are playing other games... they are tied with the ghz a bit faster.

With a single monitor for gaming I doubt you'd notice much difference between the two. Not sure on the size of the amd card but the Asus 680 needs 3 slots so keep that in mind when buying that you have proper clearance to fit the thing in. The 670 version from Asus with directcu cooler is a 2 slot so if you plan to sli and your pci-e lanes are close together that would be something to consider. That being said the DirectCU coolers are very nice pieces of work and keep everything running cool and quiet.

Despite all the hd7970 hypes, I would recommend the gtx680 only because its a direct cu II top model. My gtx670 dcu II top absolutely wrecks most if not all hd7970s at 1346mhz/7150 clocks. That thing is a crazy overclocker and best of all I didn't even have to tweak the voltage to achieve those clocks. I'd expect the gtx680 model to reach similar, if not better clock speeds. Overall, it should beat the hd7970 by at least a 5-10% margin.

I agree though I have had bad luck with amd before so I do prefer nvidia cards. I would say for a single monitor gaming the differences between the two are negligible performance wise. If you plan to do multimonitor gaming in 2d then i'd say get the 7970. If you plan to do multimonitor gaming in 3d then go for nvidia.

shall we bench? If you have any hd7970s, name your benchmark or link me with some benchmark, I am confident my gtx670 would beat it

Thats a broad statement. While I agree with those synthetic benchmarks, I find them sort of inconsistant most of the time. Like they don't bench gpus fully overclocked with one another. They usually tend to compare a hd7970 ghz toxic model with an ordinary gtx680 while they compare a superclocked gtx680 with a normal reference hd7970. I speak from user experience. I have the gtx670 and my buddy has the sapphire hd7970ghz edition we both overclocked our system to the max and in most games, my gpu outshines his. The only exception that I have seen so far is hitman absolution and batman arkham city. In titles like crysis3, Battlefield 3, even in Far cry 3- the gtx670 came out on top.

Ya nvidia drivers are so great they caused me to go back to amd.who has better drivers is all heresay and personal preference.Absolutley nothing wrong with ati drivers.GTX 660 SLI was a blatant headache to deal with compared to 7950 crossfire.No reason to ay more for less performance i would never reccomend a gtx 680 to anyone not even over a 7950

No he is absolutley right the 7970 ghz is faster then the gtx 680 and when you factor in overclocking then it isnt really any contest.even a maxed overcloced 7950 can keep with or beat a maxed overclocked gtx 680

The 7970 is faster. You ever watched any professional bench markers ? Everyone knows that the 7970 Ghz is faster than the 680.

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*OP, skip to the end to skip all the BS*

Yes. The 7970 is faster than the 680. But, the 8350 is also faster than the 3770k. So, why does the 3770k kick the 8350s' ass in games? Optimization. Why does the 680 perform better in most games? Optimization. In benches the 7970 wins at stock, though the world record for 3dmark was quad sli overclocked 680s because they overclock better. Now, quad sli Titans have the world record for GPU horsepower of course.

I say GTX 680 lightning all the way. I own one, and I easily got a 450MHz overclock on the core (1450Mhz) and a 700MHz on the memory (3700MHz, 7.4Gbps) on mine because of the unlocked voltage on the core, memory, and aux (although I don't think the aux voltage makes any difference for stability). I max out Crysis 3 with high TXAA and stay at about 40FPS. My temps don't get past 75c with the fans at 50% (barely audible) because of the extremely awesome cooler. That's the hottest I've ever seen it, and it's running at 1.304V. 680 Lightning I'd say is better than the Asus 680 just because of the unlocked BIOS and only double slot length while still having a great heatsink. It also has sweet blue LEDs all over it :lol:

Keep in mind though... Nvidia didn't like the unlocked voltage up to +.1V instead of the standard +.022V. So they started releasing all of the new 680 lightnings with the locked BIOS. So you will have to flash the BIOS which takes literally 5 seconds. You can find out how here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1280007/official-msi-gtx-680-lightning-owners-club Look for **A NOTE ON BIOS**

As mentioned above, another reason to go Nvidia over AMD is because of the better drivers. Not only are there very frequent updates to boost your performance passed AMD cards, you get great features such as being able to over ride pretty much any graphics settings in a game using the control panel and even increase the quality of the game more than it normally could be. For example, adding FXAA and forcing AF to 16x etc. I love the FXAA because I have some classic games that didn't have AA so I just turn it on and bam the game looks so much better. Weaker horsepower+better drivers = better performance 75% of the time. Optimization goes far (just look at how long consoles have been holding on for) and because Nvidia is more popular than AMD right now, game devs are focusing on the bigger crowd.

GTX 680 lightning would be the best option. Proof provided above.

LOL i have a buddy who overclocked his gtx 670 to max and i overclocked my 7950 to max and he couldnt keep with m in anything.Its not the performance of the gtx 670 and 680 that makes me stay away from it its the price.

LOL i have a buddy who overclocked his gtx 670 to max and i overclocked my 7950 to max and he couldnt keep with m in anything.Its not the performance of the gtx 670 and 680 that makes me stay away from it its the price.

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Look at the benches the first reply posted. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-3-performance-benchmark-gaming,3451-6.html the GTX 670 stock outperforms a 7970 stock. Like I said, optimization comes far. And AMD drivers aren't very good which doesn't help at all. Look at the comments, the highest rated comment is "hope AMD comes out with better drivers soon". Stop acting like a child and look at the facts. AMD needs to stop being lazy and put some more effort into driver optimization. Same with the game devs.

Alright we have another AMD vs Nvidia dispute and like all the rest will not be resolved because each is convinced that their's is the best. What everyone should realize is that both will play all the games on high/very high and ultra and that they are really only separated by a small amount of fps. Someone using a computer for gaming will be very happy with a GTX680 and they would also be very happy with a 7970 because both will give a very good gaming performance and the difference will be neglegable. You won't notice a 5fps or even 10fps difference in gameplay. The problem with benchmarks is that you will always have a winner even if it's by 1 fps.

So I'm going to ask that the continued back and forth stop and if someone wants to post thier opinion do so but leave it at that so that the OP will be able to male his/her decision and not have to read through posts of arguments back and forth over who's best.

In the end it will come down to your own preference for which card you want. Both should perform just fine for the game you listed. Perhaps looking at noise levels of either card and the cost would be a better factor to consider.

why don't we try out some becnhes ourselves? lets put my gtx670 and your hd7950 to a test and see which one of us scores higher. I will set up a separate thread if you are in.

2012 AMD and NVIDIA Driver Performance Summary Review
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/04/2012_amd_nvidia_driver_performance_summary_review/6#.UV-TGRPn-Uk

2012 AMD Video Card Driver Performance Summary
In 2012, AMD had a rough time developing performance drivers and making them available to the public in a reasonable amount of time. It was evident that AMD was having problems during the first few months of the year.

AMD needs to keep its drivers up to date and ready for new games during the entire year. It cannot slack off at some point, it is just not acceptable.

It is also very important to have public drivers when your hardware is launched. We are looking at you AMD! It was clear that there was a lot of potential for performance in the Radeon HD 7970 and 7950, but we didn't see that performance realized until the middle of the year at least.

2012 NVIDIA Video Card Driver Performance Summary
If there is one thing that stood out to me about NVIDIA's 2012 driver performances, it is how consistent the performances were. In most of our gameplay tests, NVIDIA's initial driver tended to have all of the possible performance boosts built in to it. This means there was not much room for improvement, but that is okay since it usually had the faster video cards. We saw time and time again in this evaluation that NVIDIA's drivers had a much higher average framerate in almost every game compared to the AMD video cards.

NVIDIA was also extremely good about having its drivers up to date, and available in a reasonable amount of time. When new games were launching this past year, NVIDIA almost always had a driver being released the day before the new games came out. This way NVIDIA ensures that its customers are able to fully utilize the hardware they have spent a lot of their hard earned money on.

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Yes, but the OP's question was if they would play Crysis 3 on ultra. Crytek and Nvidia have a partnership so Nvidia is obviously going to be better in a "Nvidia game". T'is all I'm saying. GTX 680 lightning would be the best choice for the OP. Am I wrong? Didn't think so. I just so happen to have a GTX 680 lightning. It does not mean I'm favoring it because I own it. I did a quick benchmark search for Crysis 3 (which was already provided and obviously ignored by everyone except me) and even the 670 outperforms a 7970. Don't put me in the same childish group as the couple others. I simply came in to display the facts to hopefully shut them up, just like yourself.

EDIT: By the way, 10 FPS is a very noticeable difference. 10FPS vs 20FPS is the difference between playable and unplayable. 30FPS looks choppy if you're used to a solid 60+FPS and if you're able to keep 40FPS instead of 30, you will notice it.

I don't get it? The card isn't beating a stock gtx680 its coming pretty close but its not beating it. Also in the link, they used games like dirt3, arkham city, crysis2 etc in which amd tends to do better.

In my post I did not name anyone specificly and am not including anyone in any group I am simply saying to those who are arguing to stop and just make a post answering the OPs question. What is taking place by others is not answering the question but just having the same argument that always erupts when someone wants to know which is better , AMD or Nvidia. They have now continued to do so and it's getting close to this thread being closed to get their attention.

In my post I did not name anyone specificly and am not including anyone in any group I am simply saying to those who are arguing to stop and just make a post answering the OPs question. What is taking place by others is not answering the question but just having the same argument that always erupts when someone wants to know which is better , AMD or Nvidia. They have now continued to do so and it's getting close to this thread being closed to get their attention.

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Thanks for clearing it up. Sorry if you took my reply as disrespect. I suggest you just close the thread. There is lots of data for the OP to read and it doesn't seem like they are going to stop arguing.