EVGA GTX 680 CLASSIFIED 4gb vs. EVGA GTX 680 FTW+ 4gb vs. Sapphire Vapor-X 7970 Ghz 3gb

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Caliaton

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Feb 27, 2013
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I know everyone has heard the 680 vs 7970 argument a zillion times, but I'm having a very tough time deciding which of these specific cards to get. Which of the three will perform best in most games maxed out at 1080p, and which will overclock best? The 680 classified has the highest stock clock and leads me to believe that it will overclock better than the other two cards, but I could be wrong. And a couple more questions if y'all don't mind, can I get by overclocking any of these cards with a good 600w PSU, and will a i5 3750k bottleneck any of these gpu's? All answers are GREATLY appreciated, thanks :)
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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clock speed means nothing considering there are different chip structures... right now due to the mature graphics drivers the 7970 is about 10%-15% faster across the board compared to the 680. Overclocking the 680 will not make up that difference, as the Tahiti chip the 7970 runs on overclocks better then the Kepler the 680 uses.

That said, if you plan in the future to xfire/SLi, going with the nvidia is a no brainer.
 
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DarkSable

DarkSable

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Sep 27, 2012
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This is on a single 1080p screen? Stop trying to throw your money away.

Buying a 4GB card is pointless for 1080p - it gives you nothing over a 2GB card.

The 680 is also a bad pick, because it's only 5% faster than a 670, yet it costs 25% more.

So what it really comes down to is a 670 or a 7970 boost edition. Both will max out games at more than 60 fps. The 7970 will give higher framerates, but will have higher frame latencies, too.
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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not true on the latencies. 3 months ago this was so... AMD fixed the issue with recent driver updates, now there is no frame rate latency issues with the Tahiti gpu... except in xfire... but then that's a universal AMD issue.
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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yeah, in the recent tom's article on latencies and micro stuttering with xfire and sli, they showed the latencies with single gpus in the same tests. the results as Tom's reported was that AMDs issue with their single cards was gone... of course their issues with xfire were alarming to the extreme. While there was micro stutter in the nvidia platform, it was far worse on the AMD machines.
 
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Caliaton

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Feb 27, 2013
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Well the 7970 seems to be looking like a better bang for the buck here considering you get three $60 games with it and its also $150 cheaper. The only thing is i'm not familiar with most companies that make non reference AMD cards, and a lot of them have bad reviews and i'm a little worried about that (which is what draws me away from a 7970), so i'm not sure which is a good brand but can you recommend me the best 7970 ghz currently available? There's so many that it's hard to choose but I just saw that the sapphire cards seemed to be pretty well acclaimed. And, can I overclock a ghz 7970 with a corsair 600w PSU?

 
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Duke Nucome

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Vsync does wonders to cure micro stuttering.
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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yes... 600W is enough.

ignore bad reviews on newegg... the users there are idiots. Generally i only look at the reviews for 2 things. 1) consistent complaints (the same problem = possible problem with the device, this is not always true, as newegg users are idiots, but it sometimes is) and 2) comments about features and details about the device not included.

otherwise newegg reviews are junk.
 
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Duke Nucome

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They are all pretty good I mean they have to follow the AMD refernace design so they are essentially the same at the base level. That said imo try and find the card with the lowest noise cooler.
 
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cookybiscuit

cookybiscuit

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It also creates a pretty substantial amount of input lag.
 
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Duke Nucome

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I don't mind it at all as it's "Smooth" lag and negligible imo because I can still win in them twitch online shooter games like MW2 etc.
 
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Caliaton

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