Radeon HD 7950 vs GTX 770?

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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hello all. I recently purchased an HD 7950 and I'd like to know if I made the right choice or if I should get a refund and buy a GTX 770 for 100 bucks more.

I've been playing Crysis 3 for the last three days and I'm actually very impressed with the performance of the 7950 with this game. I'm running the game with everything maxed out except shading/shadows and getting 50-60fps for the most part and sometimes dipping into the 40s. I was told the shading/shadows lowers my fps because of my CPU... an i7 920 2.6ghz? I also can't tell a difference when I have the shading/shadows turned all the way up or down lol I really don't see any difference in the shadows but maybe I'm looking for the wrong things?

I'm reading that the GTX 770 is having a hard time running Crysis3? Something about the 2gigs of ram not being enough and the card only able to run the game at like 30-40fps?

I beat Metro 2033 and with the 7950 I played it on all maxed settings. Again I stayed at 50-60 fps for about 98% of the game. There were a couple of spots that railed my FPS but one of the gpu experts on here told me that even happens to him when he runs it on his GTX 690.

Played Tomb Raider a little bit and also getting great FPS in that one.

So far I'm really liking this card and I wouldn't enjoy sending it back and spending 100 bucks more on the GTX 770 but I do want future games to run as well as Crysis 3 does right now. I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to GPUs and Overclocking them but I've read and I've been told that the 7950 overclocks well and can perform as well as a 7970 when OC'd? Oh and I have the OC'd Boost edition by sapphire so it's at 925mhz clock I think :)
 
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ipwn3r456
If I were you, I wouldn't go for the upgrade, the GTX 770 is a very little bit faster than the HD 7970 looking at the reviews, but you can always overclock your HD 7950 and performs as well as a HD 7970. The GTX 770 is basically a GTX 680 overclocked. So, I don't think it's worth it for you to spend another 100 bucks to get the GTX 770, you may get a little increase in terms of gaming performance, but you are paying 33% more (I assume you are paying for $300 for the HD 7950). Also, you do know that the HD 7950 has a 384 bits memory interface, and its 3GB of GDDR5 RAM, instead of the GTX 770's 256 bits memory and its 2GB GDDR5 RAM. If you are cranking up AA (Anti-Aliasing), or playing on very high resolutions (above 1080p), the HD 7950...
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wanderer11

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If you're happy with the 7950 there's no point in spending more. Just keep it for now and upgrade in a couple years when the settings you have to turn down do make a difference.

By the way I really don't think 2 GB VRAM is a problem for Crysis 3. I've been playing with 7870 CF and get 35-100 FPS maxed (besides AA) at 2560x1440. Tomb Raider was harder to run. Those cutscenes killed my fps.
 
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ipwn3r456

ipwn3r456

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If I were you, I wouldn't go for the upgrade, the GTX 770 is a very little bit faster than the HD 7970 looking at the reviews, but you can always overclock your HD 7950 and performs as well as a HD 7970. The GTX 770 is basically a GTX 680 overclocked. So, I don't think it's worth it for you to spend another 100 bucks to get the GTX 770, you may get a little increase in terms of gaming performance, but you are paying 33% more (I assume you are paying for $300 for the HD 7950). Also, you do know that the HD 7950 has a 384 bits memory interface, and its 3GB of GDDR5 RAM, instead of the GTX 770's 256 bits memory and its 2GB GDDR5 RAM. If you are cranking up AA (Anti-Aliasing), or playing on very high resolutions (above 1080p), the HD 7950 may perform better than the GTX 770 in those cases. Just save your money, maybe wait for another few generations of GPUs to release, or spend it on other parts of the computer.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Thanks all for the replies. Yea I'll just keep the 7950 and maybe OC it later when I have to start turning down the settings.

Wanderer- I only played Tomb Raider for like 15 minutes so we'll see what happens when I play it more.

Ipwn- I do turn on the Anti-Aliasing. I play in 1920X1200 I think it is resolution and I payed 300 bucks for the card yep.

Coozie- I would like to overclock the CPU. I was thinking about upgrading the CPU sometime but if I could OC it and get good results I may as well do that before spending more money on a new one. I don't have a clue as to how to OC though =/. I watched some youtube videos but they were all for BIOS that were different from mine.
 
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ipwn3r456

ipwn3r456

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I am quite agree with coozie's comment. I think your CPU can be quite bottleneck your system due to it's quite slow. I am not an expert of overclocking CPUs, hope someone else can help you with that. If you can overclock it above 3.0 GHz +, you should be fine for now. Just make sure you have a good cooler.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hey man this may help you. I started playing Tomb Raider and also got very bad fps drops during the cut scenes. At first I thought it was the shadows stressing my cpu like with other games but in fact it was the tressfx. Once I turned that off my fps shot way up. I'm pretty much at a constant 60fps now with everything turned up even shadows. Tressfx makes Laras hair prettier which is cool but not a big deal for me. Although I would like to know why its killing my fps like that. Hope this helps :)
 
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Ultisym

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First, dont take advice from anybody that says the 770 is just an overclocked 680. There is a wee bit more to it than that. Like the 7000 hynix fast ram, gpu boost 2 and an overall better quality build. (Yes ive had a pair or MSI R7950s in crossfire, cheap build but nice overall). Anyway, I agree for what your doing stick to the 7950, but make no mistake, the 770 is the superior card.
 
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Ultisym

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First, dont take advice from anybody that says the 770 is just an overclocked 680. There is a wee bit more to it than that. Like the 7000 hynix fast ram, gpu boost 2 and an overall better quality build. (Yes ive had a pair or MSI R7950s in crossfire, cheap build but nice overall). Anyway, I agree for what your doing stick to the 7950, but make no mistake, the 770 is the superior card.
 
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Ultisym

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Yeah, well you get what you pay for. Im not a particular fan of red or green. I get the best deal at the time. This time it was the 770.
I installed 2 MSI 7950s in crossfire today. Got them for the computers im building for the office and thought I would play with them a little. 770 is already back in. Performance even in crossfire was not much better than a single 770. So in that respect, yes its worth double the cost to me to have the single card solution over the XF 7950s as the performance increase wasnt even 10%. If you want to hate on NVIDIA thats fine, dont stand on the 7950s shoulders though LMAO.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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I'm not a fanboy either. I bought my first 7950 in June before the release of the 700 series from Nvidia. I payed 300 bucks for the Sapphire Flex 7950 and got 4 games with it. I didn't go for the 7970 because it was 100 bucks more expensive and from the reviews I read the 7950 was only 3-6% behind the 7970 at the same clock speed. If the 770 or 760 was out at this time, or maybe if I even knew they would be releasing it soon I may have went for one of those.

My friend has the same rig as me with the only difference being is that he has a 680 and I have a 7950. We tested Metro 2033 on both of our rigs and my 7950 showed the same performance as his 680, even beating it by a few FPS in some areas. The 770 is a rebranded 680 with its clock speeds increased and some other crap. Yes it's a bit better than the 680 but not by much according to all the reviews and benchmarks.

Here is a short video of Crysis 3 performance on the 770, 7950 and an overclocked 7950. The overclocked 7950 is getting almost equal performance to the 770. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIaJESzIcU0

Crossfired 7950s give Titan-Class performance based on pretty much every review I've seen. Even beating the Titan by a few fps in many games.
You want to say that the Titan is only 10% faster than a 770?

Today I tested Crysis 3 on my rig. With maxed settings and 4XMSAA I was getting about 30fps in this one area. Then I enabled Crossfire and I was getting 45-50fps in the same area with the same settings.

I don't know what games you played or did your tests on but I really doubt that under normal circumstances 2 7950s would get only 10% more performance than a 770.

I know someone with two 770s in his rig. He tested Crysis 3 as well and got a minimum fps of 33. With my 7950s I got a minimum Fps of 32.
Max and Average FPS was very similar as well.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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I didn't say it gives double, although it has the potential to. Most threads I've seen agree on a 70-80% increase in performance from adding a second card in both CF and SLI. With one 7950 I was getting average 30fps in Crysis 3 with max settings. With CF I get an average of 50fps. That's nearly double...
 
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west7

west7

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about VRAM, 2GB isnt enough ive got HD 7950 and i've seen in GPU-z(utility give information about the GPU) that crysis 3 uses more than 2GB (around 2450 MB) i'm playin at 1920x1080 with SMAAx4 with graphic setting set to very high
 
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west7

west7

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yes it one sapphire hd 7950 vapor-x boost , well i getting around 40 fps at the default clock(950\1250) and i have overclock the card to 1100\1570 and i'm getting around 50 fps
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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With maxed settings I get around 50fps with 2 cards. Not sure how you are getting 50 with just one. Maybe something is wrong with my card?

I'll try overclocking mine and see what I get. I don't overclock the memory as it doesn't seem to give me any increase in FPS, but I'll try it again.
 
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langoman

langoman

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Did you refund the HD7950?
I bought the model bellow and even with the import fees i´m very happy with this video card. I suggest you to keep in mind what GPU the next generation videogames are using... Many future games will be optimized for AMD GPUs. Unfortunately, I´m not a AMD fan. I have a HP laptop where the AMD 64 CPU almost fried.

Notes:

1) I had using a NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GTS 512MB for long 5 years, so it was a wonderful upgrade to my computer...

2) However it costs a little bit more (mobo+cpu kit), I also recently changed my CPU to a i7-4770k, which gave to me considerable higher benchmarks. I was using Quad Core QX9650 since last year.

HIS 7950 IceQ Boost Clock 3GB GDDR5 PCI-E Graphics Card H795QC3G2M
Sold by Amazon.com LLC $229.99

Item Subtotal: $229.99
Shipping & Handling: $15.16
Promotion Applied: -$0.00
Total Before Tax: $245.15
Import Fees Deposit: $233.19
Shipment Total: $478.34
 
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Ali Husain

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You are forgetting that the HD 7950 is a MUCH better overclocker, I have read about a guy/girl who has overclocked his HD 7950, and got around an 80% increase in performance (that's better than crossfire in certain scaling using a single 7950)
(keep in mind that this is the MSI version, but has got no major overclocks at the factory, and a stock version would not overclock any better, because the voltage is the same)
Review on Amazon from Edward Kan
ASIC Quality is 88.6% via GPU-Z 0.6.4 - this is very high. This seems to be "new batch" 7950 chips which have higher ASIC quality in general. Higher ASIC quality should = better overclocks at the same voltage compared with lower ASIC quality.

The card I received is based on the 7970 PCB - it has 8 pin and 6 pin power in. This SHOULD be a very good overclocking card given ASIC quality, aftermarket cooling, 7970 PCB design. And is it?

Answer is, yes!

I used sapphire trixx for overclocking.

Stock core voltage was 1.031 volt for my board (set low!) and it ran of course at stock settings 880core 1250 memory great. I got 43.9 frames per sec on uningine benchmark, using default settings (2560x1440 resolution).

I was able to crank up the voltage to 1050, memory to 1700 WITHOUT ADJUSTING VOLTAGE. That's 1050mhz core on 1.031 volts! Upon cranking up the voltage to 1.100 volts, I was able to overlock to 1050mhz core and 1700 memory, uningine benchmark ran at 70.5 frames per second.

I then bumped the voltage to 1.10 volts (still very low, most of the review sites pushed their 7950 to 1.2 to 1.25 volts). was able to get Core to 1150mhz, memory 1700. At these settings, using the stock fan profile, running furmark to max GPU temp, Temp Max was 81 Celcius, fan speed running at 79%. It was loud and tinny sounding. Uningine ran at 78.6 FPS.

MSI - are you listening? please read this part - I then removed the heat sink and removed the old thermal paste, replaced the thermal paste with arctic silver 5. (this was really easy to do, only 4 screws removed). The temp max dropped from 81 celcius and 79% fan speed to 79 celcius and 75% fan speed, using furmark.Read more ›
 
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langoman

langoman

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I decided to change the Radeon HD7950 for a R290X 4GB RAM. Not much diference in the overall performance. For me, it was basicly a Memory upgrade... :-(

 
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