HD 7850

[kuttaman]

I am buying from Sapphire for about 190, this is the stock settings 860 MHz Clock, 4800 MHz Memory its a 2GB

 

[sam_p_lay]

Are you talking $190 US? I'd honestly steer well clear. For one thing, nVidia hardware gives a far smoother, more consistent framerate delivery, whereas AMD is using really up/down performance to average out to the same frames/second but without the same smoothness/responsiveness.

http://techreport.com/review/23981/radeon-hd-7950-vs-geforce-gtx-660-ti-revisited/3

It's well worth reading the article to the end. It's a new way of testing performance, to more accurately represent the 'smoothness' delivered by a card. Frames/second is a crude, oversimplified measure of performance that doesn't tell the whole story. We'll be seeing a lot more frame latency benchmarking moving forward.

The AMD fanboys were in uproar (over 200 comments on the article) about how testing on Windows 8 was to blame. So they re-ran the tests on Windows 7:

http://techreport.com/review/24022/does-the-radeon-hd-7950-stumble-in-windows-8/2 (first page is useful to understand the test methodology, benches start on page 2)

The conclusion:
"A moral victory in the borderline-meaningless FPS sweeps doesn't overcome the fact that the Radeon HD 7950 has a persistent problem with high-latency frames across a range of test scenarios based on the latest games... If you just want bragging rights, by all means, choose the Radeon HD 7950. If you're looking for the friction-free fluidity that only comes from consistently quick frame delivery, though, our recommendation remains the GeForce GTX 660 Ti."

I know it's not the exact model you're looking at, but it's the same architecture/series so results are still applicable.

The other thing is Sapphire. Even if you're really determined to get a Radeon, don't get Sapphire. I've owned three, and all three died within 6 months after warranty expired. If you upgrade every two years anyway then I guess it doesn't matter, but I don't like being forced into buying a new card personally just because my Sapphire is built to die after a certain amount of use.

 

[kuttaman]

no its CAD, I am in Canada, hmm Ill shop around. I wanted a Geforece card too, but the only thing that matches with the 7850 atleast on paper is the 660 ti which is unfortunaltey 50 dollars more expensive.

 

[sam_p_lay]

I think maybe you've mistaken GTX660 and GTX660 Ti. The Ti model competes with the 7950 so that's why it costs more. What you want is the non-Ti model - it's easily superior to the 7850 and barely any more expensive (at least where I am). The non-Ti GTX660 is only a tiny bit (around 10%) behind the Ti model anyway - so smarter purchase when you're not even gonna notice that 10%.