7970 Question

[iyzik]

Hi so I am upgrading my crossfire 6970s to a single 7970, so I am curious which one will give me the closest performance to CFX 6970s (in other words best 'OCability'). My budget is about 480.

I've heard the HIS IceQ is a good one and the cooling on that looks pretty nice for some OCing..

 

[xtreme5]

mostl likely the GTX 680 would be great choice instead od those oldies.

 

[iyzik]

I was looking at some of those also, I could probably get one but idk the 7970 has much better overall bandwidth and 384-bit 3gb memory (when i run skyrim on current rig it takes 2.6gb vram)....

 

[iyzik]

how much of fps increase is there from a 7970 to a gtx680?

 

[cybersheep]

the 680 beats the 7970 in most benchmarks on one monitor
also nvidia is releases drivers shortly to fix some bugs which apparently will increase performance by 18%!

 

[cybersheep]

how much of fps increase is there from a 7970 to a gtx680?

its minimal but its there.....the gap will increases when the new drivers come out

 

[Chairman Ray]

Until they drop the price of the 7970 another $50 or so, it will give less performance for the price than the 670 or the 680. With your budget, you might be able to squeeze in a cheaper gtx 680, or opt for a 670, which is very close to the performance of a 680.

 

[storm79]

Hi so I am upgrading my crossfire 6970s to a single 7970, so I am curious which one will give me the closest performance to CFX 6970s (in other words best 'OCability'). My budget is about 480.

I've heard the HIS IceQ is a good one and the cooling on that looks pretty nice for some OCing..

MSI HD 7970 Lightining is the best choise!! It also beats the GTX680!! Awesome card!!!

 

[iyzik]

hmm the problem is gtx680 is never in stock and is usually a bit over 500$, but i am definitely planning on OCing the 7970, will that bring it on par with a 680?

 

[iyzik]

its minimal but its there.....the gap will increases when the new drivers come out

but then wont the gap be closed again with 7970s new drivers??

 

[cybersheep]

but then wont the gap be closed again with 7970s new drivers??

the nvidia drivers were actually bugged resulting in about 18% loss in performance or so iv heard, there new beta drivers are out which seem to fix the bug
the 7970 will most likely not get better

 

[iyzik]

I think I will get an MSI Lightning as @storm79 mentioned becuase I really need the extra vram and gtx680s 2gb is just not enough. I will OC it past the performance of a gtx680 and i did hear that amd is releasing new drivers for 7970 soon that also will increase perf (not sure if true)

 

[doron]

The 18% increase sounds great, it is however for some specific titles and not across the board as cybersheep suggests.

IMO you should stay with your current config longer as spending 400+ dollars for 20-30 percent increase in performance (best case) doesn't justify getting a new gpu, especially when your cards get you over 60 fps in most scenarios.

 

[redeemer]

Wait for the new 7970 revision the XT, lower volts higher clock. The 7970 is a better all round card than the GTX 680, I have both setups SLI 680 and Xfire 7970

 

[cybersheep]

if your overclocking i would go 7970 otherwise 680 is better out of the box

 

[jimmysmitty]

MSI HD 7970 Lightining is the best choise!! It also beats the GTX680!! Awesome card!!!

That card is way too big and I have had multiple MSI GPUs die by either a bad fan or just stop working.

I say wait to see about Sapphires Vapor-X or Toxic (the Vapor-X is supposed to have 6GB of VRAM) as those are normally the top of the line AMD GPUs.

 

[aznplayer213]

Hi so I am upgrading my crossfire 6970s to a single 7970, so I am curious which one will give me the closest performance to CFX 6970s (in other words best 'OCability'). My budget is about 480.

I've heard the HIS IceQ is a good one and the cooling on that looks pretty nice for some OCing..

are you having bad micro stuttering? 2 6970s are still good but generally most people stay away from multi-card setup because of micro stuttering.

 

[lemlo]

I say keep your 6970s and wait for next gen.

 

[17seconds]

The 680 will allow you to enable Ambient Occlusion and Transparency Supersampling in Skyrim, which the 7970 lacks.
http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide?sf2686171=1/#19

Quote:
"NVIDIA has an option to turn on Super-Sampling at 2X, 4X, and 8X which improves aliasing on all transparent objects like fences and vegetation. AMD also offers a version of this without the ability to select the level of SSAA, called Adaptive SSAA. When we attempted to turn on Adaptive SSAA on the AMD video cards we experience choppy performance which was unplayable. It doesn't quite make sense to us, since the video cards have a large framebuffer of 3GB and high memory bandwidth. For whatever reason, Adaptive SSAA is not playable on the AMD video cards in this game. However, Transparency Supersampling on the NVIDIA GTX 580 is playable. At 4X TR SSAA performance was slower than the AMD cards, but well within what's playable for this game."
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/20/msi_r7970_lightning_video_card_review/6



And if that's not enough, even a top of the line factory overclocked MSI 7970 Lightning can't beat a stock GTX 680 in Skyrim.

 

[ilysaml]

I say keep your 6970s and wait for next gen.

+1
Sounds like a very superb advice from an apprentice.

 

[iyzik]

Those benches only show a few fps diff between stock 7970 and stock 680 which is not bad, plus if i OC it will likely beat even a OC 680 from what I hear plus i dont really need that extra stuff in skyrim i already have over 100 hrs and dont play it much anymore. mostly bf3, metro2033, cod4 (could play that on ultra on integrated lol), and crysis 2. i sold both 6970s for 500$ and i have a little extra and ive probably decided on a 7970, lightning is a bit to expensive w/ tax and shipping so i am thinking that gigabyte with triple fans....?

 

[ilysaml]

Those benches only show a few fps diff between stock 7970 and stock 680 which is not bad, plus if i OC it will likely beat even a OC 680 from what I hear plus i dont really need that extra stuff in skyrim i already have over 100 hrs and dont play it much anymore. mostly bf3, metro2033, cod4 (could play that on ultra on integrated lol), and crysis 2. i sold both 6970s for 500$ and i have a little extra and ive probably decided on a 7970, lightning is a bit to expensive w/ tax and shipping so i am thinking that gigabyte with triple fans....?

You shouldn't have sold the HD 6970s, cause technically 2 HD 6970s in CF are better than a single HD 7970, in terms of FPS you won't feel that you made an upgrade unless you had negative scaling with the 2 HD 6970s.

HD 7970 is about 7-8% slower than GTX 680 (stock vs stock speeds) when the HD 7970 is clocked @ 1100 MHz more and it's easy to do, the game becomes the only determinant whether it favors AMD or nVidia cards.

The Gigabyte is pretty good one and costs less, also it overclocks nearly to the Lightening levels, as far as I saw, the Lightening hit max 1210 MHz and the Gigabyte hit 1200 MHz.

 

[iyzik]

You shouldn't have sold the HD 6970s, cause technically 2 HD 6970s in CF are better than a single HD 7970, in terms of FPS you won't feel that you made an upgrade unless you had negative scaling with the 2 HD 6970s.

HD 7970 is about 7-8% slower than GTX 680 (stock vs stock speeds) when the HD 7970 is clocked @ 1100 MHz more and it's easy to do, the game becomes the only determinant whether it favors AMD or nVidia cards.

The Gigabyte is pretty good one and costs less, also it overclocks nearly to the Lightening levels, as far as I saw, the Lightening hit max 1210 MHz and the Gigabyte hit 1200 MHz.

Yes I completely agree with you saying I shouldn't have sold them, the problem was I WAS getting negative scaling in a couple games and real bad microstutter, screen tearing (when there was no v-sync to enable) and overheating problems. I understand this is not an upgrade it was more just to get rid of all the annoying issues of crossfire. And considering one 6970 could run almost any game maxed, I'm sure the 7970 will be awesome.

I ended up choosing the HIS IceQ X2 one so thanks for all the help guys.

 

[iyzik]

Best answer selected by iyzik.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey