Gtx 670 or Radeon 7950?

The GTX 670 hands down. Get the non OC'ed one and save $20. You can OC it your self. Bump your 955 up to around 3.8-4.0ghz to minimize a bottle neck. Whats your PSU btw?

Power supply?

Yes your Power supply. A 650watt would be good. 600 at the lowest. You want some power head room for OC.

HD7950 is less expensive and you can get 3 games. HD7970 is closer in price and when OCed will beat the GTX670 and in some cases the GTX680. The HD79XX will also flatten the GTXs in compute power if you do anything that uses open GL.
-Bruce

750 watt.

It depends, they're both good cards. Get the 670 if you don't tinker much. Get the 7950 if you want to mess around and find a stable OC. Once it's OC'd its a great card. It also depends on what games you play. Some games are better with nVidia, some are better with AMD. The 7900s flatten the GTX in compute, the GTXs win the majority of gaming benchmarks. It's tit for tat and there's no clear cut winner. The 7950 gets you almost $100 in free games right now on newegg.

Moose I know why you recommend AMD, but you know the 670 is the better deal. For the simple fact that the 670 beats the 7970 in most cases is proof enough he should go with the 670.

Just spending an extra $20-40 bucks to get the OC version and better non reference cooling is just that much better to get -- in most cases better performance than a reference 680. Now that is money.

that about sums it up, get a gtx 670 IMO its the best single gpu buy around   sorry stick

id love to swap out my gtx 560 ti sli for one, or a 7970 for that matter bc of recent driver optimizations its a better competitor although the 7950 is probably a better buy if you go amd, overall my vote is still for the 670

Why not sell your 560's for one?

yeah im thinking about it but its always a situation of losing raw power for lower heat and more vram   its not like the 560tis cant handle 95% of what i throw at it at max but for games that utilize vram (crysis 2, bf3) im finding myself playing the game at similar settings that i would dial in on a single card so its like whats the point, on most other games the performance is phenominal and i dont mind low or no aa settings on bf3 and crysis....

anyways it would be nice to have a single gtx 670, but at the same time I would probably have to come out of pocket to essentially downgrade a bit in terms of raw power, meh its a cyclical debate in my mind

They're both sweet. I tuned up my brother's MSI Twin Frozr IV GTX670 today and put a decent OC on it. Can't remember the clocks but they beat my 6950CF-X in Unigine Heaven 3.0 by half a frame. I won in Metro2033 but about 9 frames. It's an awesome card for $400 (his was $430). On his OC I never touched the voltage, I had the core up to 1100 IIRC and memory came out to 6.2GHz total I'm pretty sure. Stock was 1045/6.0. The kicker was that in all this testing it never got over 58C!!!

side note:

I wonder if that wolfram dude is still running 5850 x fire!?

Understandable.

I actually have the same problem. I have a 5970 and for some odd reason -- haven't tried it in a while, but in Crysis 2 what I consider the 2nd act the frame rate has really dipped on me badly.

But in BF3 I run the game on Ultra no AA. Don't see the difference really in 1920x1080. I run that extremely well. Only on the biggest maps constantly being outside on 64 players servers will my FPS dips to around 40-50. But in most situations get 80-100 FPS. I did a benchmark on Kharg Island and got an avg of 109 FPS.

stick that sounds very impressive in terms of heat and oc-ability...
wow thats whatim talking about! well if its about as fast or faster then your 6950s then i assume I would see a similar differential between the 670 and my 560ti sli ((SLi) (Urban would get mad))..


what about the 7970...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

???

you think its worth the ~$45 AR more over a 670 like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

$420 vs $460 AR....

those are the two models id get if I had to pull the trigger right now....

when it comes down to it, im a value guy, i go with the best deal at the time (contingency theory)

It depends, for me the 7970 is worth the extra money because I understand how modestly clocked they are stock and how much better they perform with a little tweaking. This is the same reason I was considering a 7950 over the gtx670. It's really luck of the draw though, some of these cards will get a 20% OC, some will only get 5%. It's risky..

I actually ended up getting a 7870 and spending the rest of the money on important non-enthusiast-computer stuff. Like bills and food, lol.

Lol well thats no fun! jk.... well you talk about how much the amd cards can oc well what about the 670? seems like it too has a lot of oc potential!? so technically not an advantage then imo

the 7870 is a nice card and I would considering getting one and spending the rest on these speakers which are boss:

http://www.amazon.com/Edifier-S330D-Multimedia-Speaker-...

but if i were to do that id probably just sell 1 gtx 560ti and keep the other for my main gpu until I would upgrade around the holidays...

but honestly the temptation to get a 7970(50) or a 670 is pretty strong right now

in regards to the edifiers, they have optical in too! my bro has a pair and I am envious, ever since my cat chewed my last nice speaker set ive been stuck with crap 10 dollar speaker sound and honestly it really sucks!@

lol, yeah I don't need 6950CF-X I just need cool quiet and good framerates. Lets take this back to Idle Chat as to not hijack this dudes thread.

OP, gtx670 or 7950, just get one, they're both sweet! GTX670 is a little better though, for most people. Just not me!  

So leaning toward the 670. Now next, which brand?

Is this even a question?

GTX 670.

The ASUS's with the dual fans or the MSI Twin Frozr IV. Those are THE 670s to get.

this is what id get, kinda partial to asus, the cooler is boss:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

the price is also right and you can oc the shitttte out of it!

the only other one id consider is the msi lightning but its a little more pricey

Looking at the evga gtx 670. Clock boost 1084.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Single fan designs are louder and hotter.

Louder depends on the fan. Hotter for the GPU, cooler for the rest of the system.

GET THE 670

performance wise. The 670 simply outperforms the 7950 and they are the same price. They are based of pratically the same architiecture so one should OC just as good as the other. I would say OC the processor but most games these days perform well even on Dual-Core CPU's becuase if a game is well optimized, life BF3 is, you shouldn't see a significant improvement between CPU's because the game rely on the GPU.

Skyrim and Minecraft are perhaps the most popular, CPU intensive games out --- they rely heavily on CPU power.

So yes, go for the 670, Here are some benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/598?vs=550

LOOK SPECIFICALLY at the games at 1080p and under -- the 7950 has more VRAM which makes it perform better at multi-monitor and Resolutions over 1080p.

Just last week at Newegg, they had an xfx 7950 for $324, BEFORE rebate. With rebate $304! I agree that the 670 is a little faster in gaming, the 7950 is faster in compute and oc's better. If you can save almost $100, I would go for the 7950, if not, then the 670.

One fan spins at a higher RPM thus creating more noise. Dual fans move more air and spin a lower speeds, less noise, more cooling.

Some single fan setups are louder than other single fan setups, yes. All ASUS, XFX, Sapphire, MSI, top quality name brand dual fan designs cool more effectively and are more often then not much quieter than even their own single fan designs. Not really something to be argued as much as it's a fact. This is also why they sell their single fan models for less than their dual fans, they are better.

dont worry about the oc'ed models, get a model with a nice cooler like the asus and msi ones that were linked, these cards will oc way past a reference model with an "out-of-the-box-oc"

So the 670 MSI Twin Frozr IV Thermal Design is what im thinking of getting.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Excellent choice!

+1 great choice OP

Oh man...MSI Lightning GeForce GTX 680!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...