7870 vs 7950

[codydragon1]

Hello all. I have a quick question, which Graphics card should I buy? This 7870: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150606 Or this 7950 for an extra $10: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127667
Monitor Resolution is 1920x1080.

CPU 3570k

8GB RAM

Thanks.

 

[mocchan]

http://www.hwcompare.com/12190/radeon-hd-7870-vs-radeon-hd-7950-3gb/

For a $10 difference, there's no doubt in my mind, HD7950.

 

[Dupontrocks11]

Hello all. I have a quick question, which Graphics card should I buy? This 7870: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150606 Or this 7950 for an extra $10: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127667
Monitor Resolution is 1920x1080.

CPU 3570k

8GB RAM

Thanks.

For a whopping $10 I would say the 7950. The 7870 has very similar performance to the 7950 but an extra 10 bucks for another gig of vram? That's a deal!

 

[Sakkura]

The 7870 is pretty close to the 7950, but it's not 10 dollars-close. I'd pick the 7950 too.

Of course, with a single 1080p monitor a cheaper 7850 might actually be sufficient.

 

[codydragon1]

Ok guys, thanks for the responses, but I have another concern, and that is the Warranty/ RMA service. I know that the XFX 7870 has lifetime warranty and from what I hear, they also have good RMA service, but what about the MSI 7950? Does MSI have good RMA service/Warranty's?

 

[mocchan]

I've never had any issues with MSI products or warranties in general I don't think you should be too concerned.

XFX on the other hand...they're great too, but I've never had any good experiences with them.

 

[motorneuron]

The 7950 has 50% more memory and bandwidth, and 40% more texture units and or 75% more shaders and texture units. Also, its core clock (880 MHz for your twin frozr) leaves way more headroom for overclocking than does the 7870's (1050 MHz on that XFX). Especially once you consider all that performance left on the table with the 7950's conservative clock (and remember, the 7970, which is essentially a non-gimped 7950, now has a version marketed at 1 GHz), the 7950 is a no-brainer. I mean, really. I would be offended if you got the 7870.

As for brand--this is a pretty thin reason to pick one card over another, and 3 years is totally acceptable. I like the lifetime warranty on XFX cards too, but are you realistically going to be using this thing for 3 years+? And if so, would you be that upset if it failed outside the warranty period? Don't give yourself at least three years of inferior video performance based on fear!

Sorry, here's an edit to add benchmarks, but note that these are at stock clocks, and both your cards are factory OCed: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=550

However, with all its OC headroom and superior silicon (as well as memory), you'll see a bigger performance gain over the 7870 on (1) newer games and (2) higher-resolution gaming. You can realistically expect an OCed 7950 to perform much more like a 7970: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=508 You can see the bigger performance gap at higher resolutions there, as well as with more demanding AA settings; that's the memory.

 

[rdc85]

I'm also go with 7950, the 7870 is great card but priced to high....

(this what we got by lack of competition... >.<)

 

[unksol]

7950 hands down lots of good reason above. Both are custom cards. But for 10 bucks you get better performance AND 3 free games? Heck if you don't want the games sell em to a friend for a few bucks

 

[codydragon1]

Ok then, I guess Ima go get a 7950. Thanks for your help guys.