With the current prices/bundles, I've been looking at the Gigabyte 670, the Sapphire OC 7950, and the new Vapor-X 7950. All of these cards seem to be great cards for gaming at 1080p or 1200p and should provide me with several years of good gaming performance, but I still have some concerns.
The main concern to me is the rigidity of these cards; I can tell they all have bands running along the portion that's unsupported, but is that really enough over time given the weight of these? Second, I'd like something with low fan noise while gaming as well as a low temperature (would rather not have a card be a mini space heater). I know the Tahiti's consume a bit more power which generally means higher temps whereas the Keplers are a bit better in that regard, though I'm not sure if this really matters.
Build quality of the Gigabyte as well as the great quiet cooling it has are definite pluses for me, but I still have a few itching questions that sway me. I like the Gigabyte a lot, but I'm not sure if the 2GB of vram should concern me down the line with 1080p/1200p compared to the 3GB and better memory bandwidth on the 7950's. Also the price is about $63 dollars more than the two 7950's considering the shipping costs of those. I'd probably play Borderlands 2 or Sleeping Dogs so those are both great to me.
Between the two Sapphire 7950's I couldn't really see the big differences other than the Boost feature which doesn't appear to be very useful or efficient. From what I've read it overvolts the card for a short period and the card boosts for a few seconds then it undervolts and underclocks itself causing unnecessary power consumption for very little fps. The Vapor-X also seems to have the superior cooling design versus the 950 Mhz model.
I couldn't find any real information on the 950Mhz model as far as max temps/acoustics/power consumption just from reading user reviews. I'd definitely pull the trigger on one of these two cards if I knew they were about as well-cooled and quiet as the Gigabyte 670.
I'm not against either brands, I'm just looking for a quiet, well-cooled and decent power efficiency. I'd prefer objective advice about these three cards and those concerns rather than what brand is better since I'm merely looking for the best performance : dollar. If there's anybody with these cards, it'd be cool to hear the pros and cons of them. Thanks for reading this and advice is greatly appreciated in advance.
The main concern to me is the rigidity of these cards; I can tell they all have bands running along the portion that's unsupported, but is that really enough over time given the weight of these? Second, I'd like something with low fan noise while gaming as well as a low temperature (would rather not have a card be a mini space heater). I know the Tahiti's consume a bit more power which generally means higher temps whereas the Keplers are a bit better in that regard, though I'm not sure if this really matters.
Build quality of the Gigabyte as well as the great quiet cooling it has are definite pluses for me, but I still have a few itching questions that sway me. I like the Gigabyte a lot, but I'm not sure if the 2GB of vram should concern me down the line with 1080p/1200p compared to the 3GB and better memory bandwidth on the 7950's. Also the price is about $63 dollars more than the two 7950's considering the shipping costs of those. I'd probably play Borderlands 2 or Sleeping Dogs so those are both great to me.
Between the two Sapphire 7950's I couldn't really see the big differences other than the Boost feature which doesn't appear to be very useful or efficient. From what I've read it overvolts the card for a short period and the card boosts for a few seconds then it undervolts and underclocks itself causing unnecessary power consumption for very little fps. The Vapor-X also seems to have the superior cooling design versus the 950 Mhz model.
I couldn't find any real information on the 950Mhz model as far as max temps/acoustics/power consumption just from reading user reviews. I'd definitely pull the trigger on one of these two cards if I knew they were about as well-cooled and quiet as the Gigabyte 670.
I'm not against either brands, I'm just looking for a quiet, well-cooled and decent power efficiency. I'd prefer objective advice about these three cards and those concerns rather than what brand is better since I'm merely looking for the best performance : dollar. If there's anybody with these cards, it'd be cool to hear the pros and cons of them. Thanks for reading this and advice is greatly appreciated in advance.