Need Advice on GTX 660 Ti vs GTX 670 vs Radeon 7850/7950

BlizzardGamer

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Jul 8, 2012
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Hello, and welcome.
Im asking help for upgrading graphic card. I hope you take little time with this one.

Backround story:
I upgraded my old system to this:
p8z77-v pro, i7 2600k, 2x 4Gb Corsair Vengance + Intel 330 SSD. (~700 euros)
Old case, old HDDs in use too, system on the SSD, old Graphics 5770HD 1GB still on use.

After being disappointed by the "oh so great" Lucid Virtu technology, that actually reduces graphical quality of the game rather than boost the game performance in a "SLI" way like I got tought it would, I have come to conclusion that its better to have Lucid Virtu MVP off, and buy new graphic card.
I should have followed the old word of advice thats very true: If its too good to be true, then probably its marketing scam set up by the global market economy in hopes to get your money, and then laugh all the way to the bank to withdrawn it. Reducing graphical quality obviosly increases the performance, but thats not what I want :non: . Now thats said, we can move on.

Im planin to get GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670 or alternative Radeon. Yes I have Radeon right now, and Radeon fanboys, this is your chance to get my head turned to buy Radeon card, possibly 7850 or 7870 if really good graphics and somehow better or advanced quality in graphical sense is there in difference on the hardware when compared to Nvidia alternatives..

I have read Toms Hardware reviews and come to conclusion that these card are excellent choice of... of cards.

Zotac GeForce GTX 670 AMP!
Pricy card, but best 670 out there, however its less pricy than 680, but still quite salty price for my taste, unless someone has excellent points why this specific card should be bought instead of just "normal" Asus GTX670-DC2T-2GD5. And this gets us to...

Asus GTX670-DC2T-2GD5
Excellent silent card with second most best factory overclock. I read the review of all 670 and Im wondering why this card didnt make it to the Recommended buy tittle, and instead it was given to GeForce GTX 670: Gigabyte N670OC-2GD.

Gigabyte N670OC-2GD
Toms Hardware Recommended buy 2012. However, the review didnt open to me how come this card got the "Recommended buy" tittle, its 20€ less in price than DirectCU II, doesnt do that well in the benchmarks either and has noisy fans, no wonder since there is 3 of them. I really dont see the point for the tittle here.

Radeon HD 7950 & Other Radeon cards
Radeon has promised to reduce the prices. But when do they actually come down, and if they do, is it smart to buy card that still bottlenecks the system and causes grey hairs, until upgraded to better one. Also Radeon has very nice idle power consumption but Im not sure how its nvidia has it going on the modern cards.

Radeon HD 7850
Its not really an option, why? Well guess how this thing really works out since from benchmarks you can see clearly that it performs 20-30 FPS less than the other some expensive counterparts. However, Im not going to game crysis 2 with it and it makes me wonder if the benchmark really matters that much, or can it be said that 7850 wouldnt do so well in other games too.

Oh and about the overclocking, Im going with slim overclock, nothing too high. Not touching the MSI overburner or what ever that software is. And also not trying to kill my GPU with furmark, dont see the point. I think better "real world" tests are long gaming session on Battlefield 3 in ultra settings on 1920x1080 resolution on huge 48 or 64 maps. Raise the clocks just 10%, then if it crashes, I can always reduce the clocks little. Ussually GPU overclocks like boss on graphic card but memory usually runs already somewhere close to the max on stock coolers, there is differences on memorys too tho.

Questions are:
Is Zotac 670 AMP! realy worth the extra cost?
Why Gigabyte's 670 card got the Recommended buy tittle instead of giving it to DirectCU II?
How power efficient the Nvidia cards on idle load, and is there any Radeon cards that would give awesome performance but still be worth to buy, instead of just trowing extra 50-100 in and buying nvidia card with greater performance.
What card would you recommend?

-BlizzardGamer

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Reviews read:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-6.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-test-review,3217.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7950-review-benchmark,3207.html
 

BlizzardGamer

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Jul 8, 2012
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You are not allowed to edit this message!
...Oh well, also Id add to questions this.
That is 660 Ti very small price difference to 670 really something encouraging that I would somehow go nuts and get 660 Ti instead of investing on little and get 670 instead.. Why 660 Ti is so expensive but yet so close to the price range of 670. Its not like people would go all of sudden "Yeah, Im not going to buy the better card thats little expensive-er than the 660 Ti." Makes me chuckle.
 

Kamen_BG

Distinguished
Hi.

Im going to try to answer your questions one by one.
1st question : HELL NO
2nd :the DirectCU cards are very very quiet.
3rd : Nvidia cards from the 6xx generation use less power than their AMD counterparts at load but use more at idle.And lastly AMD is more than competitive at every price point.If you're not going to play on a 3D screen AMD cards are usually the the better choice (for the price point).

For example
HD 7970 GHZ Edition > GTX 680
HD 7970 > GTX 670
HD 7950 > GTX 660 Ti
HD 7870 > GTX 570 / GTX 560 Ti 448
HD 7850 > GTX 560 Ti

And so on.

In my opinion if you can afforda GTX 670 you should buy a HD 7970.
 
The 660 Ti's and 670's are coming with a free copy of Borderlands 2 to help with the value proposition. They are also cheaper than they have ever been. By the way, Blizzard games firmly favor Nvidia cards.

The MSI GTX 670 Power Edition/OC for $400 (vs. the Zotac AMP! at $450) with a free game is very tempting. Clocked at 1016 mhz out of the box, it comes already factory overclocked, yet also features Turbo Boost auto-overclocking so you don't have to do anything yourself. As fast as a GTX 680.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127685
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_670_Power_Edition/28.html
 
The numbers say it all.....

At 1920 x 1200/1080 nVidia rules the roost
At 2560 x 1600, I'd look carefully as AMD usually has an edge here

I have read Toms Hardware reviews and come to conclusion that these card are excellent choice of... of cards.

Widen ya horizons...... When the reviews contain a half dozen caveats as to why they did this and did that and why they did this different, I go looking elsewhere. Guru3D, TechPowerUp and my new favorite Hardware.Info give a much broader spectrum of tests.

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3026/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review---3-way-sli-included


Here's Guru3D's results:

Guru3D uses the following games in their test suite: Hard Reset, COD-MW2, Far Cry 2, ANNO 1404, Metro 2033, ANNO 2070, BFBC2, BF3, Crysis 2, AvP, Lost Planet 2. Total fps (summing fps in each game @ 1920 x 1200) for the various options in parenthesis are tabulated below along with their cost in dollars per frame:

In "bang for the buck" ranking

MSI PE 660 Ti costs $300 and gets 851 fps at a cost of $0.35 per frame
670 DCII Cu TOP costs $420 and gets 999 fps at a cost of $0.42 per frame
GTX 670 costs $400 and gets 917 fps at a cost of $0.44 per frame
7970 DCII Cu costs $415 and gets 924 fps at a cost of $0.45 per frame
680 DCII Cu TOP costs $520 and gets1077 fps at a cost of $0.48 per frame
7970 costs $420 and gets 872 fps at a cost of $0.48 per frame
7970 Ghz costs $470 and gets 952 fps at a cost of $0.49 per frame
GTX 680 costs $500 and gets 989 fps at a cost of $0.51 per frame

At tech powerup.......they used Alan Wake, AvP, Batman Arkham City, BF3, BattleForge, COD4, Civilization 5, Crysis. Crysis 2, Dirt 3, Dragon Age II, Hard Reset, Metro 2033, Stalker CoP, Starcraft 2, Shogun 2, Skyrim, WoW, Diablo II, Max Payne 3, Sniper Elite V2

660 Ti costs $300 and gets1097.5 fps at a cost of $0.27 per frame
660 Ti costs $310 and gets1156.4 fps at a cost of $0.27 per frame
7970 DCII Cu costs $415 and gets1303.3 fps at a cost of $0.32 per frame
670 DCII Cu TOP costs $420 and gets1265.3 fps at a cost of $0.33 per frame
GTX 670 costs $400 and gets1157.3 fps at a cost of $0.35 per frame
7970 costs $420 and gets 1191.8 fps at a cost of $0.35 per frame

As far as which card is best, to my mind the Asus 670and MSI PE 660 Ti are THE cards to own right now. The Asus 670 DCII doesn't have the highest factory OC but it does have the highest stable OC (1280 boost clock) once you get done playing with it.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-geforce-gtx-670-directcu-ii-top-review/23

Asus 670 TOP - 10.0 rating
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/33.html

Gigabyte Windforce SC 670 - 9.8 rating
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GeForce_GTX_670_Windforce/33.html

MSI Twin Frozr IV 670 - 9.7 rating
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_670_Power_Edition/33.html

Palit Jetsteram 670 - 97 rating
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_670_Jet_Stream/33.html

Zotac AMP 670 - 9.6 rating
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_670_Amp_Edition/33.html

With the 660 Ti, the MSI one beat the Asus

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_660_Ti_Power_Edition/33.html

That's the reviewers..... if ya wanna see what the buying public is getting, look here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/368533-33-people-buying#t2773891



 

BlizzardGamer

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Jul 8, 2012
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Hey guys, how is it going, Blizzardgamer here.

So I looked at how techpowerup.com listed
the 670 DirectCU II & MSI GTX 670 PE Twin Frozr IV cards, and I was amayzed how DirectCU II got perfect 10 as score. Also hardware.info says that GTX 670 has 60 fps on 1920x1080 on BF3 ultra settings, and that is quite impressive indeed. However Im not going to play everything on ultra to reduce fps drops, since I take the 60 is average fps on those tests. Guru3d.com article on DirectCU II TOP is also very impressive, and makes me actually turn in the favor of DirectCU II TOP. It seems this card is absolutely amazing and totally worth the buck.
 

Scoutdrago3

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Sep 27, 2013
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OK, if you are looking for performance and you have 280 dollars just get the 7950, especially for a multi-screen setup. Now if you are looking for good prices get the GTX 660 TI. But the difference between the cards is pretty bad on most games. In games like Crisis, The 7950 beats the 660 TI by 15 FPS. And you really shouldn't listen to those NVidia fan boys that say that Phys X is the "future of gaming". That's a lie. Only 6 or 7 games have PhysX compatibility and anyway it makes almost no difference. Also a lot of YouTubers and threads are saying that AMD is going to lead the Next-Gen of gaming