Upgrade GTX 660 vs 7850/7870

ASUS HD7870-DC2-2GD5 Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
Free sleeping dogs game w/ purchase, limited offer http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... $249.99

$229.99 after $20.00 rebate(s)

ASUS GTX660-DC2O-2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card $239.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Benchmarks favour the HD7870 slightly. It's back and forth with several games, but with several noticeable larger wins on the HD7870 side (due to the memory bandwidth bottleneck on the 660).

You really can't go "wrong" with either card but I'd recommend the HD7870. With a free game that also completely changes the value as well.

So get the mentioned Asus, or this card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

noticeable wins? proof please (and 1 -3 fps is not a win but a TIE)







don't see any "memory bottleneck" any where . . .

bottom line it depends on what games the OP is playing to find the better value.

+1

and the HD7870 OC better than the 660

This might help a little

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/08/27/nvidia_geforc...

I agree man and those is some good charts scores was a bit closer then i thought..Even tho the 7950/7970 has better memory bandwidth i think it does depend on what games you play and ive seen different cards favor different games so its really a no lose situation and it comes down to what games "you" play and what you want out of your games

The most intense games I have are The Witcher 2 and GuildWars2

The 660 (non ti) would do you just fine

Benchmark results:

It seems the HD7850 and GTX660 are really back and forth. You can find some reviews with 10 games that favor the HD7850, but then find a different review with different games that favor the GTX660.

So I say consider them equal for performance and look at OTHER factors.

I lean towards NVidia these days by a small margin due to these reasons:
1) adaptive VSYNC
2) PhysX
3) TXAA (Unreal 4 engine and others coming)
4) better driver support (IMO, don't flame me. did a lot of reading on this)

When I bought my HD5870 I went AMD solely because NVidia's only competing products ran HOT and LOUD. Unless there's VALUE to be had, I can't actually think of one solid reason to go with an AMD card.

I vote GTX 660. I was in the same boat as you and really considered picking up a 7870. The performance is so close to each other it really is a push. Having to roll back drivers just to achieve stability with my now backup hd6770 is what really made the decision for me.

Good Luck

take a look at metro. Some other games would be crysis 1. You happen to link a heavily OC'ed 660 but if you look the stock 660 is far less powerful. The 7870 is almost always more powerful.

the 7850 is faster than the reference 660 and the 7870 is much faster.


no 660 but you can see that the 7870's performance is pretty good.

And this shows that the 660 660 Ti 7950 and 7970 are doing good

a .8 fps more is a win, really?!? sad. didn't find a cyrsis1 bench in the review and it is the one of more latest reviews for it uses the latest drivers. clearly you need to look at the benches again because the only bench that the 78070 is more "powerful" is D3 . . and you missed SC2 where a stock 660 even beats a stock 7970.

don't take my post out of context; which was a reply to the claim that a 7870 "noticeably wins" over a 660 in all games. less than 5% FPS is not a noticeable win for either card. so to say the 7870 is better would not be correct with that criteria, but spin it any way you want.

you do know there is a compilation of the benchmarks at the end of the review right? Rather than you go and pick the ones that work for you.



you can see that the 7870 is faster than the stock 660 and it took the asus overclocked version to match its performance. Considering the 660 costs more than the stock clocked 7870s I don't see your point.

are you serous?
you really think i or any intelligent reader is going to fall for that spin your trying to put on this?

that is a horrible benchmark.

why?

because if card A beats card B in four games by 8% but card B beats A in one game by 10% then it would appear that card B is better by 2% and that would be an erroneous conclusion esp. if the user isn't playing the fifth game but does play the other four.

are you going for troll status on this thread?

edit: and prices for the 660 are generally less than a 7870 . .
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=114,82&sort...

SOME BUNDLES to compare (borderlands 2 is $60, Sleeping Dogs is $50)

GTX660Ti + Borderlands 2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

HD7850 + sleeping dogs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

HD7950 + sleeping dogs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

*The HD7950 seems a good value if you want the game bundled. Sapphire Tech is known for quality cards. You can't go wrong with any of these cards IMO.

The bundle is $310, so the card itself is $260 (after $50 game). I think it would be hard to beat the value of the card at this price.

THOUGHTS?

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=1...

I believe this is the HD7950 I reference above.

*It's important to note that this card appears to have an identical feature to the NVIDIA GPU BOOST! It's called "Powertune Dynamic Boost".

Why is this important?

The card basically sets a maximum thermal load it can't go over. This is good because:
a) can BOOST performance slightly if thermal limit isn't maxed out

b) card can't overheat and DIE like previous cards

Previous go GPU BOOST or this new AMD equivalent (only on some of the new HD7000 series) they had to set a specific clock frequency for the GPU and if the room was hot and/or a game or benchmark utility (FURMARK) was too demanding you could actually KILL YOUR CARD.

Hope that made sense.

The important thing is this feature is a GOOD THING.

Everytime theres card vs card yall go into a debate battle which confuses people.. BOTH cards is good

+1 the problem though is the person buying wants to know which is better which that depends on all sorts of stuff that's why the debates and sometimes it's just because fanboy non sense.

Actually, what he posted is the most accurate way to look at the two cards. He even used the exact same site and comparisons from the same article. So if anyone is trying to put a spin on something its you. The OP asked which card is better, he didn't specify which games he wants to play, etc. The chart shows overall percentages from all the games tested.

It also shows that the 660 only beats a stock 7870 if it is OC'd. Get an OC'd 7870 in the mix, which overclocks better than a 660, and the difference will be even greater.

TLDR: You can't go wrong with either card, but the 7870 will offer more performance and longevity due to the non crippled memory bandwidth.

My honest opinion memory bandwidth hasnt been a prob for me and alot of people has been going off of batman arkham city benchmark and im not to crazy on how that game was optimized either but for the most part im able to play with good frames rates. I had a choice between the 7950 and 660 Ti and i went with the 660 and yea yall could say it has ALOT more bandwidth but from what ive seen its only been a few frames difference in alot of games and i play at 1080p so im good

no again that is a horrible measurement. along with what i said before; what is the percentage in relation to? 25 fps, 40 fps, 60 fps pr 100 fps?
8% difference of 25 is 2 fps . .wow, yeah that would be huge in what i am going to spend my hard earned money on. (if you didn't get it that was sarcasm)

bottom line is stock for stock both cards are equal because of trading blows depending on the game. no spin there.

anything else (overclocking, memory bandwidth) is putting a spin on it; because just as you pointed out that at that time no one mentioned any game; neither was any reference made to a particular manufacturer or model.

Wait man 2 frames..YOO im getting that card bro!!! lol

And the 660 is only 9% faster than the 7850, might well say the 660 is equal to the 7850 then amirite?

If your picking your card only based on games here this might help click on it to enlarge

Uploaded with ImageShack.us Source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/gefor... and see if more than half the games you play appear on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardwar... hope that helps like i said can't go wrong either way imo.

in metro and D3 i wouldn't mind having a 7850 compared to a 660 so in those two instances you are right.

Good stuff on the chart bro

Thanks i can't take all the credit though it's from a thread i made asking for everybody to help me figure out which games favored which hardware found here http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/122827-25-list-game...