Gtx 660ti vs amd 7950

[computernoob29]

i cant decide between getting a gtx 660ti a amd 7950 or waiting till i have enough money and getting a gtx 670.
i will mostly be playing bf3, borderlands 2, skyrim, minecraft,tf2,cs:go, maybe assaqsins creed 3.

 

[eric4277]

I guarantee you everyone is going to recommend the 7950. Why? IDK. The general consensus seems to be that 7950 > 660 ti & sometimes 670. Which I have yet to see proof. Everywhere I have looked the 660 ti destroys the 7950 in bf3. Only time it will lose is if you got past AAx8, which doesnt make much sense to go past x4. I say 660 ti or wait for 670. I am currently also trying to pick between 660 ti and 670. I have until the end of the month to choose. I hope the price will drop on either one by then but it probably wont.

Some people will argue that the 7950 OC's better. In truth they both OC very well. I don't trust many benchmarks anymore. There are never consistent results and some people might be getting paid to misrepresent results. I like to watch youtube videos of people playing to judge performance against the benchmarks. From what I have seen, the 7950 struggles to maintain ~50 fps and the 660 ti does a good job of staying around ~60 in bf3

 

[unclejehmimah]

Get the 7950 you'll make many bitcoins. The benchmarks prove it yo. Plus it's actually better, just look at the toms GPU charts foo.

 

[mubin]

If you can wait than get the Gtx670. its best price/performance card for $400. If you cant wait then get the 7950.

 

[eric4277]

I have seen the 7970 get beat by the 670 and sometimes the 660 ti in BF3.

 

[eric4277]

There is a reason why AMD has price dropped their cards and Nvidia has yet to respond. There is also a reason why the 8850 and 8870 were compared to Nvidia's gtx 670 and not their own cards.

 

[luciferano]

Save your money and get a GTX 670. The 660ti is basically the GPU equivalent of a poo smear at $300. It's $50 overpriced for having such risky issues with minimum framerates due to the crippled memory bus.

The 670 will be a lot better than the 7950 in the games you mention - you will get better PhysX in borderlands 2, a better experience in BF3, and you can enable SSAO in Skyrim.

That's debatable. AMD has greater overclocking headroom on the good models (some of the good 7950s have more average headroom than the GTX 670 TOP, the best, albeit discontinued, GTX 670 that I'm aware of) that can let you use other settings, higher MSAA efficiency, and can use OpenCL/Direct Compute features such as some advanced lighting features that Nvidia can't do with playable performance on the GTX 600 cards. PhysX is really only an advantage in two modern games, Borderlands 2 and Batman:AC, and eve nthen, AMD ahs their own advantages that can counteract PhysX (such as the huge MSAA advantage that you mentioned).

 

[luciferano]

There is a reason why AMD has price dropped their cards and Nvidia has yet to respond. There is also a reason why the 8850 and 8870 were compared to Nvidia's gtx 670 and not their own cards.

Yes, the reason is that AMD needs to make more money. They're in debt last I checked, so they need to be more aggressive. Nvidia just doesn't give a crap about lowering prices until they absolutely need to, they just release new cards that make some of their more expensive cards largely irrelevant (GTX 670 to the GTX 680 and GTX 660 to the GTX 660 Ti).

 

[DarkSable]

I love the fact that so many AMD fanboys are accusing everyone who isn't of being an Nvidia fanboy. Does it really matter? People have preferred brands, live with it. Yours is AMD.

The 7970 is actually the better price/performance around $400, just not for the specific game combo he mentioned.

Mmm, Tom's disagrees with you. OP, save up your money - the 670 is an extremely beastly card that overclocks very well. My friend and I built new rigs at the same time; everything the same except for the video card. (And minor various things that don't affect performance.)

I've got a 670, and he has a 7950. When we're playing at 1920x1080, my rig wrecks his - I'm getting 10-15 more fps than him on ultra. We did an experiment once, though - combining monitors to run with three monitors at once. When we did that, his rig took the advantage, by far.

End result? Go with a 670, as it will happily max out any modern game at 1080p without blinking. If you're playing at stupid high resolutions, go Radeon.

 

[eric4277]

And tomshardware is the one and only official source of all things tech right? go check other websites and live gameplays on youtube and see how the 660 ti annihilates the 7950. I have seen some results from Tom's that dont add up. Also, IIRC Tom's has multiple sites that handle benchmarks. That can cause some conflicting results as well.

When you are already behind you will need a huge OC.

Also, MSI power editions and ASUS tops have OC'd to ~1400mhz

 

[luciferano]

And tomshardware is the official source of all things tech right? go check other websites and live gameplays on youtube and see how the 660 ti annihilates the 7950.

When you are already behind you will need a huge OC.

Also, MSI power editions and ASUS tops have OC'd to ~1400mhz

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/08/23/galaxy_gtx_660_ti_gc_oc_vs_670_hd_7950/1

Most 660 Ti reviews have AMD cards using old drivers (some of them even had AMD on the December 2011 driver) and also compared cherrypicked and/or overclocked 660 Tis to stock 7950s. This one did a good overclock on all tested cards such as the GTX 660 Ti 3GB from Galaxy (possibly the best 660 Ti), the GTX 670 TOP from asus, and a Radeon 7950 XFX Black Edition with proper drivers for all cards. Notice how the 7950 won against even the 670. My only issue with this review is that I think that the 670's memory wasn't clocked as high as it could have been, but oh well.

 

[luciferano]

I love the fact that so many AMD fanboys are accusing everyone who isn't of being an Nvidia fanboy. Does it really matter? People have preferred brands, live with it. Yours is AMD.




Mmm, Tom's disagrees with you. OP, save up your money - the 670 is an extremely beastly card that overclocks very well. My friend and I built new rigs at the same time; everything the same except for the video card. (And minor various things that don't affect performance.)

I've got a 670, and he has a 7950. When we're playing at 1920x1080, my rig wrecks his - I'm getting 10-15 more fps than him on ultra. We did an experiment once, though - combining monitors to run with three monitors at once. When we did that, his rig took the advantage, by far.

End result? Go with a 670, as it will happily max out any modern game at 1080p without blinking. If you're playing at stupid high resolutions, go Radeon.

Tom's doesn't disagree, so I don't know where you're getting your information. Also, unless you give full hardware specs for the two comparison machines as wel las configuration, saying something like that is irrelevant. It must be solidly backed up to be worth believing.

 

[eric4277]

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/56546-msi-gtx-670-power-edition-oc-review-6.html

 

[luciferano]

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/56546-msi-gtx-670-power-edition-oc-review-6.html

No overclocking. Also, how can the date be September 5th in that review?

 

[eric4277]

Now, I challenge you to find a youtube video of someone with a 7950 holding 60 FPS on Ultra at 1080p at least x4

 

[luciferano]

Now, I challenge you to find a youtube video of someone with a 7950 holding 60 FPS on Ultra at 1080p at least x4

Since when is Youtube an unbiased source of such information?

 

[eric4277]

L2 Scroll wheel. shows no msaa, then x4 @ 1080p and 1600p. and shows OC on a different page

 

[eric4277]

I find a youtube video of someone trying to show what their card can do and not being influenced by any type of sponsorship more unbiased than any website.

 

[Hiii]

Now, I challenge you to find a youtube video of someone with a 7950 holding 60 FPS on Ultra at 1080p at least x4

I think the argument against the 660 Ti is the minimum frame rate, wich guarantees less lag spikes in the 7950 i guess, and yes youtube vids are not that trustworthy i think.

 

[luciferano]

I find a youtube video of someone trying to show what their card can do and not being influenced by any type of sponsorship more unbiased than any website.

Sorry, but I'm seen a lot of Youtube videos about such things and not many were unbiased and none that were from less than a few years ago. I'm not saying that there aren't any, but I haven't seen any.

 

[eric4277]

If the 7950 was better than the 670, AMD would not have it priced at the same range as the 660 ti. And if it was better, Nvidia wouldnt be stupid enough to have their most equivalent performer priced $100 more than the competition. That wouldnt make sense from any point of view. If you say greed, it doesnt make sense because you will sell more at a $350 price point than $400 and make more money for your greed.

Honestly, selling a $400 card at $550 because you dont have any current competition sounds more greedy to me.

 

[luciferano]

I think the argument against the 660 Ti is the minimum frame rate, wich guarantees less lag spikes in the 7950 i guess, and yes youtube vids are not that trustworthy i think.

The minimum frame rate isn't necessarily always extremely low on the 660 Ti, but it's generally lower, not that it's an absolutely empirical metric. Besides, there's more than the minimum frame deficiency to argue against. The 660 Ti is one of the worst cards for overclocking out of the this graphics generation along with other deficiencies, such as MSAA efficiency.

 

[eric4277]

When I say youtube videos, I also mean regular user more so than sponsored channels.

Don't get me wrong. I do think the 7950 is a great card. I just dont like how everyone is chumping off the 660 ti like it is a pos and the 7950 is better than everything, because it isnt.

 

[DarkSable]

Anyways, OP, if you go with the 670 or the 7950, you'll be happy either way.
It's highly recommended to avoid the 660ti, however, due to memory bandwidth issues - it'll cause stuttering at higher settings.

 

[wanderer11]

Get whichever is cheaper. There really isn't that much of a difference, as you can tell through all this bickering. If BF3 is really THAT important to you get the 660ti. I personally don't like it. If Crysis is important get AMD. For comparison I have a 7870 and Skyrim keeps 60fps with the hd textures. I haven't seen it lower yet. CSGO has minimums of around 160 fps. I use 1920x1080 by the way. Also, BF3 goes from 45-80 fps with AA off and everything Ultra in MP.