Karol401

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May 9, 2012
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Hey everybody

I want your help with this. I want to buy a new graphics card but i cant choose between those 2 posten in the thread (msi 660ti vs sapphire 7950 oc) I really like physx and 3D but sapphire has bigger performance and better overclocking ability......so which one should i choose because maybe (only maybe) i will do sli/crossfire and 660ti is bottlenecked by 192bit xxxx or somethink i cant remember what so what would be the best choice? I would pass on 3d or physx but if the performance would not be so noticable i think i would go with msi so tell me which is cooler and which performs better.

My rig

cpu: fx8150 will oc
MB: msi 990fxa-gd80
vga: 560ti but ill buy a new card soon
case: zalman z11 plus
ram: 16gb corsair vengeance
psu: 700w
ask for other components if i missed any.
 
You didn't say what your resolution is. I would say go for whichever is cheaper. If you are playing at 2560 then I would say 7950. I have a Sapphire 7870 and it barely gets over 60C in games, so I would expect a little more heat from the 7950. If there are certain games you like you should take a look at a benchmark to see which card performs better.
 

sherlockwing

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Aug 7, 2012
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Get 7950 if you want to OC for max performance, get 660ti(or 660/7870) if you just want to stay at stock+boost speed.

perf_oc.gif
perf_oc.gif
 
If you want the MSI GTX 660 Ti, then go for it. There is literally no situation that anyone can come up that will show a consistent and significant performance difference between the two choices. These two cards are even, except as you said, one has PhysX the other doesn't.

This review includes a direct comparison between your two choices. It includes OC vs. OC, etc. Enjoy!
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/sapphire_7950_vaporx/4.htm
 

matt_b

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Jan 8, 2009
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Taking into account the crippling effect when AA and AF are turned up on the 660Ti, I cannot agree here. The 7950 overclocks higher (percentage increase from base frequencies), has a much wider memory bandwidth interface (much better for higher resolutions), and has more RAM to boot. The downside to the 7950 - higher power consumption. For current titles (not the usual stressful Metro and Crysis), it would be hard to tell a difference between the two cards in some instances, but the 7950 wins too many points in other areas to ignore it as the winning choice right now.
 
G

Guest

Guest


Depending on the game the 660ti or 7950 could win. Give us your Monitor resolution and the games you would be mostly playing. Then we can better recommend a card for you.
 

Since this is one of your key points, please don't be misled, the performance difference under any situation that anyone can come up with will be negligible and unnoticeable in real world gaming. There is no significant and consistent difference in the performance of these cards at a normal resolution, regardless of AA levels, overclocking, etc.

This chart averages out 23 benchmarks. Yes, you can overclock the 7950, but then yes the MSI 660 Ti also overclocks.
perfrel_1920.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_660_Ti_Power_Edition/28.html
 

Actually, HardOCP also covered it. Here's what they had to say:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/08/27/nvidia_geforce_gtx_660_ti_at_high_aa_settings_review/8


The Bottom Line
In the end this all reinforces our stance that memory bandwidth isn't everything, and people seeking out video cards for gaming should not focus so intently on the memory bus width and bandwidth specification for determining their video card for gaming. Other factors go into it, and only through actually gameplay will you know how these truly perform side-by-side. That is why we here at [H]ardOCP actually play games with these video cards and use that real-world gaming performance to determine which card your money is better spent on.

Our testing today at super high AA settings has shown that the "bus limited" GeForce GTX 660 Ti does not crumble so easily. There were no instances where we ran into "VRAM wall"s that took gaming performance into single digits, this never happened even at high AA settings with Transparency AA.

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti cards continue to show a very solid value at Amazon and Newegg for gamers and as we have shown (here and here), a little bit of overclocking on the right card can go a long ways.
 

whyso

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Jan 15, 2012
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Um...... NO!

The problem with this review is that it does not look at AA scaling. Rather it looks at whether the game is playable at max AA settings. We simply don't know if the performance hit between no AA and 8x AA is 10% or 80%. The Toms review is much better in this regard as it clearly shows how cranking AA drops the framerate. Also the HardOCP review has a problem. We are comparing an overclocked gtx 660 TI at 1188 MHZ vs a stock radeon 7950 (at 925 MHZ). The 7950 wins most of the time too.
 

eric4277

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Aug 16, 2010
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I am SO sick of people spouting this dumba$$ bs ( I dont know if we can use explicitives here). AA does not cripple the 660 ti. It still gets awesome FPS. ALL GPUS TAKE A FPS HIT FROM AA. Stop spreading these ignorant rumors. People are constantly crying about AA hurting it and the 192-bit being so slow, but the numbers do not support any of those claims.

I am personally looking to buy a video card on the 31st. I wanted a 670 but my budget wouldnt allo it, so I looked to the 660 ti. Then Never Settle Released and I started thinking about the 7950. But now, I am back to the 660 ti because I dont really care that much for the games bundled and I know the gtx 6xx series is younger than the amd 7xxx series and will also be adding lots of performance boosts from driver updates. I also really want Adaptive V sync. So now if I see the gigabyte 670 on sale for $359 again like it has been, I will buy it, otherwise I am going 660 ti.

I am an NVidia Fanboy and before Catalyst 12.11 I did not acknowledge the 7950 to be better than the 660 ti and I didn't recommend anyone buy it over the 660 ti. But now it is better, but I dont believe it will last long and personally I still wont go AMD.
 

everything you just said is BS and you have been told in other threads that you were wrong. Stop spreading BS pleas.
 


The key difference is the 660Ti takes a disproportionately high performance hit from AA compared to other cards in certain games. In any case, you are dead set on Nvidia, but can't afford their only worthwhile card, so just buy the 660Ti and be done with it. Just don't come back and complain later when the card chokes on a game that taxes the memory bandwidth.
 

eric4277

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Aug 16, 2010
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If that is the case, why has the 6xx series outsold the 7xxx series even though it is younger. And why haven't people who bought 660 ti returned them immediately? And no one has ever proved me wrong in any other thread pre 12.11. I used their own websites and showed them charts of the 7950 losing to the 660 ti. techpowerup.com had it losing to the 660 ti. Hell, the chart above even shows the 660 ti beating the 7950.
 


If the only game you are playing is Battlefield 3, then the 660Ti will outperform the stock 7950. The problem with the 7950 is that in its initial release, it was heavily underclocked. Newer cards have a newer BIOS that increases the stock clocks. The 7950 can also overclock more than the 660Ti, so it will pull ahead if you are willing to tweak it. Unless Battlefield 3 and GPU accelerated PhysX games are all you play, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to buy a 660Ti right now.

As for why Nvidia outsells AMD, it is simply because Nvidia's marketing department has spent all their time trying to convince everyone that the only cards worth having are GeForce cards. They have been successful in that goal for a large chunk of the PC gaming audience. So Nvidia has a large client base that will buy whatever Nvidia puts out, even if it is flawed. Think about Apple and their various iThingys if you want another example. It doesn't matter if the AMD card is faster at a given price point, these people will still buy the Nvidia card.
 

eric4277

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You say heavily underclocked, I say rushed to try and buy sales while there is no competition. They release their cards earlier to monopolize the market and sell $400 cards for $550. Then when Nvidia drops their cards, AMD has to price drop out the wazoo. This also goes to my point that the 7950 is 10 months old and the 660 ti is only 2. AMD is trying to catch up with NVidia and has had more time to work on drivers. Nvidia will have time as well.

Like I have said repeatedly. I am an Nvidia Fanboy, but at the same time I will respect good performance. The 7950 is now a serious contender and solid performer. I have shown repeatedly the 660 ti whooping it pre 12.11 but people have those fanboy blinders on so hard they cant acknowledge performance.

NVidia outsells AMD because their cards have been generally better the past few generations. If AMD got their stuff together and didn't monopolize prices, their sales would be much higher.
 
How long the cards have been out isn't even all that relevant. You do realize that the 660Ti is just a heavily crippled GTX 680 that Nvidia chose to wait 6 months to release so they could get their more impatient fans to spend more money on the 670 and 680? It's based off the same architecture of the GTX 680, which came out back in March. The 660Ti is not based on some brand spanking new architecture that is a generation ahead of the AMD 7000 series cards. You'll have to wait for the 700 series cards to come out next year if you want that.

In any case, I am not so much an AMD fanboy as I am just anti-Nvidia. I am not fond of their business practices (pushing as much proprietary crap as possible, crippling GPU compute capabilities on their consumer cards, locking voltages, crippling the memory buses on all their midrange to low end products), and I am still bitter about two different GeForce 4 Ti4200s that gave up the ghost after less than a year way back when. In any case, we might as well stop now, as I don't think either of us are deprogramming the other.

 

eric4277

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Aug 16, 2010
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Proprietary? How so? lol wtf you talking about?

And my thoughts on the 660 ti releasing so late is that they used all the chips that werent good enough to be 680s to make 670s, then the ones that couldnt be 670s into 660 ti. It is actually smart from a financial perspective.

Also, AMD's generations have not lasted as long as NVidia's as of late. Nivida has released a few months behind AMD since the gtx 4xx series. And still dominated AMD. The 7xxx series is just now really catching up.
 

sunhashin

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Aug 17, 2010
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Can you explain a little more on what that means? Sorry if this question is too stupid but I am in the process of purchasing a new setup and I have an fx-8150 with a gtx 680 as my priority choices.