Can't Decide

[Brylord]

I can't decide between 3 graphics cards for my latest build:

EVGA GTX 660 SC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130826

Sapphire 7850 OC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102984

Sapphire: 7870 OC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102983

They range from 209.99 to 249.99, so which one is the best bang for my buck? Based on the benchmark testing on PassMark the GTX 660 should be the best. It got a score of 4,178 while the 7870 got 3,442 and the 7850 got 3,260, but I don't know how representative the scores are for real world use.

 

[manofchalk]

Anandtech has a good comparison utility that shows actual performance from the cards on various games. Fairly representative of real life usage.

660 vs HD7850
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/660?vs=549

660 vs HD7870
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/660?vs=548

But keep in mind that as of late, AMD have released two drivers (12.7 and soon to be 12.11) that have increased performance massively. So I would advise waiting for the inevitable 12.11 review for more accurate results.

 

[wanderer11]

7870. It's only $235 after rebate and you don't really want to skimp on a gpu.

 

[Kamen_BG]

The HD 7870 is easily the best of those three cards.
This is a test of the 12.11 BETA driver.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_12.11_Performance/5.html
It might get even better than that.

BUT if you can stretch your budget a little bit i advise you to buy this HD 7950 instead.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=
It's got a very nice cooler and is also overclocked.

 

[dyc4ha]

@Kamen_BG agree, I think the 7870 is the best of those 3, and the latest drivers are very promising. I personally wouldnt care much for synthetic benches, they dont paint a good real world picture. On the other hand, game benches do so look at the games you would want to play. Not sure if this is a pure gaming rig, but unless you also use programs that leverage cuda, the radeon cards have been proven to have much better compute performance too.

 

[Brylord]

Well looking at the gaming benchmarks that manofchalk linked I can see that the 7870 beats the 660 in a lot of areas but interestingly enough in all the games that I own they are able to get pretty much the same FPS. So would I be fine just going for the gtx 660?

This is going in an HTPC/Gaming rig that I've started putting together here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/367756-31-bitfenix-htpc-gaming-build

And I don't wanna spend too much more than the cards I have listed, I'm trying to keep everything as close to $800 as possible.

 

[dyc4ha]

Well looking at the gaming benchmarks that manofchalk linked I can see that the 7870 beats the 660 in a lot of areas but interestingly enough in all the games that I own they are able to get pretty much the same FPS. So would I be fine just going for the gtx 660?

This is going in an HTPC/Gaming rig that I've started putting together here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/367756-31-bitfenix-htpc-gaming-build

And I don't wanna spend too much more than the cards I have listed, I'm trying to keep everything as close to $800 as possible.

I am not sure I follow your logic: The games you are interested are about the same on both cards, but other games 7870 is better. Yet you still want to go with the 660? Unless the price of that 7870 is really out of your range I do not see why else you would want the 660. Seeing its also a HTPC rig I doubt you would run cuda programs.