GTX 660 vs Radeon 7870

[completelyrandomname]

I have done a bit of research but cannot find an exact answer. My resolution is 1920x1080. I play Borderlands 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012, Starcraft II, and possibly Battlefield 3. Which one would be best for me?

 

[hbeduryan818]

I have done a bit of research but cannot find an exact answer. My resolution is 1920x1080. I play Borderlands 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012, Starcraft II, and possibly Battlefield 3. Which one would be best for me?

Are these two the only ones in your budget? If so then the 7870 hands down if no busget opt for the 7950 which with the newest drivers performs as well if not better than the gtx 670

 

[loresr97]

I have done a bit of research but cannot find an exact answer. My resolution is 1920x1080. I play Borderlands 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012, Starcraft II, and possibly Battlefield 3. Which one would be best for me?

Well Borderlands 2 uses PhSyx which is Nvidia. But 7870 will beat it on other games.

 

[stickmansam]

7870 costs about the same as the 660 while performing quite a bit better.

 

[lpedraja2002]

In some games like BF3 the GTX 660 performs better than the 7870. Also, if you want to enable Physx in Borderlands 2 you might want to go with the GTX660 as the 7870 takes a rather large hit in performance when enable via the config file. The GTX660 is $10 less on Newegg and includes Assassins Creed 3 but the 7870 is only $10 more and includes Far Cry 3. Both are excellent, I've been reading some reviews and it seems the EVGA GTX660 doesn't overclock much if any at all, but its been factory overclocked past 1ghz so that's quite a plus. The 7870 according to reviews has some room for overclock with stocks already at 1ghz.

Get whatever you feel most comfortable with, I like Nvidia more but haven't tried an Ati card since the 5770 I believe it was.

 

[stickmansam]

This is with the newest drivers form both sides. The 7870 still pulls ahead in BF3. Full review is here http://www.techspot.com/review/603-best-graphics-cards/page4.html

The 660 does perform better than the 7870 in Borderlands 2 though with PhysX on but both card will take significant drops even Nvidia cards as shown here

Even the 680 drops a number of frames. There appears to be large cpu bottleneck right now if you look at this

Mind you they are using a i7-3960X so your CPU might bottleneck more since its an i5 3330

So you can save $10 and get better performance in most PhysX enabled games or spend $10 and get more performance in non-PhysX games or with PhysX turned off.

EDIT: Some format changes

 

[Ravyu]

Actually, if he has a good CPU, he might be able to offload the PhysX task to it instead of the GPU, though I forgot how to do it, but that is definitely possible.

The HD 7870 wins hands down in most (if not all) the games you play with the lovely new 12.11 beta drivers

 

[bigcyco1]

I have done a bit of research but cannot find an exact answer. My resolution is 1920x1080. I play Borderlands 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012, Starcraft II, and possibly Battlefield 3. Which one would be best for me?

That's a hard choice because Borderlands 2 and Starcraft II favor the 660 but 7870 is faster in most games

 

[akshayghai29785]

if some one has gtx 660 set pre render frame to 2 & thru advance tweaking enable SSAA 4x which will give you awesome framerates not less then continous 50 but if the op is going for multi monitor gtx 660 fails to deliver the performance

 

[akshayghai29785]

als with new drivers nvidia gtx 6xx series has also seen a good imporvement

 

[bigcyco1]

I would save up and get a 670 they go on sale off and on for $350 sometimes the 660 and 7870 are both good choices for mid range gaming though.If your a hardcore gamer neither of those cards are going to cut it you'll want a 670 or 7970.

 

[stickmansam]

At 1080p there is almost no need to step up to the 79xx or the 670 or 680

 

[bigcyco1]

Well that's kinda true it depends on what kind of fps you want and how hardcore of a gamer OP is a 7870 and 660 can't get the job done in certain games if he wants to stay at min 60+fps in games like 64 maps bf3 1. Crysis 2, and Crysis Warhead
2. Metro 2033
3. ARMA II.
4. GTA4
5. witcher+ubersampling
6.skyrim+8xSS + mods
7. Alien VS Predator
8I.BATMAN ARKHAM CITY +PHYSX anything like that the OP might as well forget all about a 660 or 7870 they will not cut it.Otherwise a 660 or 7870 is a good choice.

 

[completelyrandomname]

I should add that it has to be $250 CAD or less.

 

[completelyrandomname]

http://www.techspot.com/review/603-best-graphics-cards/page12.html
Based on that I'm leaning towards the GTX 660, I don't really care if I can run PhysX or at maximum settings, just has to be 1920x1080 and decent settings like high. Incase you haven't figured it out I'm going for the sweet spot and unless you can convince me to go for a more expensive card, I will or might get the GTX 660.

 

[bigcyco1]

I doubt anybody is going to waste the time trying to convince you of which card to get everybody helps for free.It's not their money being spent.I think the 660 is a good choice for mid range gaming.

 

[stickmansam]

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=76163&vpn=GV-N660OC-2GD&manufacture=Gigabyte

Most of the aftermarket coolers perform about the same and Gigabyte offers a decent factory overclock at a cheaper price. The 5 dollars over the Galaxy one gets you Assasins Creed 3 which you can play or sell as well as a larger OC which is important with the locked voltages.

As mentioned above we are all trying to help though our opinions sometimes differ =P

EDIT:This NCIX Gigabyte 660 is cheaper than the Newegg ones. NCIX generally has a higher regular price but is cheaper when both are on sale. There is also an option to pickup in store and save shipping if you live in Vancouver or Toronto.

 

[sam_p_lay]

+1 to bigcyco1. Performance is so close you wouldn't tell the difference without a framerate counter. And like people have said, the GTX660 gives you PhysX. Even better, FXAA and adaptive v-sync. It's what I would do.

 

[completelyrandomname]

Best answer selected by completelyrandomname.

 

[completelyrandomname]

GTX 660 it is, thanks for the contributions.

 

[AndrzejN81]

GTX 660 it is, thanks for the contributions.

I was thinking the same. I got 660 gtx and its is really great graphic card. However when I got my two LCD monitors to go with my old LCD... 660 gtx didn't want to run Nvidia Surround. Ati doesn't have that problem. All features of 666 gtx including physix do nothing for me any more... BTW. I can run Batman City with physix on cpu. Works quite well.