7870 or 660ti?

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andrewcarr

andrewcarr

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killerhurtalot

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lol... you do realize they require different equipment right? and as far as I'm concerned, most review websites are too cheap to buy new equipment.

and how is that stats lol. it's clearly quantifiable... don't tell me that you'd rather have a higher fps with slight hiccups that drops down to 30-20 fps (pretty much the same thing as lag in online games but in a offline game lol.) for a couple frames then pick up again???



As far as i'm concerned, AMD cards are ONLY worth it if you're overclocking it (cause they all overclock like a beast). Otherwise, stick with Nvidia.
 
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andrewcarr

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I was just about to mention the overclock. Because I'd have that bad 7950 running above 670 FPS levels. Also you can't deny their the budget kings. But soon you'll see the 8xxx series and maybe their focusing on that aspect this time around.
 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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The 660Ti is not worth $60 more than the 7870, frame latency issue or not. The performance gap between the two cards does not justify that much extra expense.

In any case, if you somehow think you can see one frame out of thirty being rendered 20ms slower than it should be, and that will absolutely ruin the whole gaming experience for you, the cause for this issue seems to be related to the default Flip Queue Size on the Catalyst drivers. You can use a program called RadeonPro and set your Frame Queue Size to 1, that seems to alleviate this issue for the time being, at least until AMD's driver team does something about it.
 
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killerhurtalot

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not with the TERRIBLE drivers AMD puts out lol.

It took them what.... 10 months to get decent drivers out this generation??? It's been like this basically every generation...

I wouldn't touch AMD until they actually put decent drivers out since there is no guarantee that they'll put out decent drivers... for the last few generations (other than this generation), the only reason amd could "claim" the performance crown was because of their release cycle...
 
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andrewcarr

andrewcarr

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I don't get why one to two seconds of lag for every minute you play is all that bad. Secondly I like AMD's drivers and think the interface is much nicer than Nvidia's, although it offers limited overclocking at least it's extremely simple and great for someone with no experience (although MSI afterburner and others will give better results). As for the drivers talking a while to get ironed out, why does that matter? The 7970 outperformed previous generation cards at launch and was even more competitive after the update, although the value with the 670 outperforming it was bad for a while.

killerhurtalot, you obviously like Nvidia and there's nothing wrong with that, I personally like AMD (at least for this generation) and that's just fine too. But I wouldn't advise the OP spending the price difference between a good 7870 and a 660Ti when there are only a few FPS improvement. If you remember the 660Ti used to get the bad rap the AMD cards are getting now but for the memory interface not latency times.

Anyways now the AMD cards are good, and at least they were readily available at launch. Yes maybe the 8xxx series will not perform to it's full potential but at least it will outperform the previous generation cards right away and by the time the drivers are worked out Nvidia will just be releasing their next generation, then the prices of AMD's cards will fall to the point that I don't recommend any of Nvidia's cards (for another year, although last year I regularly recommended the 560Ti) and also at least the AMD cards launched over a much shorter time period, instead of waiting for all the previous generation models to go out of stock.
 
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iam2thecrowe

iam2thecrowe

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i havnt had a problem with AMD drivers along with many other people, speaking from experience not utter BS. There is nothing wrong with their cards or drivers. Occasionally there is a hiccup with both nvidia drivers and AMD drivers where they dont display something quite right at a given resolution with particular settings. but its not hard to change a setting and then wait for a driver patch.
 
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JJ1217

JJ1217

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Am I the only one to notice 90% of people who rant against AMD drivers are Nvidia card owners?
 
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technoholic

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Apparently, techreport was paid by nvidia dearly to make an obviously biased article with cherry picked games and inconsistent testing method. They even conflict with their older articles. And that testing method, dont get me started on that. They are the only rviewers doing these tests AND this much of test is TOO few to generalize it. This isn't a scientific method to prove something, ya know. And the only game they recorded to prove their point was Skyrim. And they made the record with a god damn video camera sticked in front of the screen. Which aspect of idiocy of them should i tell here? if i write about it, it will be like 2 pages. What i suggest: i am not saying that 7950 is/isn't flawed. I am saying that NV fanboys jump to conclusion too fast before anything is scientifically proven. Apparently, Nvidia couldn't fight with their awful performing cards with premium price, and they came up with this "psychological war".

Edit: There is no way i can recommend any card other than GTX 660 and GTX 670 from Nvidia family this generation. Because AMD's marketing strategy and variety of cards cover any price corner that Nvidia may suggest. 660Ti? Why pay that premium while you can get a GTX 660/ HD 7870 much cheaper and get only 5-7% less performance? Why not pay for a GTX 670/HD 7970 if you can afford? GTX 670 is Nvidia's castle imo, the best balanced Kepler
 
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sam_p_lay

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+1 to djangoringo and killerhurtalot about GeForce performance consistency. What's interesting about the results is not how badly the Radeons do (that's nothing new) but how well the GeForces do. Previously, both companies were putting out inconsistent performance. Radeons were most consistent in some cases, GeForces in others. So it's significant that the GeForces are so much smoother now, and my best guess for that is drivers. When TR approached them last year about performance inconsistency (they asked AMD too), nVidia said they're actaully working on a project specifically to address the inconsistency. Maybe that's what we're seeing the result of here?

As for it being only TR, reason is not so much equipment (with the exception of the high-speed cameras) but the time-consuming nature of the testing. It's always a race for tech media sites to be the first with new benchmarks/reviews and traditional frames/sec testing is quick and easy. I've been speaking with Chris Angelini (Tom's Hardware's editor-in-chief for anyone who doesn't read the articles) and that was the main reason up until now for the lack of frame latency benchmarking. But it is coming.

And as for 'one frame in thirty' being slower, it's often a hell of a lot more than that. Constant up/down fluctuations within a very small time scale.

With regards to RadeonPro, Mautari did some really impressive work there! Makes you wonder why AMD have been unable to do this for their own cards (they seriously need to hire this guy!).

There are some drawbacks though compared to the nVidia solution. Most notably the fact that you need to benchmark each game individually and then calibrate RadeonPro for that game according to your benchmark results. Tom's Hardware said in the review that it's a complicated and time-consuming procedure. Do it wrong (even if you're off by just 10fps) and you get some massive lag spikes (right up to 100 millisecond frames, which equates to a drop to 10fps).

With nVidia on the other hand, you don't need to do a thing - the hardware is already designed to deliver consistently smooth performance out of the box. So a Radeon with RadeonPro is definitely an improvement over normal Radeon performance, but it's still not as good as normal nVidia performance, which doesn't require you to recalibrate it for each game.

Finally, +1 to technoholic about the GTX660 and GTX670 being nVidia's strongest value points - I'd personally save a bit and take the GTX660 over the Ti. You'd never notice the difference. Technoholic, would be interested in the article that exposes the nVidia/TechReport bribery? That's a pretty huge deal if it's true.

EDIT: Or spend a bit extra and get a GTX670 - that's a good option too :) GTX670 is the minimum to max Far Cry 3 at 1080p.
 
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iam2thecrowe

iam2thecrowe

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http://techreport.com/review/23527/review-nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-graphics-card/8 < i can cherry pick to favor AMD too, from the same site you speak of. the nvidia cards dont always get the edge on their site, they judge it as they see it. in the link I provided the nvidia cards have the higher latency in a particular game too. Depends on the game. Yes the skyrim bench of the 7950 is a cherry pick of the year, but they bring up a valid point that fps doesnt = smoothness which was the point they were trying to make, although they do slag AMD more than the evidence displays. If you read all the information and are not a fanboy of nvidia or AMD you will realise its a fair way of testing and doesnt favour either manufacturer (nvidia fans in particular are mislead by information very easily it seems, one fail from AMD means they become emotionally attached to nvidia cards and AMD gets a bashing from them). They also tested with vsync and triplebuffering off, which anyone that doesnt want screen tearing would have on and gives you smooth synced frames. So overall their testing is not flawed, but is incomplete and a little misleading, i dont know if they were paid by nvidia or not, but you can come to a reasonable conclusion if you look at ALL the information, not just "omg amd skips a little in skyrim on a 240fps high speed camera camera and we will slag them and their drivers for being horrible".
 
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technoholic

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Is my personal thought, nothing else comes to mind cause of the test methodology they follow, the hand picked/limited amount of games they chose to "prove" something. I'd expect you, at the first, would be approaching the issue with doubt and with a more scientific aspect, questioning the consistency and validity of that test. I showed you how inconsistent/confusing these tests can become and i can show more if you ask
 
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technoholic

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iam2thecrowe my reaction is against those whoever take the issue out of the intention. Heck lots of people in this forums believe that this situation applies ALL the Radeon family, which is in fact wrong and can't be generalized. This current issue (if true and if it isn't related to software/driver bug) is only relevant to HD 7950 and not to all Radeons. Would i purchase a HD 7950 now? I think i would have doubts and would not do it now. But it is still too vague to make a conclusion
 
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