HD 7950 + 3470

[Littlebro]

Hi,

I'd like to play games on high quality for about 3 years and I want to know if a Gigabyte R7950 Windforce 3X in combination with a i5 3470 is future-proof. Or should I save up for a 2500K/3570K with a decent cooler? The thing is, right now I have a crappy laptop of 2008 that isn't capable of playing anything well (skyrim lowest settings with an average of 25 fps... permission to laugh your *ss off granted ) and saving for a 2500K or 3570K + cooler would take me another 2 months or so... (price difference of around €60). If the graphics card is not the best available, that's not that bad. I could always upgrade it in a year or two.

I've been saving for a PC for over a year now and I really don't want to wait a lot longer, as you can imagine... I'm letting my PC built for me somewhere in January.

Thanks for your help in advance!

Littlebro.

 

[Littlebro]

Oh I forgot, when I put a K-CPU in it, I would also have to change my mobo to a z77 for OC'ing... So that puts another month on top of the waiting time .

 

[Sumukh_Bhagat]

Getting a i5 3570k over a 3470 is waste until you OC it to 4.5 Ghz. You'll then get a reasonable boost for €60.
And you'll have to get a Z77 mobo, its Costly.
And a Good aftermarket cooler.

I have i5 3470 myself with GTX 660, and it performs awesome.
But Please get a GTX 660 TI or GTX 670. Hardly Recommend.
Most of the 7950 nowadays are giving poor performance and laggin too much.

 

[Sumukh_Bhagat]

The Golden Words said by a friend in the Forum:
He is the guy who is better known to this issues.

Indeed, I think most sites would recommend the 7950 of those two based purely frames/second. Reason that Tech Report's recommendation is so different is that they're not testing frames/second (well actually they do, but they're testing something much more important alongside it).

Frame latency benching is a new way of testing performance, to more accurately represent the 'smoothness' delivered by a card. Frames/second is a crude, oversimplified measure of performance that doesn't tell the whole story. It gives a rough idea, but smooths out major dips and spikes in framerate. Performance on the GTX660 Ti (and it's more than likely this extends to the adjacent models from nVidia since it was likely a driver update that did this) was far more consistent and not up/down. We'll be seeing a lot more frame latency benchmarking moving forward, including from Tom's.

The conclusion:
"A moral victory in the borderline-meaningless FPS sweeps doesn't overcome the fact that the Radeon HD 7950 has a persistent problem with high-latency frames across a range of test scenarios based on the latest games... If you just want bragging rights, by all means, choose the Radeon HD 7950. If you're looking for the friction-free fluidity that only comes from consistently quick frame delivery, though, our recommendation remains the GeForce GTX 660 Ti."

EDIT: Although I've made it clear anyway, just want to double clarify that I'm aware the OP isn't looking at a 7950 or GTX660Ti, but that these GPUs are just one model up and the consistency/inconsistency findings likely apply, since the models are architecturally very similar.

By sam_p_lay

 

[Sakkura]

I have i5 3470 myself with GTX 660, and it performs awesome.
But Please get a GTX 660 TI or GTX 670. Hardly Recommend.
Most of the 7950 nowadays are giving poor performance and laggin too much.

The 7950 is fine, don't listen to the fanboys. A GTX 670 would be better than the 7950, but cost more as well. The GTX 660 Ti has unreliable performance because of a severe memory bottleneck. Sometimes it'll perform like a 670, other times it'll perform like a regular 660 (or worse).

@OP: Combining a 7950 with a 3470 is okay. That's still a powerful CPU even if it only overclocks by 4 bins (400 MHz). If you did wait a couple months you'd be close to the launch of the next generation of AMD graphics cards and Intel CPUs.

 

[Littlebro]

Isn't that just a thing that has to do with drivers? Personally, I really get the shivers of Nvidea because off their stubborn pricing... AMD practically always gets the awards for Price/Performance. Also, I don't see that much of a difference. And on top of that, it's played in slow-motion. Sorry man, I really appreciate the reply and help but you haven't convinced me just yet.

 

[Sunius]

You don't really have to buy a cooler from the start - and i5-3570k shouldn't be much more expensive than i5-3470, is it?

 

[Littlebro]

It's €35 difference + a new mobo...

 

[Sunius]

I'd say you'll be fine with i5-3470. You'll experience much more pain waiting to gather money.

 

[Littlebro]

You think it'll last for at least 3 years at decent performance rates? And what about the GPU? 7950? Any more comments on that? Now that I'm reading a lot on it, I'm starting to get more worried about the 7950 than the CPU . Is the 660Ti just as good? I'll be playing at 1080p.

 

[Sumukh_Bhagat]

Stick here to get your Answer: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/383838-33-7870-660ti-1920x1024

 

[Sunius]

GTX 660 Ti and HD 7950 performance is pretty much tied - I'd go for whichever is cheaper.

And yes, i5-3470 will last at least 3 years.

 

[Littlebro]

Ok thanks for all your help!