GTX 660 Ti or Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition?

[ILackCreativity]

Which card would perform better in most games if paired with an i5 Sandy Bridge processor? I hope to play games such as Battlefield 3, Black Ops 2, Assassin's Creed III, Crysis 2, Medal of Honor: Warfighter (hopefully) on a 1920x1080 resolution with settings on ultra. There is a price difference, but negligible ($20 less for 7870 GHz Edition).

 

[djangoringo]

If it's less than 20$ or about that, the price difference, get the 660ti, it's a much better card.

 

[Ironslice]

660 ti

 

[Guest]

get a 7950, it runs with the 670 (even though you can overclock the 660ti to match the 670 performance) and it's the same price range BUT BE WARNED that the AMD drivers aren't always the best and my friend is dealing with some microstuttering

 

[sam_p_lay]

+1 for GTX660 Ti.

 

[bigcyco1]

+1 for 660 Ti.

 

[ILackCreativity]

get a 7950, it runs with the 670 (even though you can overclock the 660ti to match the 670 performance) and it's the same price range BUT BE WARNED that the AMD drivers aren't always the best and my friend is dealing with some microstuttering

Sadly I cannot get a 7950 because my Antec Three Hundred case's maximum graphics card size is 11'', and the 7950 is around 11.5'' (I think)

 

[sam_p_lay]

Don't worry, you'd get no noticeable benefit over the GTX660 Ti in real-world performance anyway. Infact the GTX660 Ti has demonstrated far more consistent delivery of framerates so might actually be noticeably better in real-world performance. Certainly no worse.

 

[DanteIsOnFire]

Wowee!

Lot of nvidia enthusiasts in here!

If I were you, I'd go with the 7870ghz edition, as it has the benefits of the catalyst 12.11 drivers (which consequently give the most love to it), a good factory overclock, and a good amount of overclocking headroom. On newegg the 7870 ghz goes for 220-260 USD and the 660 ti is anywhere from 300USD and up.

You can go with the 660ti if you want, but it runs on a 192 bit memory system (correct me if i'm wrong), so that it cannot fully make use of the extra vram at higher resolutions (just like the 4gb version of the gtx 670 and 680) and that really turns me off of the card, and the 300 dollars isn't worth wasting on it. Nvidia does have the advantages with drivers though

+1 for 7870ghz

 

[Theredmagus]

+1 GTX 660 Ti

At 1920x1080, it's a fantastic card as that's the resolution it's designed for with its limited 192-bit memory bus. If you want to save a little money, the 7870 is also a great card, but for most games, the 660 Ti will outperform it.

 

[sam_p_lay]

You can go with the 660ti if you want, but it runs on a 192 bit memory system (correct me if i'm wrong), so that it cannot fully make use of the extra vram at higher resolutions

Urgh more bandwidth ignorance. Though that's the first time I've ever seen somebody understand memory bus width as a limitation on the amount of memory that can be addressed. Anyway, this bus width thing is a myth. Check out the 2nd post here:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/378279-15-gtx660-7850-7870

tl;dr? The 7800 series GPUs have no significant performance benefit from bus width, since it's only one factor of determining bandwidth, in which it has only ~5% lead. I look forward to the day when people will give advice only when they have understanding.

 

[payturr]

I'd say 660 Ti namely because almost all the games you listed there are like, endorsed by Nvidia. If you were saying Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs - I would say AMD because AMD has better support with those games. But the 660ti is a better card than the 7870 unless it's like 60$ difference - then I'll stick with the 7870, it's not bad at all for what you get, especially if you got like the Hawk Edition from MSI because they actually let you overclock it unlike the Nvidia counterparts.

 

[Sandouby_96]

u can't compare the 660 ti with a 7870,the 660 ti is compared with a 7950 so which is better a 7950 or a 7870 ,this means the 660 ti is the better card

 

[jack2598]

I have had both cards, my 7870 was faulty, so i went with the 660 Ti. Overall, I found the 660 Ti a much better card - Not only in gaming but Photoshop and rendering programs, etc.

 

[Herminator55]

Thank you all for the comments as it has helped me to make my choice and going for the gtx 660ti as both cards are the same price at the moment through novatech