Gpu Question

[yamahahornist]

So I was looking at the Gtx 670 and the AMD 7950. What I don't get is how the heck does the Gtx 670 beat the 7950 in performance?

The 7950 has:
1792 Shader units vs Gtx 1344
384-bit Memory Bus vs 256-bit
240 GB/s vs 192.2Gb/s

To me the 7950 should destroy the Gtx 670, but still it doesn't?

Are the AMD drivers really just that bad?? I know the new beta ones help, but come on AMD I want my product to perform
its best when I put it in my system; not 4 months later!

 

[manofchalk]

The memory bus and GB/s are the same thing just said in different ways.
Also your comparing a $400 card against a $300, do you expect the the 7950 to win? A fairer comparison is between the 7970 and the 670, which IMO the 7970 wins.

The GPU underneath is stronger, plain and simple. GK104 (the GPU in the 670) performs better than the Tahiti Pro GPU in the 7950.

Also the rumour of AMD drivers being worse than Nvidia is just a myth, Nvidia has had their share of bad and even disastrous drivers before.
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=196.75&oq=196.75&aqs=chrome.0.57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_rn=1&gs_ri=serp&tok=_dezNL3-8aY9AdpBuoegaw&pq=196.75&cp=7&gs_id=v&xhr=t&q=Nvidia+196.75&es_nrs=true&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=Nvidia+196.75&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41018144,d.dGY&fp=c4df36f82b63f2bc&biw=1920&bih=1017

 

[yamahahornist]

I understand that the Gtx 670 is $100 more, but that's not my point. How in any case should a card with 240Gb/s be slower then a card with 192gb/s? The Nvidia 196.75 driver story was interesting btw lol; it shouldn't be a laughing matter but that's pretty bad on Nvidia's part!

 

[manofchalk]

Despite what it might seem, that number is referring to the bandwidth of the memory bus not actual speed. Quite simply the 670 doesn't need that large a memory bus to perform, while AMD have put on the bigger bus and more VRAM to help it in memory intensive games, of which there are few.

 

[yamahahornist]

Ok that makes sense! So its pretty much the same reason why Intel' Cpus perform better (in most cases) then Amd ones is due to the architecture on the chip itself? That's my guess? I am right? Thanks btw!

 

[manofchalk]

Pretty much, if you were to purely go on cores and transistor count AMD would be flooring Intel, but obviously its not the case.

Though in this case its not so much architecture, the Graphics Core Next architecture on current AMD cards is very good, its more simply that the 670 is just a performance and a price tier higher than the 7950.

 

[yamahahornist]

Best answer selected by yamahahornist.