So, I'm doing research to buy a card in about a month but I have some questions I havent been able to answer. My budget is about $400. I am not really a fan boy of either brand, I'm just looking to get the best value for my money. My Resolution, for the time being, will be 1080p, but I figure if I ever add another monitor, I would either add another card while I was at it, or just run it off of a Discrete GPU. I also do plan to attempt at least a moddest overclock, though 1.2 GHz sounds pretty sweet.
So, for the Geforce card, I am sold on the EVGA FTW models. I might go for the signature2 but I'm not sure about that yet. Either way, I'm not really looking for a different brand.
For the Radeon, I'm looking at Sapphire and XFX as the leaders, but I'm not sure as I have usually dealt with geforce in the past.
So far, what I have found is a bit confusing. At first, the 7970 was behind the 670, but now newer drivers seem to put it over a 680? I also know the 670 FTW preforms about the same as a stock 680.
Looking at pricing, I can get a FTW for less than an pre overclocked 7970 non ghz, at like $380 for the geforce and $390 for the 7970. Doing research has told me that the FTW can overclock higher than the 7970 non GHz, but unfortunately, I realized half of what I have read is now out of date, so that may no longer be true.
I am considering a 7970 GHz and wondering if it is that much better than the FTW. I know it is better, but how much? Is it worth the $60?
Also, I notice a few cards have major differences in memory clock speed. Does this make a difference? Am I reading it wrong? Sometimes they are in the 6000MHz zone(670), but sometimes it is more like 1500MHz(7970).
And on top of that, does a FTW with 4GB ram make a big difference? I can get a FTW+ 4GB for the same price as a GHz. All I have seen is people saying RAM is for resolution, but I also know games like Crysis use a lot of it, and I would hate to be limited by the 2GB on the FTW a year or two down the road. I plan to use it to play lots of games, but I'm also a designer, so the extra ram could be helpful when rendering high poly models.
So, for the Geforce card, I am sold on the EVGA FTW models. I might go for the signature2 but I'm not sure about that yet. Either way, I'm not really looking for a different brand.
For the Radeon, I'm looking at Sapphire and XFX as the leaders, but I'm not sure as I have usually dealt with geforce in the past.
So far, what I have found is a bit confusing. At first, the 7970 was behind the 670, but now newer drivers seem to put it over a 680? I also know the 670 FTW preforms about the same as a stock 680.
Looking at pricing, I can get a FTW for less than an pre overclocked 7970 non ghz, at like $380 for the geforce and $390 for the 7970. Doing research has told me that the FTW can overclock higher than the 7970 non GHz, but unfortunately, I realized half of what I have read is now out of date, so that may no longer be true.
I am considering a 7970 GHz and wondering if it is that much better than the FTW. I know it is better, but how much? Is it worth the $60?
Also, I notice a few cards have major differences in memory clock speed. Does this make a difference? Am I reading it wrong? Sometimes they are in the 6000MHz zone(670), but sometimes it is more like 1500MHz(7970).
And on top of that, does a FTW with 4GB ram make a big difference? I can get a FTW+ 4GB for the same price as a GHz. All I have seen is people saying RAM is for resolution, but I also know games like Crysis use a lot of it, and I would hate to be limited by the 2GB on the FTW a year or two down the road. I plan to use it to play lots of games, but I'm also a designer, so the extra ram could be helpful when rendering high poly models.
I definitely saw which one was better, but...wow... The problem is that that was two months and many driver versions ago... 
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