Graphic Cards Graphics cards AMD 7950/ gtx 670/ gtx 660Ti ???

K

koltkommando

Recruit
I have my rig all polished for some good quality gaming experience.

Intel Core i5 3550
Intel DH77-KC
G.Skill RIPJAWS 4GB x2
Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 1TB
Corsair TX V2 650W
Corsair Carbide 400R
APC BR1.1KVA-IN

That's my rig thanks to @ALPHA17 for guiding me in the build
I have been waiting for 660 Ti for quite long. Specs sheet are out too. Had thoughts of saving some bucks with a volume card., but the specs doesnt match 7950 in performance if i am not wrong.
I am confused on which GPU to put my money on. I can raise my budget to max 25k. Plus my friend has agreed to get the GPU from US :D, that is certainly going to save some money for me.
Please help me in deciding which one to buy.
And if 7950 which make? Saphire/MSI/Asus/XFX OC verions. If not 7950 I am all ready for Asus gtx 670 DC2T :)
 
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@koltkommando congrats on the RIG purchase, hope it serves you well.

About the graphics card, it is hell out there. With AMD the prospects are --
  • decent performance on stock but up-till the HD78** series over-clocking will unleash the true power of these cards and you do not need to do a lot of voltage tweaks either, so power consumption is also curbed.
  • completely savages nVidia when it comes to Compute and GPGPU performance. Also playing above the 1080p resolution is also a much better experience with these RED's.
  • Availability and pricing in India is on the sane scale of things; this counts for much as any component bought outside India will not have any warranty cover in India unless explicitly stated.
For nVidia the --
  • blistering game-performance with pretty acceptable power constraints. Though unlike the AMD cards they do not have an extreme-idle mode.
  • Over-clocking is a veritable pain as nVidia in its pursuit of aggressive Turbo-clocks has binned the cores very highly and this makes simple home-brew over-clocking hard, unless you are willing to shell out extra cash for so called 'over-clock profilers'.
  • Availability and pricing in India is on the insane level of the field. Apart from that no company apart from evGA has international warranty on its cards and they have no after sales centre in India as far as I know, so if anything dies on you it is a long wait for your card to go to --> EU / USA and return from there [shipping and customs extra].
If I were you I would go for a HD7870 / 7950 for now and over-clock it as high as possible, the companies you can look at are --> Sapphire, HIS and MSi.

For nVidia the usual suspects --> ASUS, ZOTAC! and MSi and if you are not to keen on over-clocking these cards then go for a GTX670 / GTX660Ti and enjoy.

Hope this helps, Cheerio!
 
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#alpha17 Impressive dude impressive . There is not even one post of yours that is not worth TE .
Keep it up :D

As far as OP is concerned ,
If you want the bang for your buck , i would suggest getting the 7950 .
It's a beast when you overclock it .
On stock . it'll more or less be the same as it's nVidia counter part .
You cannot go wrong with any actually (brand preference comes in here :p)
But i think the 7950 is a little ahead in the race :D
 
buddingwhizkid care to elaborate on how at stock the 7950 will be more or less equal with it's counterpart?and what will be it's counterpart according to you,a 670?then i think you should read up more.Also the OP never said he would be OC'ing, so at stock ,the cards from the green camp should be the ones he should buy.and again GPGPU and compute applications will not be used by the OP so...,also ALPHA17 how is gaming at 1080p a "much better experience with the REDS"?NewsFlash : Kepler wins against the reds in stock performance(price ratio too) any day,on Hanukkah or the 4th of July.So i say (under any circumstances OP) the cards from the green camp Hallelujah.i won't be touching OC because the OP hasn't said anything regrading it.
Don't believe me? here : debate: GTX 670 or 7950?

another debate :gtx 670 or radeon 7950? - Forums - StarCraft II

hardocp comparison :HARDOCP - Conclusion - GeForce 680 & 670 vs. Radeon 7970 & 7950 Gaming Perf.

Also quoting Hardocp
"On page 2 of this evaluation we looked at the out-of-box performance, stock performance of each video card. The new GeForce GTX 670, at the same price as the Radeon HD 7950 was much better performing than the 7950 in every game. We experienced GTX 670 performance up to 30 percent; faster than the Radeon HD 7950, for the same price. When we compared the GTX 670 to the Radeon HD 7970 we found the lower priced (by $50) GTX 670 to perform on par with, or better than, the Radeon HD 7970! The $50 less expensive GTX 670 was delivering the same gameplay experience, and sometimes a better experience, compared to the more expensive Radeon HD 7970!On page 3 we overclocked all four video cards and compared again. Even with the Radeon HD 7950 overclocked the GeForce GTX 670 overclocked was able to perform faster."
Click to expand...

Quoting techpowerup
"NVIDIA improved energy efficiency again, leaving behind AMD's HD 7900 Series. Compared to the last generation GTX 570 we see twice the performance per Watt, at significantly reduced absolute power consumption numbers. GTX 670 will happily power a high-end gaming rig with a 400 W power supply, thanks to its efficient design. Typical gaming power draw is around 150 Watts for the card alone, which should be no problem for any decent power supply. The lower power consumption also reflects in cooling performance. Given NVIDIA's cheaped out cooler I didn't expect much, but temperatures are fine and noise levels are OK, they are certainly lower than AMD's HD 7970.
Overclocking works well too, we see maximum GPU clocks that are not far from what the GTX 680 offers. Only memory OC is a bit lower, which seems to caused by the PCB design and lack of cooling for the memory chips.
Overall the GTX 670 is a beast of a card that comes at a reasonable price of $399 when looking at the current-generation high-end segment. AMD's HD 7950 costs $380 and is hopeless against the GTX 670. HD 7970 at $450 might be a tiny bit faster, but loses on power and noise - and is 50 bucks more expensive. GeForce GTX 670 might even hurt sales of NVIDIA's own GTX 680, as it provides a very similar experience, but ends up being $100 cheaper, and in stock. GTX 670 is also ready for an all out price war with AMD, as the design is extremely cost optimized and could easily be sold at something like $250."
Click to expand...


The review is here : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2 GB Review | techPowerUp

Also, this debate is not 100 percent; cut and dry so i urge everyone to not come running back to me if someone once recommends the 7950,needless to say the general consensus is that a 670 is better.PERIOD.I don't think i can make this any more clearer,the choice is now yours.
 
With newer drivers the situation is very different. Stock vs stock 670 is 5-10% faster than the 7950 avg. however once both are oced 7950>= 670 besides having more VRAM. I would pick the 670 ESP for superior stock performance etc. however the decision is personal and not fully objective. But given the exact same price, 670 is slightly better though not by a huge margin. However I would anyway pick a 7950 over 660TI. However don't spend more than 28-30k on any of these two cards.
 
Thanks guys for updating me. I just found out that RMA has been pain in you know where for all the brand makes, whether its ASUS, Sapphire, EVGA. All i had in my minds was to get better performance for lesser price compared to Indian market Value. (350$ for 7950 and 409 $ for GT670 )
Should i gamble upon the RMA and get it from there ???
 
buddingwhizkid said:
i say , dont compromise with warranty .
Get the indian version and game with freedom :D
Click to expand...

On an Independence Day that too.

Yes, I strongly suggest that you source the card from an Indian retailer because after sales can be a complete nightmare. In this case the HD7950 wins out and honestly things keep changing. Sometimes its nVidia with the upper-hand and other times AMD just trashes them. Whether you go for a HD79** series card OR the latest and greatest from nVidia's arsenal you are covered and can keep playing games for the coming 3 years in high -->medium settings dependent on the game engine and other factors that come into play.
 
Get it from abroad. The chance of anything going wrong is less than 5%. And if it does, Indian resellers will be way worse with you and will probably take as long. The only downside for a USA reseller will be you will have to pay international shipping, but if you can save at least 10k upfront, then buy from abroad. Better variety and more options available.
 
save 10k :O
ofcourse if it's 10k cheaper buy from outside , but i highly doubt that the price difference could be that huge .
rite said:
Get it from abroad. The chance of anything going wrong is less than 5%. And if it does, Indian resellers will be way worse with you and will probably take as long. The only downside for a USA reseller will be you will have to pay international shipping, but if you can save at least 10k upfront, then buy from abroad. Better variety and more options available.
Click to expand...
 
okay for sake of comparison with benches and with the "updated drivers",here see the benches with max payne 3( a new release and highly optimized for the pc, with very good graphics) : at normal quality at 1680x1050 : Max Payne 3 Graphics and CPU Performance Tested, DirectX 11 Showcased > 1680x1050 - Normal Quality - TechSpot Reviews
at normal quality at 1920x1200 : Max Payne 3 Graphics and CPU Performance Tested, DirectX 11 Showcased > 1920x1200 - Normal Quality - TechSpot Reviews
In both these tests the 7950 loses to the 670 with avg fps of 20-30,while the 7970 also loses with a difference of about 10-15 fps.(Need i say more?I hardly think OP would recover 30 fps with OC'ing,needless to say it isn't impossible to OC the 670 albeit relatively difficult).

at very high quality settings and all resolutions(1680x1050,1920x1200 and even 2560x1600) : Max Payne 3 Graphics and CPU Performance Tested, DirectX 11 Showcased > Very High Quality - TechSpot Reviews

Even now the 7950 still trails the 670 with a loss of 15-23 fps and the 7970 also trails with a loss of 9-15 fps,these results are upto 1920x1080.At the extreme res of 2560x1600 the 7950 still trails with 7 fps while the 7970 loses with only a 3 fps loss.SO EVEN AT THESE EXTREME RESOLUTIONS AND QUALITY SETTINGS THE HIGHER VRAM DOES NOT GIVE THE 7900's ANY EDGE AND THEY LOSE.

In these benchmarks the HD 7950 is absolutely hopeless against the GTX 670 and the 670 even manages to give the HD 7970 a thrashing,not losing once to it.The 680 is in a league of it's own.The choice should be clear now for you OP.
 
People keep making me confused.
I have bumped onto a model 7950 SAPPHIRE 100352OCSR apparently runs a 950MHz clock speed but there exist another OC version of the same which is expensive by atleast 100$?
And GTX 670 DC2T is any day in my bucket list if you are telling me to switch options :)
Please help me finalize with a choice. All i need is a final nail in the coffin, a final verdict.

And help me decide with a brand if to go ahead with 7950 in India For RMA reason.
670 i would def go ahead with ASUS DC2T :D
 
i have a 560ti asus DC2 and it oc'es really well,runs cool and quiet.I highly recommend the 670 dc2t to you,just search for benches online like the one above i have posted and you will see.
and as for overclocking,oc'ing the 670 can be a hassle(if you even need more power than it provides in it's stock condition),this thread here will teach you everything(and help in troubleshooting) : http://www.overclock.net/t/1265110/the-gtx-670-overclocking-master-guide

people are getting to 1.2ghz + stable there,i saw one getting to 1335 core and 7000 mem ,game stable.this of course doesn't mean you also will get to these clocks definitely but it's a start.
 
Considering 7970 Price drop with Newegg Selling For as low as 419$ --> Click or Reference Design MSi 409$--> Click avoid the Diamond(pathetic Support) Cards !

Only reason to lean towards a 670 is better Driver Support -.-
 
aryacooldude said:
Only reason to lean towards a 670 is better Driver Support
Click to expand...

Will you stop using this lame reason to put down AMD, the Catalyst drivers are fine, they run great and I do not know what people find in the nVidia ForceWare driver that makes them say that in the former driver support is poor.

In-fact with the recent updates the performance improvement with the HD7970 is so marked that it has performed at par OR better than the nVidia GTX680.
 
Alpha17 surely doesn't show in the max payne 3 bench i have posted above.also people have been getting 1300mhz on the asus 670 over at ocn.something to note.i am out just buy whatever you want,at this point you have heard everything you possibly can OP,so go for anyone,both are good.
 
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