Solved Advice needed in buying components,7970 or GTX 680?

[shinigami8671]

Like the thread title mentions,i am buying a new rig after selling this current one and really confused about a few things.
First of all,the GPU. Was going for a Zotac GTX 680 in 400$ to be exact but some friends have told me that with the arrival of some new drivers,AMD is head to head with Nvidia now and right now a 7970Ghz edition from Club3d is a good choice which costs about 380$ and i can really put the extra 20$ to good use too. In some benchies its lower then 680 and in some higher.
Also 7970 has 3GB memory and more bits,as i will be using this for the next 3-4 years,wouldnt it be a better choice?
Really confused here so need advice from guys who are using them right now,please share your personal experience,any advice/opinion will be appreciated.
Rest of my PC specs will be:
i5 3570K
GA-P67A-UD5-B3
Gskill Ripjaws 2x4GB 1600Mhz (I reckon 8GB is enough for gaming)
Silverstone Raven RV02 or some other case within 65-70$ as havent decided yet.
And Corsair HX520 as it looks AND performs good and costs 35$ here.

 

[Contrabardus]

7970 is a better card and cheaper. I've got three of them in crossfire. 3GB is the best memory size as well, any higher and it actually slows the card down. I had a couple of 6GB 7970s for a short time, but then I sold them and installed 3 3GB cards and two of them perform and benchmark much better than the two 6GB cards did. Benchmarks were also better on a single card comparison as well.

The 7970 and the GTX 680 performed similarly when initially released, the 7970 had a slight advantage over the 680. However subsequent updates to the Catalyst Control Center have boosted performance for the card even higher, where as the 680 still performs pretty much the same.

If you can get your hands on one of the 7970 ghz Editions it's an even higher performance boost. However, even the base card still beats out the 680 in most benchmarking.

This article details a bunch of benchmarks. Initially it looks like the 680 wins out, but if you keep going through the benchmark scores, the 7970 is clearly the better card for the majority of games and benchmarks. The 680 seems to win out in a few older or less graphically intensive games for some reason, but actually gets beaten out in some of the benchmarks by the 7950.

Source: The Best Graphics Cards: Nvidia vs. AMD Current-Gen Comparison > Test System Specs & 3Dmark 11 - TechSpot

Also, this:

I've yet to run into a game where I can't turn Nvidia PhysX up all the way and have it run smooth despite having AMD cards in my PC. They're powerful enough they can handle the extra physics despite not having a dedicated physics processor. Batman Arkham City and Borderlands 2 both run smoothly with PhysX maxed out. Though, the framerate does drop a little in Batman, it's not enough to create jerky gameplay or lag on my system. The FPS just drops to around 40 or so for a few seconds in particularly busy areas and the game still runs smoothly despite it. [I'm talking about on a single card here, not while running Xfire. Xfire laughs at such things.]

I'm not a particular AMD fanboy. I've had Nvidia cards before and they run well. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on a couple of GTX Titans and throw them into an SLI config. I'd lose my 7970s in a heartbeat if I could do it right now.

However, out of the two cards you mentioned, the AMD card is clearly better, and also cheaper. Go with that.

 

[shinigami8671]

wow that is great news for me,and yes the one im planning on buying is Ghz edition,these are its GPUz:

Also have you ever ran 3Dmark 11 test on performance preset on 1 (single) of your cards? IF so,what was the GPU score? And which 7970's do you have?

 

[Contrabardus]

I've got the Ghz edition 7970 GPU and an I7 3770k CPU. My score on Performance mode for 3Dmark 11 was 12676 and 3639 on Xtreme with a single GPU.

 

[AddRAM]

You should go with the new 7 series GTX

Newegg.com - EVGA 02G-P4-3771-KR GeForce GTX 770 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Video Card

Newegg.com - EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2765-KR GeForce GTX 760 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support w/ EVGA ACX Cooler Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121770

 

[Contrabardus]

You should go with the new 7 series GTX

Newegg.com - EVGA 02G-P4-3771-KR GeForce GTX 770 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Video Card

Newegg.com - EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2765-KR GeForce GTX 760 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support w/ EVGA ACX Cooler Video Card

Newegg.com - ASUS GTX770-DC2OC-2GD5 GeForce GTX 770 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Why?

Neither of those cards is as good as the 7970 ghz edition. The 770 is comparable to the basic 7970, performance is roughly the same, but the Ghz Edition is clearly superior than either card. He's getting a better deal on a card that performs better.

I don't know why you bothered putting the 760 up there. It's not in the same class as the other cards mentioned here, superclocked or not. It's another step down, and that's why it's so much cheaper.

He would need to buy a 780 to do better than a 7970 ghz edition, and it's still more than $600 from what I saw. If he had mentioned that card, I would have said go with that, but a 770 would be a lower performance card for more money. Not to mention the card has less Vram at a lower bitrate. There's no good reason to go that route unless you have a hardon for Nvidia.

PhysX is largely a marketing ploy. In all honesty the vast majority of PhysX games all do things that a decent CPU can handle easily. There are only a few games that use it, most of them aren't that popular, and the ones that are use physics tricks easily handled by most gaming system level CPUs.

Nvidia 3D is not a huge advantage either, it requires specialized equipment and AMD 3D looks just as good and most games that use 3D are optimized for both. Any DirectX game can be run in 3D with a 3rd party program anyway with either card.

The 7970 overclocks much better than the 770. The 7970 outperforms the 770 in the vast majority of benchmarking programs as well. Honestly, the 770 is just a slightly tweaked and overclocked 680 and it has little to no overclocking potential because of that. The 7970 is a beast and can be OCed quite a bit. Even at stock settings the 7970 is roughly equivalent, but if you factor in OCing, then there is no real comparison, the 7970 is a much better card. Not to mention, it comes with 3 free games all of which are awesome. [I believe it's currently: Bioshock Infinite, Farcry Blood Dragon, and Crysis 3.]

Nvidia makes good cards, but there's no good reason to go with the 770 over the 7970 ghz Ed. other than brand loyalty.

 

[MrSH4RKYY]

I have a 7850 nothing compared to the one that you are after but i am going to say go with a GTX 770 like the guy said^^^
or even if you can get the money a 680 the GTX will go well with the i5 but then again the 7970 is a very nice and powerful card!

 

[M1GU31]

I would go with the 7970

 

[TwoCables]

Contrabardus is absolutely correct. This is what all the experts on Overclock.net are saying too. The 7970 is the best option here.

 

[Faladu]

I have a 7950 and ALL the cards mentioned will be fab for a gamer, even mine.

No bad choice, maybe poor PSU that can't handle it, about it.

hwcompare.com maybe help you decide, take them all head to head.

Welcome to top shelf video, it is mighty sweet.

 

[TwoCables]

I have a 7950 and ALL the cards mentioned will be fab for a gamer, even mine.

No bad choice, maybe poor PSU that can't handle it, about it.

hwcompare.com maybe help you decide, take them all head to head.

Welcome to top shelf video, it is mighty sweet.

Oh that PSU is more than enough. Sure it's a little old, but it's still a good unit.

 

[AddRAM]

Alrighty then, here ya go.

Newegg.com - 7970 ghz edition

 

[shinigami8671]

WOAH! Thanks for all the feedback guys!
I Bought the Club3d 7970 Ghz Royal Ace edition,it looked really nice and got it for exactly 380$,although the cooler seems like it should have a few more screws but the performance is top notch. Ran 3dMark 11 and 10K score even with my i3 2100 and 4GB ram,im sure with some upgrades,it will go higher:

Also bought Silverstone SST-ST85F-P 850W psu (yes i know its an overkill) but got it just for 50$ from a dear friend. Also got Sleeping dogs,far cry 3 and 2 other games and a MOH warfighter 20% discount coupon for free with the GPU

Now time for i5 3570K.

 

[shinigami8671]

Also i should mention,even though my previous Antec EA 500 had an 8 pin connector,it didnt fit on the gpu,some of the shapes of the pins were different.

Update:-
My friend bought GTX 760 Gigabyte edition and got 9K score with minimal OCing and as you can see i got 10K with my CPU bottle-necking the GPU and no OC at all,GTX 760 costs 350$ here with 1 year warranty and the 7970 i bought costs 380$ and has 2 year warranty plus the many games i mentioned,so 760 isnt even in the same league. As for GTX 770,its not available in my county yet and even if it was,im sure it would have been more then 400$ here which is out of my budget. 780 although available but costs more then 800$ i think so it was out too.

 

[TwoCables]

Also i should mention,even though my previous Antec EA 500 had an 8 pin connector,it didnt fit on the gpu,some of the shapes of the pins were different.

That's because it's for the CPU.

 

[oneskrewluse]

its going to come down to things like cpu bottle necking, brand preference, and what the actual game engine runs best with for example here are 2 different benchmarks the first is for world of warcraft and the second is call of duty black ops 2
Benchmark Results: World Of Warcraft - AMD Radeon HD 7870 And 7850 Review: Pitcairn Gets Benchmarked
Medium-Detail Benchmark Results - Call Of Duty: Black Ops II Graphics Performance, Benchmarked

this is the same guy testing all these cards under different situations and its kinda funny to see one card beat out another one time and lose the next


i hope i didnt add to the confusion to much

and also alot of people believe seem to say that 4gb of ram is plenty for gaming unless you are multiboxxing . from my experiance with world of warcraft running ventrilo youtube and firefox i never hit the 4gb mark my self unless i multi box

 

[Faladu]

OP, I would consider using a few folders on your desktop, instead of so many icons, it's a performance hit.

7970 though should be wonderful for a few years, I don't see them passing this tier for a while.

 

[Sub Styler]

OP, I would consider using a few folders on your desktop, instead of so many icons, it's a performance hit.

7970 though should be wonderful for a few years, I don't see them passing this tier for a while.

It has been many years since I made this statement, I used to live by it. On old Win98 machines with little RAM and on board graphics I would agree, however scaling a few 32x32px images for modern hardware wont make a difference.

 

[vspeck23]

7970 is a better card but there is a bit of a myth running amd with nvidia or intel with ati is a a big NO NO ! amd and ati utilize their gpu's and cpu's together and same with intel and nvidia, and i assume running crossplatform as it would be foreign ?

thats my humble opinion but the 7970 is better with a higher memory module and has something like over a billion transistors

 

[shinigami8671]

7970 is a better card but there is a bit of a myth running amd with nvidia or intel with ati is a a big NO NO ! amd and ati utilize their gpu's and cpu's together and same with intel and nvidia, and i assume running crossplatform as it would be foreign ?

thats my humble opinion but the 7970 is better with a higher memory module and has something like over a billion transistors

Umm thanks(?) mate
You do know the thread is 6 months old? Bought the 7970 and been more then happy with it since
But still thanks for the input