POST YOUR SPECS

[Pidesco]

While the 7950 is much cheaper than a 670, the 670 is still noticeably faster than the AMD card, and in fact it performs about the same as the 7970 which, despite the price cut is still more expensive the Nvidia card.

 

At least in Europe, choosing between the 7950 and 670 is a question of budget. If your budget can take it the 670 is still the better choice.

[Humanoid]

I did leave off a reminder that I run a comparatively high resolution of 2560x1440. But even ignoring that, the real comparison is as mentioned: willingness to overclock. Given the tight restrictions (no voltage tweaking) on doing so on Kepler, it means that the 7970 at 1100MHz+ is now on average the fastest single GPU, and the 7950 (admittedly at clocks I personally won't run) given the right treatment does the same to the 670 (again, at about 1100MHz). At high resolutions AMD has had the advantage since the start, and now it's a big one. A lot of current perception may say otherwise, but that's based on outdated launch reviews and benches: it's both damning and encouraging, but driver revisions have closed the gap completely since then (recall AMD had massive issues with Battlefield 3 initially).

 

In general, the 79xx series scales better than Kepler with clocks (almost linearly at parts of the curve), which is a complete reversal of the previous 69xx series which barely responded to clock boosts. And the overclocking headroom is massive, the 7950 stock core is at 800MHz, and easily reaches 1000MHz (a 25% boost) without touching the voltage, and at ~1.2V should generally hit about 1150-1200MHz, that's up to a massive 50% increase. The 7970 for what it's worth reaches around the same clocks from a 925MHz base (1050 for the GE editions being rolled out now - but don't bother buying the GE really).

 

Being out here on the other side of the world gives me little knowledge of worldwide pricing, but given the US pricing I've seen - placing the 7970 at barely over 670 pricing, means that for the majority of cases the 7970 is the superior investment.

 

Graphs and numbers below the line representative of my resolution (though not of the games I play), feel free to skip this part as it's admittedly boring.

 

---

 

 

Some graphs to back me up on both the scaling point and the overall performance - first up is the ubiquitous BF3, an nV stronghold until fairly recently. The blue bar is the 7950 at factory settings, the green bar is at 1025MHz. I do believe the AA advantages AMD here, but I always run AA.

 

 

 

 

Going up to 2560x1600 - blue is 925MHz, green is 1050MHz, with the 7950 there at its stock 800MHz:

 

 

 

 

Skyrim, another strong nV title, until recently:

 

 

 

 

ARMA2

 

 

 

 

Also have a fairly recent comparison between the top custom designs for both the 7970 and the 680 here: http://www.xbitlabs....n-hd7970_6.html

 

Plus some raw numbers: http://www.xbitlabs..../zfulltable.png

 

P.S. For multi-GPU purposes though, yes, I would go with Kepler for the time being. (But personally I don't think I'll ever bother with either vendor's multi-GPU solutions) I like to think I'm pretty vendor neutral, GPU history is HD7950 - HD5850 - 8800GT - X1950XT - 7900GT - 9800Pro - 4200Ti - 500Ti. Heh, that's perfectly symmetrical.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Humanoid

[Humanoid]

Noting that my previous post has little value as general buying advice, I'll add that here instead, separated by what I think are the common circumstances for someone looking at getting a highish-end card. Assumptions are that pricing is roughly in line with the US pricing I had ($320-330 for the 7950; $400 for the GTX670; $420-430 for the HD7970; and $500 for the GTX680) and that the advice in general is applicable when comparing reference vs reference and custom vs custom.

 

Medium resolution, no overclocking

The cards broadly perform to their place on the price curve, with the 670 slightly overperforming, making it the best buy in this category especially when added to it running cooler and more efficient. As previously mentioned though, avoid the reference design like the plague, which is easy enough to do given Gigabyte sell their excellent custom design for the same price as other vendor's reference cards.

 

Medium resolution, overclocked

Here the respective AMD cards catch up to their nominal tier matches in terms of performance, though at a cost of a fair bit of heat and power (and consequently noise). A ~$70 saving on the purchase price goes a fair way towards closing the gap however. Ultimately your power supply and case cooling may have a good say in which way you go here.

 

High resolution, no overclocking

The main difference here compared to the medium resolution case is that the 670 loses its edge over the 7970, both in absolute performance and price-weighted performance. AMD edges this segment unless plans are made to add a second card later.

 

High resolution, overclocked

AMD clear win, matching or beating the equivalent nV cards even with a mild overclock let alone a maxed one. Again multi-GPU muddies the issue a little, but given the gap in price and in performance, it's tempting to go CF anyway in this segment.

[Pidesco]

Thanks for all that.

[Gorth]

Current parts:

Antec Performance One P182

Antec TruePower Quatro 1200 PSU

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 Motherboard (water cooled)

12Gb (6x2GB) Corsair XMP DDR3 (running at 1600Mhz)

Intel I7 960 (3.2GHz) with EK Waterblock

Creative PCI EXPRESS X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series

Samsung 30" SyncMaster 305T+ (same model as the 'dead' one)

Koolance RP-1005 (Reservoir and pump)

EVGA GeForce GTX 590 Classified Hydro Copper

DAS Keyboard ('S' as in "silent")

EK external Radiator

4TB Hitachi external HDD (USB3)

 

Windows 7 Ultimate

 

Various peripherals: Wacom tablet, Microsoft LiveCam, Microsoft 5 button mouse (very old), Saitek X52 Pro flight stick, various external HDD and USB sticks

 

To-do:

Get external 7.1 amplifier plus subwoofer

 

New:

Got a new Corsair Force Series GS 240GB SSD added to the list. Won't arrive before Monday though, then it's time to carry out an old threat, to finally wipe my c: drive and reinstall Windows after 2 years (on the new SSD drive).

[Gorth]

My old 5 button Microsoft Mouse has finally died on me after almost 10 years. It's like saying good bye to an old friend

 

Not having been in a market for a mouse for a very long time, I was at a bit of a loss, so I ended up buying a SteelSeries Sensei Professional Laser Mouse (or some such fancy name). It kind of sucks buying a mouse online, because you can't try it out, how it fit in your hand.

 

Oh, and I definitely need a bigger case some day, but that's a worry for another day.

[Humanoid]

Heh, just replaced a mouse too, but in my case it's because I got sick of trying to manoeuvre a mouse around a coffee table, so I picked up a Logitech M570 wireless trackball. It's a known quantity for me since I already have the corded version that I use for my notebook, but still, it's a market that I wished had more options. I'm also a big fan of Logitech's free spinning Revolution scroll wheels, so I hope that someday that gets implemented in a trackball.

 

 

Also bought a 4-drive HDD enclosure for my HTPC which was running out of space (12GB filed to the brim), but can't bring myself to buy enough drives at current prices to fill it up, so at the moment I only have one 2TB disk in it which I had spare (from back when they were <$70 a piece *sigh*). It's a Vantec NexStar HX4, and while the chassis is fine, the stock fan it uses is a horrible grindy thing - not sure if it's faulty or just crap. Luckily it seems to be a simple two-pin 80mm case fan, so it should be fairly simple to replace - except all the spare fans I have are 120mm. Blergh. Guess I'll try oiling the hub for now.

 

Oh, had to add a USB 3.0 expansion card to the HTPC as well to run the thing properly since in my spectacular lack of foresight a couple years back I thought that saving $20 on the motherboard in exchange for USB 2.0 only ports was a good deal. 4-port "Astrotek" (looks generic to me), seems to be working fine. Doesn't require an extra molex plug which is nice.

[PsychoYoshi]

CPU: FX-8120 OC'd to 3.9 Ghz, (not as bad for gaming as Intel and several tech sites would have you believe, especially with Win8 RP) [courtesy of AMD]

Mobo: Asus Sabertooth 990FX

GPU: Palit Geforce 560 Sonic Platinum

Memory: 8GB G. Skill DDR3-1600

PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M600

Case: Cooler Master CM690II Advanced

Boot Drive: 64GB Crucial m4

Main Drive: 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue

Sound Card: Asus Xonar DG

 

Cheap little MS mouse.

Cheap pair of Logitech speakers.

Steelseries Shift keyboard [courtesy of Intel]

 

She's a good little machine that serves my purposes; I might consider jumping for a HD7850/70 in the near future so that I can partake in a few more high-def tex mods in Skyrim.

Edited September 17, 2012 by PsychoYoshi

[Syraxis]

Desktop:

 

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.2 ghz

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 5770 1GB vRAM

Memory: 4gb DRR2

HDD: 250gb seagate SATA

SOUND: SoundBlaster Audigy SE (old as hell but it works fine)

OS: Windows 7 64 bit

 

Laptop 1:

 

Acer Aspire 4551

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 P320 - @.1 ghz

AMD Mobiliuty Radeon HD 4250 (shared memory, up to 1.4 gb)

Memory: 3gb DDR3 memory

320 GB HDD

OS: Linux Mint - "Maya" Release, MATE desktop

 

Laptop 2:

 

MacBook Pro mid 2007 edition

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 ghz

Geforce 8600m GT 512mb vram

2GB DDR2 RAM*

120 GB HDD *

OS: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

 

*To be upgraded

[datiswous]

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 240e 2800MHz

Mobo: Asus M4N78-AM

GPU: ATI Radeon 4850 (with silent modded dualorb)

Memory: 2 x 2gb ddr2

Case: Lian Li A50N (with top hole for 140mm fan and side window)

Power: Antec NEO HE 500 (or similar)

Boot/install drive: 128GB Vertex 4

Storage Drive: 1TB 5400rpm Samsung

Sound Card: Creative Xfi gamers edition / onboard VIA sound card (use this now because of driver issues with the creative card under Windows 7 64bit)

[Sensuki]

CPU: Intel Core2Quad Q9550 2.83GHz

Cooler: Noctua NH-C12P

RAM: 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-1066

GPU: 1GB Sapphire Radeon HD4890 Vapor-X

MB: Asus P5N-E SLI

Case: Fractal Design Define R2

PSU: Corsair HX-650

OS: Windows XP SP2

Storage:IOCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD + 3 x 1TB HDDs (diff brands)

Sound Card: Creative Professional E-MU 0404

Monitors: Sony GDM-FW900 24" CRT / Alienware AW2310 120HZ 23" LCD

Keyboard: 1987 IBM Model M 1391401

Mouse: Logitech MX-518 1600dpi version (I use 400 dpi no accel)

Headphones: Sennheiser HD650 (I have a few headphone amps too)

 

I have an i7 system as well but it has no case or psu

 

My old 5 button Microsoft Mouse has finally died on me after almost 10 years. It's like saying good bye to an old friend

 

 

Why not just get another one ? (was it a v3 or the 1.1a? 1.1a is hard to find but v3 is still pretty common) Great mice hey. I have a v3 as well.

Edited October 11, 2012 by Sensuki

[Gorth]

My old 5 button Microsoft Mouse has finally died on me after almost 10 years. It's like saying good bye to an old friend

Why not just get another one ? (was it a v3 or the 1.1a? 1.1a is hard to find but v3 is still pretty common) Great mice hey. I have a v3 as well.

To be honest, I have no idea what it's exact denomination is/was. It said IntelliMouse Optical (no version no.) USB and PS/2 compatible on the underside.

 

I need a mouse pad now, but I don't think I'm going to wait for the PE one in 2014, I need one here and now, but at least the cost of those are trivial.

[Humanoid]

I buy $2 foam mouse pads from Big W every 6 months or so.

[Gorth]

I paid $100 for the mouse. I better treat it to a mouse pad with Jacuzzi and personal trainer.

[Sensuki]

http://www.puretrak.com/products/item/6

 

 

:D

 

or something similar

 

I use a Razer Mantis Speed, it's worn down a bit but it's still fine.

[Gorth]

@Sensuki:

 

I may not get the exact same (I have my "regular" online stores where I shop, so it sometimes depends on availability), but it looks good.

[Sensuki]

well I can recommend these

 

Razer Goliathus Speed (pretty cheap too)

Steelseries QcK+ / QcK Heavy (but they start to wear out faster than they used to when I had one 5 years ago)

Puretrak Talent

 

But there's all sorts of stuff out now that I haven't tried.

[Maf]

CPU: Intel i7-3930K C2 4.1GHz

Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 SE2011

RAM: 64GB OCZ RipjawsZ CL10

GPU: SAPPHIRE HD 7950 OC 3GB

MB: Asus Maximus IV Extreme

Case: Antec P280

PSU: Corsair AX850

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Storage:ICorsair 256GB M4 + 2 x 2TB HDDs (RAID1)

Soundcard: Asus Xonar Essence STX

Monitor: Pioneer KRP600M

Speakers: B&W 803D

Keyboard: Logitech K800 Illuminated Wireless

Mouse: Logitech Performance MX Wireless

 

Who says console gamers are the only couch+tv gamers?

 

Woops made a mistake, got the Sapphire 7950 instead of the 7970 because the latter wasn't fitted as a Dual-X fan version until later.

As complete computer silence was one of my goals, I had to cut a corner there!

Also, I LOVE the K800 Illuminated Wireless keyboard.

You couldn't pry that thing from my cold dead fingers!

Edited October 12, 2012 by Maf

[molarBear]

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+

GPU: Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS

need i say more? mine is a relic.

but i have logitech performance mouse mx, if it counts for anything

[Maf]

MB: Asus Maximus IV Extreme

And that should be the Rampage IV Extreme doh.

Good story actually:

I received the Giga-byte GA-X79-UD5 in my first order.

When I noticed an odd noise coming from the VRM area.

Couldn't locate where it came from exactly but it didn't sit well so I searched online for answers.

the answer I got was the following:

http://www.techpower...therboards.html

And even better (scroll to 3:40):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-QALLfb2cE

Only time I made use of a 14day return period.

[Lord Kelric]

CPU: Intel i7-3930K C2 4.1GHz

Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 SE2011

RAM: 64GB OCZ RipjawsZ CL10

GPU: SAPPHIRE HD 7950 OC 3GB

MB: Asus Maximus IV Extreme

Case: Antec P280

PSU: Corsair AX850

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Storage:ICorsair 256GB M4 + 2 x 2TB HDDs (RAID1)

Soundcard: Asus Xonar Essence STX

Monitor: Pioneer KRP600M

Speakers: B&W 803D

Keyboard: Logitech K800 Illuminated Wireless

Mouse: Logitech Performance MX Wireless

 

Now that is quite a system...B&W 803D??!!'s Very nice indeed.

[Janmanden]

It seems that my move to a different country has opened some new doors (while closing others).

 

I got myself a new (relatively speaking in context with an ATi HD 4850) graphics card; the AMD HD 6930, which is a special version that was launched quietly by AMD for the chinese and russian markets. As far as I understand it's a card with a few defects, that keeps it away from being a full 6950/70. The only real minus about his cheap card, that cost me €140, is that the twin cooling system is insanely noisy, even at the lowest setting the cooler is clearly audible in the mess of my new Airport PSU, but fortunately the Artic Accelero Twin Turbo I had on my HD4850 fits the HD6930 as well. It's a rather big minus in a way considering that it looks like a pretty good cooler shamed by a horribly noisy twin cooling fan.

 

I wish there were custom fans for PSU's as well, because that big 140mm fan on the Chieftec 650 CS14 is a hell of a lot more noisy than I thought it would be with such a big fan.

 

Now I just need to add a big SSD, but unfortunately that was one of the doors that closed.

[Humanoid]

It seems that my move to a different country has opened some new doors (while closing others).

 

I got myself a new (relatively speaking in context with an ATi HD 4850) graphics card; the AMD HD 6930, which is a special version that was launched quietly by AMD for the chinese and russian markets. As far as I understand it's a card with a few defects, that keeps it away from being a full 6950/70. The only real minus about his cheap card, that cost me €140, is that the twin cooling system is insanely noisy, even at the lowest setting the cooler is clearly audible in the mess of my new Airport PSU, but fortunately the Artic Accelero Twin Turbo I had on my HD4850 fits the HD6930 as well. It's a rather big minus in a way considering that it looks like a pretty good cooler shamed by a horribly noisy twin cooling fan.

 

I wish there were custom fans for PSU's as well, because that big 140mm fan on the Chieftec 650 CS14 is a hell of a lot more noisy than I thought it would be with such a big fan.

 

Now I just need to add a big SSD, but unfortunately that was one of the doors that closed.

 

If anything, PSU fan swaps are easier than messing around with video card coolers. After all, cheap standard parts lead to lower parts costs for the manufacturer.

 

Don't know about your specific circumstance of course.

[Bokishi]

Was due for a new keyboard so I just got the Razer Deathstalker Ultimate

[Archmage Silver]

Here's my setup, put together in February 2012:

 

GPU: Asus Radeon HD 6950 2GB DirectCU II @ 870/5300 MHz (1536 Shaders)

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K Sandy Bridge Quad-Core @ 4.0 GHz

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

Mobo: Asus P8Z68-V LE, Intel Z68 Chipset, UEFI

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB Low Profile 1600 MHz DDR3 @ 9-9-9-24 CR T1

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache, SATA 6GB/s

Sound Card: Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer, 7.1 Channels

 

Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus

DVD-RW: Asus DRW-24B3ST, SATA

Front Fan: Cooler Master MegaFlow 200mm

Top Fan: Cooler Master MegaFlow 200mm @ 500 RPM (Zalman Fan Mate 2)

Rear Fan: Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP-13 120mm

PSU: Seasonic X-Series X-660, 80 PLUS Gold Certified

 

Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp U2412M, 5ms G2G @ 1920x1200

Mouse: Logitech G400

Keyboard: Logitech G110

Headphones: Sennheiser HD 555

Edited October 17, 2012 by Archmage Silver