getting ready to buy a new GPU

[hoofhearted4]

so this is what im planning. Gigabyte 7950

 

any objections?

 

idk when ill be buying it. could be this week. could be a few more weeks. gotta see how the bills fall in first, plus its out of stock atm anyways.

 

 

basically im just seeing what anyone has to say. any better models out there? is it worth the money to bump up to a 7970 or a 670? note, i dont just have the extra money. what i spend is from what ive saved, so i dont want a "ya get the 7970 if you can afford it" because thats not the case. i can afford it if its worth it, otherwise i cannot and will not.

 

thanks for your opinions all!

[Dan3345]

Gigabyte 670

 

Same price as the 7950, but better overclocking. Maybe better thermals. When you get into the 670 vs. 7950 or 680 vs. 7950 its so close in terms of real life performance it doesn't even really matter.

 

So at this point pick whichever brand you like better and go with that. Personally I am a Nvidia guy (EX AMD guy haha), so I would grab the 670. But its your call, and you can't go wrong with either really.

[FMod]

You might be mixing something up here - 670 and 680 have considerably less overclocking headroom than 7900 series. Both 670 and 7950 o/c to about 1100-1200 MHz, 680 and 7970 to 1200-1300. These are constant clocks for Radeons or peak boost for GTX's.

But 670 starts with 1084 MHz boost frequency, which means your overclock is in the 4%-12% range; while for a 7950 that is an overclock of 35%-50%.

[Dan3345]

You might be mixing something up here - 670 and 680 have considerably less overclocking headroom than 7900 series. Both 670 and 7950 o/c to about 1100-1200 MHz, 680 and 7970 to 1200-1300. These are constant clocks for Radeons or peak boost for GTX's.

But 670 starts with 1084 MHz boost frequency, which means your overclock is in the 4%-12% range; while for a 7950 that is an overclock of 35%-50%.

I'm not mixing anything up. My real life experience with three 670's is that we (my friend and I, the friend being the one who bought them) was easily ably to overclock each one up to 1350mhz. We stopped there because anything higher and they weren't stable. He bought the EVGA Superclocked FTW cards, which are binned and tested rigorously by the factory before shipping out though. So that obviously played a big part.

 

Just goes to show, the lottery is a game of who has more money hehe... :psyduck:

Edited December 4, 2012 by Dan3345

[hoofhearted4]

well i dont have a preference as ive never owned a GPU before.

 

and also, now im extremely confused. ive had a Gigabyte 7950 in my inventory for the longest time on Newegg (until i took it out when i bought my PC as i obviously didnt buy the GPU at the same time). i know they had one, and it was $300 (ive spent a lot of time looking at a shopping cart list and prices lol) but now neither Newegg, Amazon, nor TigerDirect have a $300 Gigabyte 7950 listed. soo yea. im confuzzled now. anyways, unless persuaded otherwise, ill be looking at the $300 7950s. if i cannot find that Gigabyte i was looking at then my next option would most likely be MSI 7950

 

unless the Gigabyte 7950 i was looking at was that 3GB model which in reality was $400, but newegg marked it down to $300? im not sure. and i know it was $300 long before Black Friday and even before November, and was at that price for a long time (so it wasnt simply on a sale. as i said, i was looking at my shopping cart list for months lol)

 

 

EDIT: after reading some comments on Newegg, that card was in fact listed for $300. so im not crazy lol. hopefully it will go back to that price once its back in Stock :D

Edited December 4, 2012 by hoofhearted4

[Thor.]

Lol probably because it was such a good deal, for a radeon gigabyte 7950 your gonna have to cough up 500$ else where http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/psyduck.gif

 

Go with msi or Asus, its good thing i go t it when i did, Gigabyte is a really solid card.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Thor.

[FMod]

i know they had one, and it was $300 (ive spent a lot of time looking at a shopping cart list and prices lol) but now neither Newegg, Amazon, nor TigerDirect have a $300 Gigabyte 7950 listed.

If it's not in stock, Sapphire isn't bad either and it's $280: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006

 

I'm not mixing anything up. My real life experience with three 670's is that we (my friend and I, the friend being the one who bought them) was easily ably to overclock each one up to 1350mhz.

This is far above the mean even for non-reference 680's. Reviews don't normally clock that model anywhere near - Fudzilla got 1130, Hexus got 1195, HH seems to have gotten 1160.

 

To give a better statistical overview, here are GPU-Z validations for 670.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/search.php?did=10de-1189-3842-2678

Statistically, after we ignore non-overclocked cards, there are:

 

1153 GK104 validated in the 1100-1200 MHz range (83.8%)

176 in the 1200-1300 MHz range (12.7%)

25 in the 1300-1400 MHz range (1.8%)

20 in 1400-1500 MHz range (1.4%)

 

This comes to 3.2% of user overclocked cards passing validation above 1300 MHz. Since validation clock is higher than stable clock, this corresponds to about 2.2% for 1350 MHz stable (if you stress-test properly). Sub-1200 MHz o/c in reviews for specifically 670 FTW supports the rarity of such clocks. How did you manage to hit boxcars three times in a row? Don't know for sure, but the simplest explanation is that the cards were from the same batch.

 

BTW you may want to look at Tahiti or 7900 series results for comparison:

 

1036 - 1100-1200 MHz (56.1%)

604 - 1200-1300 MHz (32.7%)

184 - 1300-1400 MHz (10.0%)

22 - 1400-1500 MHz (1.2%)

 

This comes down to not only higher increase over stock clock, but also to higher absolute clocks.

[hoofhearted4]

Lol probably because it was such a good deal, for a radeon gigabyte 7950 your gonna have to cough up 500$ else where http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/psyduck.gif

 

Go with msi or Asus, its good thing i go t it when i did, Gigabyte is a really solid card.

no its only $400 normally. and i bet once its in stock again on Newegg itll be back to $300 or close to it.

[Dan3345]

Oh yeah...I was wrong.. They were 7970's. So there ya go, want overclocking? 7950 then, also weren't EVGA but were these.

 

Pretty awesome cards, I just wish for the money you spend on em the crossfire drivers would be better..

Edited December 4, 2012 by Dan3345

[kalikka]

I can say that 7950wf can easily OC to 1150mhz core, without raising the voltages too much (1,218v). Got two of them on my 2 rigs.

My card could easily go over 1200mhz (stable 1200mhz@1,25v) but I rather tone down the noise/heat with lower voltages (61C core and 65C VRM with the new Glide Stream sidefan, so could easily max out the voltages).

 

Update to my vram usage: I did a complete overhaul to my ENB/lighting mods, vram usage dropped by 600mb with RCRN. Now its around 2gb with 3 followers.

Edited December 4, 2012 by kalikka