7970 vs 680 thread.

[Rusty0611]

It's not about arguing what card is better. Most will make their choice and feel that they have the better card.

It's about performance and what each card can do.

Yes I agree the thread started off like that but the way you and bhaav et al have been trading blows it is now about which is better if you abstract from the mud slinging.

 

[ALXAndy]

i get it , Andy is ****ed cos he paid **** loads for a 7970 when he could have got a 680 and saved some cash for a better card "out of the box" cos he doesnt overclock

Hi. We had all of that about ten pages ago.

As what I believe to be "an enthusiast" I am capable of not letting personal feelings get in the way and finding myself more interested in trying to decipher the truth, and how these cards perform when pitted equally.

IE - at their maximum levels.

Even *IF* the 7970 came out on top that wouldnt' matter. Nor if the 680 was genuinely faster overall.

It's not a new thing for people to get rather excited when a new product comes out and get it a bit wrong when writing a review. Human beings will have a preference, and the Kepler launch was very exciting.

However, it's a bit off when in your excitement you forget to compare the cards properly and fairly and then jump to a conclusion based on your opinions and not in depth details.

So you can see it however you wish. If you think I am annoyed because I bought a 7970, or need to "justify it" or whatever other scenario then that's up to you mate.

If I was really that bothered I would have put it up for sale and ordered a 680. Maybe if the 680 truly was the better card and it was completely clear I would have done? who knows !

However, before I would have even thought about it I would have made sure I had all the facts. Because it would be an expensive mistake to make if there was no difference in it.

 

[LeJosh]

The 680 and 7970 owners should start putting up benchmarks for some healthy competition between the users.

 

[Marshy]

Keep this to healthy banter guys, enough is enough!

 

[hibbet]

ALXandy,it not not dynamically OVERclocking itself thou,the clue is in the name OVER clocking i.e to clock OVER the manufacturers parameters at no point in time does it raise the clocks OVER there own thresholds

 

[jeff6475]

isnt it better and fairer when the cards are pitted against each other out of the box and not when overclocked cos every card wont be the same ?
you pay the money for whats inside the box and whateva you get from overclocking is a freebie

 

[shadow_boxer]

The 680 and 7970 owners should start putting up benchmarks for some healthy competition between the users.

This. I want to see some honest real world gaming performance benchmarks. This is getting boring now...

 

[hiredhelp]

@behavy
I understood next to nothing in your post, it was worded beyond poorly, but this bit is so inaccurate that it stood out.

GTX 680s are selling out fast everywhere, OCUK reported 1 sale per minute.
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Im very sorry im not the best at spelling or writing even at the age of 33.
But its not due to anything other than one self having to start again in life but im not going into my personal reason's so again sorry for my ramblings my poor spelling sir!.

end of the day i was pointing out the GTX im hearing is supposed to be there launch card and yet to have there mid range card out.

But from what i can see i beleave for the price to start at little over £400 for a less than midrange level card is pritty hard to chew.

surely you can see that As with AMD they have launched there fastest single gpu first then launched there next best single gpu after following the budget section of cards.

So if this is gtx starting point and there lowest card IF it is then it mean people on a budget who like a new model nvidia card who cant afford a lot would have to wait some time to buy one.?

As for the 7970 It puts a smile on my face every morning i put on my computer despite if gtx 680 has more meat on the bone.

 

[RavenXXX2]

I suggest this thread be closed and do another one with 99% less BS, OP should request it.

 

[ALXAndy]

I suggest this thread be closed and do another one with 99% less BS, OP should request it.

It should be OK

Hopefully some more information will come to light soon.

Still wondering why Vortez have not reviewed the 680

It's a shame, because they followed up their 7970 review with a series of very interesting articles where they overclocked both the 7970 and the 580.

Oddly there are no posts on the forum to ask why either, so I hope nothing untoward is going on.

ALXandy,it not not dynamically OVERclocking itself thou,the clue is in the name OVER clocking i.e to clock OVER the manufacturers parameters at no point in time does it raise the clocks OVER there own thresholds

I think we have it covered now hibbet. If anything I will simply reword it from overclocking to increasing and or changing frequencies to help frame rates.

There's no point in being pedantic about it now. It is what it is

Whatever you call it, and however you look at it the "function" was purely designed to help with game frame rates.

In the same way that adaptive Vsync was designed and put to use.

And, I reiterate, I think it's very clever. However, I also think that it's unfair to compare a card that does not adjust its clock frequencies.

You never know, AMD may be able to do this on a driver level providing there isn't a clever little doodad bolted onto the 680 that keeps things stable.

I will also mention again that yes, "out of the box" the 680 is indeed the faster card. But, I am not interested in out of the box, I want to see the full capabilities of BOTH cards.

 

[RavenXXX2]

They probably have not received a review sample of anyone, a number of sites did not, even well established ones like techspot.

 

[jeff6475]

isnt it better and fairer when the cards are pitted against each other out of the box and not when overclocked cos every card wont be the same ?
you pay the money for whats inside the box and whateva you get from overclocking is a freebie

 

[ALXAndy]

Hmm. The plot thickens (well, if you're a suspicious git like me )

I just hope this isn't because Vortez did those articles to put the 580/7970 arguments to bed.

I mean they're not a huge outfit, but I usually find what they have to say incredibly interesting.

quote didn't show but I read it.

Jeff. For many a year "out of the box" performance has been deemed completely and utterly irrelevant mate.

What is important is what a product can do when you overclock it and find its true limits, then test it.

For example ; Opteron 140. It was a server part so should have never been worth anything in desktop terms. It was slow out of the box.

However, slap it in a desktop board and overclock it? It was a complete animal and thus, went down in history.

See also - Celeron 300A. It cost around £80 or so. The top end CPU at the time was the Pentium 2 400. The P2 400 used a 100mhz base clock, the Celeron used a 66mhz one.

All you had to do was set the base frequency on the motherboard with a jumper to 100mhz, and providing luck was on your side you ended up with a part that cost less than a third of the high end part and was equally as fast.

Ever since people could overclock they have. And it has gained significant importance. Large coolers, GPU coolers, even software to aid in it.

So to all of a sudden completely want to dismiss that and compare something unfairy? well, I will leave you to work that out.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

With regards to the dynamic boosting that the 680 does, is the suggestion that this is overclocking because it doesn't always run at this and so boost itself when required?

Are there not similarities between this and the way that when I go from doing stuff in 2D to doing 3D stuff (i.e. games) the clocks on my GPU increase to handle the extra work?

So are we saying that the 7970 doesn't do this and runs the same clocks when idling at the desktop as when playing BF3? Surely that's bad for power usage?

 

[Final8y]

Clock for clock is unimportant. As others have said, nobody was demanding clock for clocks benchmarks between the GTX580 and 6970 because AMD had an unfair clockspeed advantage.

All that really matters is performance out of the box, max performance when overclocked, features, and price.
*Performance out of box = pretty much the same (maybe small lead for GTX680 but not by much)
*Performance when overclocked = pretty much the same (I have not seen any reviews which indicate a clear winner here)
*Features = GTX680 has the edge now that it supports multi-monitor. I think most owners will also appreciate turbo boost (it will no doubt become a standard feature for all future graphics cards). Physx is better to have than not (even if it only makes a minor difference), and 3DVision is also important for a small percentage of owners.
*Price = Same, although the RRP for the 680 is $50 lower, savings have not been passed on to consumers yet.

Both cards are effectively equal enough to cause such debate. I personally think the 680 has a small overall edge. All of the people holding off to see what Kepler offered do not seem too disappointed. Gibbo himself has said that 680 launch day sales were much better than 7970 launch sales. Evey 680 here has sold out, but none of OcUK's cheapesr 7970's have sold within the past 2 days. Stock levels for the £429 to £439 7970's have remained exactly the same for the past two days (2, 6 and 6).

I would say the 680m has a small edge and with the features, but for me personally, i would not use most of them, i would disable the auto boost and OC manually as i would like a fixed OC and not a load based boost.

Additive Vsync no thanks, full on for me and variable fps on side monitors would be disabled as well.

And i don't like MLAA or FXAA even more so when its forced and personally i would not buy a 2GB card today for my needs.

 

[ALXAndy]

With regards to the dynamic boosting that the 680 does, is the suggestion that this is overclocking because it doesn't always run at this and so boost itself when required?

Are there not similarities between this and the way that when I go from doing stuff in 2D to doing 3D stuff (i.e. games) the clocks on my GPU increase to handle the extra work?

So are we saying that the 7970 doesn't do this and runs the same clocks when idling at the desktop as when playing BF3? Surely that's bad for power usage?

That's another angle to look at it. But, as with most of the others it's completely unimportant.

What is important is maximum performance.

If the AMD card was adjusting its top side clocks when in games there would be much more of an uproar over it.

But yes. All of these new super wonderful features aside (including zerocore) are not important.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Yes I agree the thread started off like that but the way you and bhaav et al have been trading blows it is now about which is better if you abstract from the mud slinging.

This thread was NEVER started with the intent of having anything practical out of it, but more about trying to forcing own opinion onto others, while putting hands over ears to drown out "noise" they do not wish to hear.

Bottomline is- GTX680 offer a guaranteed 1200MHz core clock on EVERY SINGLE CARD with the backing of warranty, were as the highest factory clocked 7970 is at 1070MHz, and are priced at around £500+. So...I don't see how can someone is thinking straight in trying to convince other that a card that offer auto "overclock" feature is a BAD THING. If anything, shouldn't they being complaining why can't AMD offer this feature as well, or even clock the 7970 at 1200MHz out of the box for the money that they are charging for the card? Simple reason is that they wanted to be seen as highest performance and at a low power consumption, and doesn't want people to see it as high power consumption card when frequency is at 1200MHz. The way I see it, the GTX680's "auto-overclock" as people put it has achieved it with the best of both worlds, which AMD wasn't innovate enough to deliver.

 

[james.miller]

Bottomline is- GTX680 offer a guaranteed 1200MHz core clock on EVERY SINGLE CARD with the backing of warranty, were as the highest factory clocked 7970 is at 1070MHz, and are priced at around £500+. So...I don't see how can someone is thinking straight in trying to convince other that a card that offer auto "overclock" feature is a BAD THING.

except that tech powerup review posted above, i guess?

The way I see it, the GTX680's "auto-overclock" as people put it has achieved it with the best of both worlds, which AMD wasn't innovate enough to deliver.

It's not like it's something they have never done before, TurboCore anyone?

 

[Cyber-Mav]

i just read the reivew at anandtech, the 680 is considerably faster than the 7970 and consumes less power along with providing better image quality while being better priced. cant fault any of that.

kind of shocking to see nvidias mid range card destroy the best that amd have to offer. hopefully amd starts a price war, and we can all benefit.

 

[jeff6475]

im just eyeballing a few reviews i have read and heres 1 that shows overclocked cards aswell as stock performance

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx680/