changing my GPU

rorosas

hey guys,
i have a evga gtx 550 ti fpb and i am planning to change it for a budget of 480$ so If I had somebody outside to buy a new one, what model would you recommend? Even ones that aren't available here?

rorosas

i am a little confused between
Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB GDDR5
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 OC 2GB GDDR5
ASUS HD7850-DC2-2GD5

Nabs

@Rorosas, you're planning to get something for 480$ and you're going for one of those 3? Those happen to perform almost exactly the same by the way.

Beej

the 7850 performs close to a gtx 570. 7870 is very overpriced for the performance. for 480$ i choose gtx 670 id get msi gtx 670 poser edition ( allows for triple overvoltage with upcoming aftrburner), asus gtx 670 dcu II top, or gigabyt gtx 670 oc windforce. or if you prefare/want to try amd id get a 7970.
But 1st whar is ur system and more importantly your psu?

yasamoka

He has a Core i3 3.1GHz, a GTX 550Ti, dunno about the rest (which is the most important :P)

@Nabs: the issue is PCB quality, cooling, overclocking, etc...that's why he's choosing between cards of the same GPU (7850 / 7870)

AvoK95

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Back to the topic:
The graphics cards you've given are the same (except for the HD 7870)

For 480$ you can get a GTX670 from abroad. I think Nabs can ship it to you.

PowerPC

GTX 670, no doubt!
Get the Asus direct cu version.

yasamoka

GTX 670 vs 7970 at that price if from outside, get the 7970. The 7970 GHz edition is $500 and generally beats the GTX 680.

Why is everybody recommending a 670 when he can scale up to the 7970 and 680? You're leaving with $80 that could mean a good difference in performance.

Beej

the ghz edition is just an oc-d version that doesnt oc more than regular one. Yea it does better than most 680s, but has no advantages in other areas. 7970 normal one has better temps, noise, lower heat and lower power consumption. So get a normal 7970 and oc it urself. Se dtill dont know his psu, might not handle 7970.
Anyway op, lebanon with this budget 7850, from outside its 7970 vs 670.

yasamoka

7970 Ghz Edition will either have higher ASIC quality or lower ASIC quality. Higher means that it will clock higher for less voltages but not benefit much from exotic cooling (water-dry ice-ln2), and has better power efficiency. In comparison, lower means that it will clock less for higher voltages but will benefit greatly from exotic cooling, and can take more voltage, as it's leakier and runs hotter, and is less power efficient.

The reviews I have read seem to indicate that more voltage was required to reach high clocks, which may mean that these chips have lower ASIC quality. Binned GPUs usually mean higher ASIC quality, so we still don't know. We need wide availability of those GPUs so we can decide.

Binning GPUs and incorporating them into the GHz edition would mean that the 7970 would be separated into one model with low / mid ASIC and one with mid/high ASIC. This would mean that someone who wants to have a random chance at obtaining a:
1) 7970 with low ASIC and apply extreme OC
2) 7970 with high ASIC and get power efficiency
3) somewhere in the middle

should go for a 7970 right now, as those 3 are all good to get.

Should one aim for either a high ASIC or a low ASIC, he should wait till the GHz edition are widely available.

2 cents.

rorosas

@AvoK95 what card do you suggest ?
@yasamoka same question
@Beej same question
@PowerPC same question

rorosas

i have a 650w psu

AvoK95

rorosas wrote@AvoK95 what card do u suggest ??

Well, they say that the best card for it's value (Bang for the buck) is the GTX 670. However if you're willing to pay 80$ more, then get an HD 7970. I would get something from XFX , Saphire or Asus.

rorosas

i compared the AMD Radeon HD 7850 - 860MHz/4.8GHz 2GB GDDR5 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 - 915MHz/6.006GHz 2GB GDDR5 and look at the results http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549?vs=598
http://www.hwcompare.com/12503/geforce-gtx-670-vs-radeon-hd-7850/
and from amazon the gtx 670 is only for 400$ http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Dual-Link-Graphics-02G-P4-2670-KR/dp/B007Z3HZIA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1340567077&sr=8-2&keywords=gtx+670
check this video by the way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Lk_O5HNmo
and this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1tPmYXVXqg

rorosas

so you say that the hd 7970 is better than gtx 670?

Beej

Yes the 7970 is the better card between these two. So its up to you to choose, brute force with aggressive oc or efficiency,low heat, low temps and noise... ofcourse most of these wont matter if you go non-ref cards.

rorosas

there is also the Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 , is it good? or the gtx 670 is better ?

rorosas

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200.html
if you see the table that compares the gtx 670 680 and hd radeon 7970 and 7950
we see that the radeon 7950 is better in shaders , and memory bandwidth than the gtx 670 .
those these have a great influence on the games ??

AvoK95

All ATI graphics cards are better in shaders than Nvidia.
That's why they perform so well, and yes this does benefit in the latest games.

yasamoka

rorosas wrotehttp://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200.html
if you see the table that compares the gtx 670 680 and hd radeon 7970 and 7950
we see that the radeon 7950 is better in shaders , and memory bandwidth than the gtx 670 .
those these have a great influence on the games ??

No they aren't directly comparable. AMD has more shaders but the architectures are different. In general, the AMD cards have more raw horsepower than the equivalent Nvidia cards, but Nvidia's game experiences tend to be optimized more, and usually games do not completely make use of additional features that may provide an advantage @AMD compared to Nvidia. Example of this is Dirt Showdown:

http://www.techspot.com/review/546-amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/page7.html

This game uses compute (meaning different from gaming features) to give us something called "Global Illumination", the first of its kind and discussed in the article.

@2560 x 1600, the GTX680 performs similar to the GTX 580 and runs at 44FPS, so it is most probably not driver issues, but actual hardware limitation. Even the Radeon HD7870 performs better here. The 7970 GHz edition scores a whopping 67FPS, 52% higher! (The 7970 is a compute monster). This is something to pay attention to closely. In case games in the future depend heavily on compute, the GTX670 / 680 would get slaughtered.