nVidia or AMD ? i need a upgrade soon

[Scott Webber]

Hi guy's,

Im in a dilemma, infact i have been for a month now, as to what Graphics card to buy, i do more racing then anything else, but on the side i do BF3 & my flight sim, with 3 screens i need a powerful card, at the minute my card is just hanging in there.

iv'e always been with AMD as i did have a bad experience with nVidia with their 8800 GT Series, however i know they are 10x better then what they use to, so i wouldn't mind giving them a go, although i would have no idea how to set the card up (Inspector Gadget programme)

Current Card: XFX AMD 7870 2GBBudget: £320 Max
What card to buy? XFX AMD Radeon HD 7970 Double D Black Edition 3GB GDDR5

or Nvidia

EVGA GTX660Ti SC NVIDIA Graphics Card - 2GB or EVGA GTX 670 FTW 2048MB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI

i know nVidia has the Inspector programme, which is extremely good for gaming & customization, i know the performance in some games is overall better then AMD (performance wise)

if anyone could reccomend one of these cards or a better one, i would highly appreciate it.

 

[Rupe Wilson]

Ive got a GTX 660 TI 3GB and it seems ok to me, but ive not had a chance to give it the beans yet im still saving for my 3 screens..

 

[Jari Vinnari]

Out of those cards the XFX 7970 is perhaps the fastest when using 3 screens.

Here are many benchmarks in 5760 x 1080 resolution -> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_7950_X2_Boost/6.html

Ati 7970 requires one monitor needs to be connected using Displayport.

 

[Mattross]

If you're considering the 7970 and the 670, you should probably scratch the 660ti off the list, especially since you have 3 screens. The 660ti is memory bandwidth limited and a notch or two below the others. I'm also in the market myself and haven't decided whether to go AMD or Nvidia yet. You should look at benchmarks for the titles you play the most, but in general the 7970 should have the performance advantage.

 

[Jim Cole]

It is true that the 7970 has the advantage over the others. The 7970 performs at the level of a GTX 680 or higher, falling a bit short of the 690. I do have to say though that your 7870 should do fine for triple monitors as well and you are not going to see any huge difference going up to the 7970.

Best bet I can offer is have a look at toms hardware and look for an article titled "Best Graphics Card for the Money" followed by the month and year of the article. They put them out frequently and have a hierarchy chart on the last page showing relative performance between AMD and nVidia cards.

Here is a link to the page: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

 

[Mike Sterckx]

I'd go for Nvidia. Problem with todays AMD cards is they can't handle FX(explosoins and such). Massive framedrops, specially in BF3. Don't take my word on it, just youtube some reviews or browse the bf3 forums.

 

[Hampus Andersson]

I´d go with Nvidia, always have always will. Even though they are a little bit more expensive most of the time and perhaps slightly less efficient it´s one hell of a company and they produce drivers for even some of the oldest cards from time to time.

 

[Scott Webber]

i think i may go with the GTX 680, simple fact is nVidia is extremely good with driver's (much better then AMD) and the Inspector is very impressive, the 7970 performance is overall better for most of the game's out there, i checked a few top quality benchmarks for the graphics cards, and the AMD 7970 was always on top, but the downside is.

The card is alot bigger, the power reserve technology (forgot the official name) is not upto par with nVidia,

i shouldn't have put that 670 in there as it's almost as equal to the card i have now, the problem with the card i have now is, there is lag with 3 screens on some games, i wasn't even able to run high settings for euro truck simulator 2 , which btw is not that demanding on graphics.

 

[Tom]

680? Not a bad choice after all. Way better than ATI for sure.*

*This post is not based on the fact that I'm using a GTX680 as well.

 

[Scott Webber]

680? Not a bad choice after all. Way better than ATI for sure.*

*This post is not based on the fact that I'm using a GTX680 as well.

just a question Tom, is it worth it? do you have multi screens? if so im sure it performs great, with or without tweaks in the inspector gadget programme?

 

[Tom]

just a question Tom, is it worth it? do you have multi screens? if so im sure it performs great, with or without tweaks in the inspector gadget programme?

I'm sometimes using multiple screens but rarely and never used them for racing games. It was pretty fun to play StarCraft II etc. on 2 screens. The Inspector can help improving the graphical quality but it's not essential after all. Overall performance is awesome. Even when I'm installing lots of HD mods etc. in F1 2012 (for example) I'm losing like 10 FPS...even tho cars, tracks and everything else are of way better quality.

Let alone playing games like Hitman: Absolution, Black Ops 2, Crysis 2, Crysis 3 etc. - there's literally no game that can make it drop below 30 fps. Granted, my CPU is pretty ok as well. i7-3770 Ivy Bridge. Then again, a GTX680 will be good for at least another 1.5 years.

 

[Scott Webber]

ahh ok nice one tom, i have a i5 2500K Clocked to 4.0Ghz , my question is do you reckon this card will definetely be smooth on triple screen with high settings? if not Ultra

the rest of my pc specs are top notch

 

[Tom]

ahh ok nice one tom, i have a i5 2500K Clocked to 4.0Ghz , my question is do you reckon this card will definetely be smooth on triple screen with high settings? if not Ultra

the rest of my pc specs are top notch

I doubt it won't be. Even if I add 100+ cars in <insert name of game here > it doesn't cause any issues.

 

[Scott Webber]

Thanks Tom, hopefully i'll have it next week then, oh lord, the process of formatting & installing all my games & tweaks again is very Daunting!

 

[Tom]

Uhm why would you want to do that? Unless you're changing your motherboard / CPU as well.

 

[Scott Webber]

Uhm why would you want to do that? Unless you're changing your motherboard / CPU as well.

oh i don't have to? im such a noob , i might even upgrade my CPU & motherboard, i have the money so it might be wise to upgrade now , would i be able to keep my existing ramm?

 

[Tom]

Well, depends. What motherboard / CPU / RAM (exact specs) are you using right now and what do you want to use in the future?

 

[Scott Webber]

Well, depends. What motherboard / CPU / RAM (exact specs) are you using right now and what do you want to use in the future?

here's my specs

OCz Corsair Black Vengance 8GB DDR3 Ram
ATI XFX 7870 2GB DDR5
Intel Core I5 2500K Unlocked 4.0Ghz
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
2TB Hard Drive
240GB SSD OCZ

as for what i want in the future?

no idea, i lost track of the market months back, no idea what is good anymore

 

[Tom]

Well, your CPU is still pretty good and the only thing I'd change, but that's a luxury thing, is the RAM - 16GB can be nice to have if you render videos and / or edit photos. Everything else is still good. Add the GTX680 to that and you're all set.

 

[Jim Cole]

First off Scott, the i5 2500K CPU is still considered to be one of the best gaming CPU's for the money. There is a diminishing point of return when it comes to gaming and CPU power and cores. It has been shown in testing that you get very little if you use a CPU that is more powerful than you would with that i5.

Second of all, yes the 680 is a nice card, but if you are planning on running triple monitors there is going to be 3 times the amount of information that needs to be drawn than on a single screen. If you are lucky, you will be able to run everything the way you want it, but be prepared to have to lower some settings a little in order to maintain a minimum of 30+ FPS. Most likely you would need to turn shadows down as well as adjusting settings for reflections as those 2 things can chew up tons of GPU time.

As for actual performance in game, the HD 7970 is a better option if you want to squeeze the most out of a single card without spending a lot more money. The driver issue that people talk about goes back and forth between nVidia and ATI on a regular basis. One company is doing well and the other company has gotten lazy from the looks of things. Then they wake up and swap places for a little while. AMD is currently working out some microstutter that has been an issue and will be releasing drivers some time soon that should address that issue, but the playability in game for the most part isn't that bad. Most people say they don't even notice the microstutter in racing games unless they look to the outside edges of the monitor to see the scenery go by.

To see what I am talking about, look at a lot of gaming forums out there and see what has been said in the past about nVidia drivers. So many have had to find older drivers to get good results in a game because the new ones were causing issues. Some times people had to go back 3, 4 or even 5 generations of drivers to solve issues.