The Best Graphics Cards: Full AMD and Nvidia GPU Comparison with Latest Drivers

Umm.

Your the one that has to deal with it steve will not be adding your card to the graphs anytime soon.

You posted a complain about an NV card that was not in the review ????

so what was your intention???

1. The AVG at the bottom of every graph means average, also when discussing the results we mentioned it was the average frame rate dozens of times.
2. Not really sure how it is “kinda useless” but yes we benchmark in the single player portion of the game just like every other review out there. The reason for that is simple, you cannot accurately benchmark the multiplayer aspect of the game.
3. That is the point of including CPU and GPU performance in our game articles. Most games are not CPU dependent at all so I am not sure what nightmare you are speaking of.

I have tested these higher frame buffer cards and at resolutions equal to or less than 2560x1600 they make zero difference. Where they do make a difference you need more than two of them for playable performance. In short including a 4GB GTX 680 for example would have been a complete waste of time and we would have just doubled up on GTX 680 results.

Actually, I have a comment.

As a business owner and someone looking to buy some new cards, I found this review to be off-putting on the inventory used for the tests, alone.

Hard and many other reviews, when they do a real review, compare like cards, compare like product and from that like-basis, create a logical hypothesis and then come to a grounded conclusion.

Unfortunately, you didn't review like-product.

You chose, as your flagship, a 15% OC'd 7970 and then, regardless of price-point, pitted it against a stock 680...Only to raise it's "hand" in victory.

Shall we start racing Ferraris against Smart Cars and calling it fair game?

What I find worse about this is the attitude portrayed by the staff...A 690 is a retail product, regardless of it's price point, there isn't one reviewed which, from the standpoint of a legitimate test, is a big deal...

The OC'd MSI Lightning 680 was available at the time of these tests and the fact that it wasn't used...Is either incredibly biased or incredibly ignorant.

Your tests show the OC'd 7970 beating the 680 by 10% on average...It's interesting that the stock MSI lightning OC is @15%...Wonder who would've won head to head in a real challenge.

What respect I had for TS actually just vanished...Enjoy racing those Ferraris.

Techspot is one top bench site ...everyone can express their opinion as guest even if you are not a regular member of the site....this bench site is not like stomp of Intel /amd / nvi fan base...the site is for everyone to see and comment their opinions...hence truly unbiased and I love this site very much....thanks to all staff members of tech spot

Man.. you should see these AMD kids on OCN after this. It's like watching one gigantic AMD circle-jerk from afar.

Yes,similarly person jerking more money on hyped nvidia

Nvi--take more money give lesser product....by how--brainwashed marketing
give less specs(680-7970:3.54 b trans vs 4.3 b trans,256 vs 384-bit,1536 vs 2048 shaders)
but still our product are good how how how????-brainwashed marketing

that's nvi for u

txaa --oh nvi's new feature but but but what-----a blurry mess w.r.t radeon pro smaa

how many more would I go-on on nvi---will take pages....

I couldn't agree more. The boosted GTX 670 beats even the 680 making it a far better card than AMD's 7950 with boost. Not to mention Physx support, which as far as I remember AMD has no support to.

My apologies for being another 'Guest' poster since this will likely become confusing due to the number of us. Refer to me as Guest10011011 if need be.

To the people making comments about the 680 boosted variants being offered in the market we need to keep in mind that these are -not- reference boards and, as such, should have better performance than the reference board.

If you want to compare non-reference cards to something then you need to compare them to other non-reference cards.

In other words, this article is comparing the base graphic cards to base graphic cards as designated by the companies producing them.

That means a -base- 7970 is deemed to be of better value than a -base- 680.

Individual implementations of these cards will vary and there will definitely be some 680 cards that are faster than some 7970s. But, as a whole, the 7970s (note, this is NOT the overclocked variant) are still, for the most part, a better value than the 680s.

Overall Nice article

However I just obtained an XFX 6870 for my FIL for $120 after rebate. Given the class etc etc.. it is hands down the $/value winner IMO. (esp for the gaming he does. I'm still happily running a 1st gen reference XFX 6950 mod'd to 6970 here)

Amazing, when AMD pulls ahead in something, the Nvidia fans go crazy over it... Something just had to be wrong with the testing methods!

When Nvidia is on top, you hear no such arguments.

Amazing article. I'd have like to see the hd6850 there, but I can guess it'd be a bit below the 6870. I always thought the gtx680 was the king of the hill, but now I see things have changed with new drivers.
Dou you guys thinks it'll be worthwhile moving from 12.6 to those new 12.11 catalyst drivers. My card is a hd6850.

Thanks!!

These nvi troll boys always speaks rash with no research....they say boosted 670....WTH!!!
gtx 670 is already a boosted card 915-980 MHz on launch date.....
but hd 7950 does not get the boost on launch day and released for fixed clock for 800 mhz in launch day due to technical reasons....

later amd fixed it through bios update the boost clock from 800-925 MHz....
hence it's called 7950 boost as amd fixed it later for ref 7950 non-boost card ....

therefore,both 7950 and 670 supports boost and comparisons are fair and square.......

Hardly 5-6 games (arkham city,asylum,borderlands 1,2,mirror's edge) uses physx....it's simply non-existent (nvi shrewd marketing ploy).......if for that someone can sprout way more hard earned cash to nvi (eg -ref 7970 vs ref 680:379$ vs 479$),,,,,then leave it to them to make nvi make more money for this blind fan boys

Now a days heavyweight games are starting to use lots of v-ram for high texture usage and other ultra graphical details......eg- graphically intense games as sleeping dogs uses 1919 mb of vram @ 1080p maxed.....absolution 1606 MB @ 1080p maxed.....war fighter uses 1455 MB vram @ 1080p maxed

....these games and future types oncoming are bandwidth hungry games.....on that gtx 680 and 670 with 2 GB 256 bit are showing their crippling side-effect from now-on,,,,,these side effects are--low relative fps and micro stuttering....

I'll have what she's having.

Not at 1080p, there isn't any difference between a 2GB and 4GB GTX 680 at 2560x1600 in any of today's game regardless of settings... the same is even true at 5040x1050 which has almost 30% more pixels than 2560x1600.

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_680_4gb,1.html

Don't get it what the other says as business owner but yes, u are right Steve...there's no diff between gtx 680 2 gb and 4 gb....and more over that 256-bit of 680/670 is really crippling for bandwidth hungry games as sleeping dogs,absolution ......etc..

and this are the link of great cf in amd cards--

http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/11/15/the-crazy-good-value-of-amd-crossfire-technology/

Galaxy 68NQH6DN6DXZ Ge Force GTX 680 GC 4GB 256-bit is 560$
......jeeesss how much more they will suck from their blind fans....

....just 2 to 4 GB increase and take 80$ more for that....haaaa nvi what damn tool are you made of...and with such puny factory oc...evga costs 550$ with even more puny factory oc ref design....

Devs say:

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/h...ution_assets_were_built_for_high-end_pcs.html


http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/14/h...mans-suit-looks-ten-times-more-awesome-on-pc/

@Steve

Interesting read. I was just going to buy a GTX 670 FTW card but then I heard about the latest amd drivers doing wonders for their 7 series cards. Afterwards I came across this article.

Everything seems dandy and the 7970ghz seems a beast but I'm confused as to why the 670 FTW edition wasn't compared here.

Any idea of the BF3 scores between 7970ghz and 670 FTW? (both with updated drivers).