HD 7970, Win8, and World of Warcraft

[Borek]

Hey guys. I'm building a gaming rig for my girlfriend, and I'm finding it hard not to consider a 7970. Both the after-rebate price point and the free games are very attractive; they make the 7970 a great value. But as this is the first time I'm building a computer for someone other than myself, and as I've never ever paid over $400 for any one piece of hardware in my own rig, I've been researching my ass off for any and all compatibility issues. I want her to be very happy with this machine. We'll be playing other games on this computer, but WoW is the one we'll be sinking the most hours into. I know for a fact that there were problems when running WoW's anti aliasing higher than 2x in Win8. This was addressed by AMD and marked as resolved as of the last driver update.

Regardless of this, I've still seen complaints about computer crashes and low/choppy frame rates. Does anyone here play WoW on Win8 with a 7970? Can you put my mind to ease? I'm seriously entertaining the notion of getting her a 660 ti or 670 to save her some money and hassle. I'm sure a 660ti will drive a 1080 monitor flawlessly with most modern games at max settings.

[TechFan@ic]

You obviously will not need a 7970 to play WoW, something like a 7850 or a regular GTX 660 will be more than capable of doing that.

Remember you can still get all the games that come with the 7970 with an HD 7950, which is an absolute beast, you can overclock it to outperform a 670 overclocked to the max, that was even before the 15% performance improvements that came with the never settle drivers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuXcStgYF8

XFX 7950 DD , for 280$ a great value

http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=677...X&promoid=1366

You will absolute not experience any low/choppy frame rates or crashes with either the 7970 or 7950 and if you do for some reason, it'll be the game's fault not the cards'.

I personally would just drop an HD 7850 or 7870 in there and call it a day, you still get Far Cry 3 for free with either of them.

The card's are smaller so routing cables will be easy, they're quite cool and quiet as well.

[TechFan@ic]

You also get lifetime warranty with XFX when you register your card .

[Borek]

I know the fault won't be with the video card. If anything, the fault will be with AMD's firmware. I already said there have been known issues that AMD themselves said they ironed out.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystSoftwareSuiteVersion1210ReleaseNotes.aspx

My question pertained more towards the synergy between the three (card, game, and OS). I've found reports of continued issues even after the firmware update. I thank you greatly for your suggestions techfanic, I already know what those cards are capable of. But what I'm looking for is more of a validation of a smooth game play experience with this setup rather than some suggestions for video card alternatives. I already have the parts picked out and have done so for various reason, if I don't get the 7970, I'm getting either a 670 or 660ti. Basically though, I'm wondering if anyone has first hand experience with the setup I described.

[xkronusx]

A 7970 for W.O.W? lol it would look amazing and run smooth as hell but probably not even close to needed.

Even at ultra settings with 8xAA your getting over 100 fps, so unless your also going for crysis 3 i would side with the other guys here and say go for a lower card like a 7870,7850 or 660ti

[Borek]

Like I said in the first post, the computer is a gaming rig and we'll be playing games other than Warcraft on it. I realize that other cards will suit that particular game, but the computer is being built to handle modern games in general. The reason I made the thread is because WoW's newest expansion has known issues on Win8, I wanted them to be very minimal before I went the ATI route as this isn't my own computer.

Thanks for looking that up xKronusx, I really do appreciate it. However, that information is outdated as it describes the game's performance from the last expansion and their benchmarks were run on Win7.

Anyway, I put the order in last night. We opted for a 670 in place of the 7970 and are going to get Assasin's Creed III with it for free.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.