GTX 770 or HD 7970 ?

[MrSufyaan]

Considering an upgrade later this year.

 

I've got a budget of around £300/$450 and was hoping to get some advice on which cards will get the most out of the money.

 

Got my eye on the GTX 770 but the 3GB 7970 is tempting too.

[david cassar]

Considering an upgrade later this year.

 

I've got a budget of around £300/$450 and was hoping to get some advice on which cards will get the most out of the money.

 

Got my eye on the GTX 770 but the 3GB 7970 is tempting too.

The gtx 770 is faster and produces less heat and uses less power and it is also newer. 

[Samskip]

If you are going to upgrade later this year maybe wait for the ned amd hd series. (Q4 2013)

[MrSufyaan]

The gtx 780 is faster and produces less heat and uses less power and it is also newer. 

Yes but the 780 is way out of my budget

 

unless you meant 770

[david cassar]

Yes but the 780 is way out of my budget

 

unless you meant 770

sorry meant gtx 770

[GamerDude]

If you are going to upgrade later this year maybe wait for the ned amd hd series. (Q4 2013)

That's what I'm going to do, wait for Volcanic Islands, if it is as fast as I believe it to be, going to grab a couple top tier cards at the very least.

[MrSufyaan]

sorry meant gtx 770

Thought so!

The only thing holding me back  is the 2GB in the 770 other than that  it's a great card

 

If you are going to upgrade later this year maybe wait for the ned amd hd series. (Q4 2013)

if the price is good then i'm willing to wait and see what they have to offer.

[david cassar]

Thought so!

The only thing holding me back  is the 2GB in the 770 other than that  it's a great card

 

if the price is good then i'm willing to wait and see what they have to offer.

2gb is enough for 1080p and 1440p

[ERSCreeper]

2gb is enough for 1080p and 1440p

 

I have a 3Gb card and some games get to about 1.7Gb so for me at 1080P I would rather have more than less :P

[Mac69]

if you going to play in 1080p the 2G 770 will be better as you dont need more than 2 for 1080p. 

[RaVenBelgium]

if you going to play in 1080p the 2G 770 will be better as you dont need more than 2 for 1080p. 

Was going to say exactly the same :D

[PCBudgetSolutions]

if you going to play in 1080p the 2G 770 will be better as you dont need more than 2 for 1080p. 

Also factor in that Vram stores textures and such to be rendered.  The faster the ram the less textures have to be stored.  Especially since 7600-8000MHz memory clock isn't a difficult feat.  Now given OC to OC they are pretty even in theory once newer drivers come out to fix the issue with GPU Boost 2.0 and such, but is the 40-50 dollar less price point worth 4 games is the question.

[DontUSASme]

I'd say 770 just because it is a newer card and I think the added value in GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay is a great offer. If you do Bitcoin mining, go AMD though.

[Kruziik_Kel]

Personally I see the 7970 to be a better value card than the 770, being that the 770 is just a higher binned 680 its not a whole lot better than a 680 which in most cases is worse then the 7970.

It really depends on what you are doing if the 770 benches significantly higher in what you are doing go for it, or just get a 680 the chips being identical only difference is 770 is a bit higher binned otherwise id go with the 7970 and get the free games which only add more value to the already cheaper and in many areas better card

[felixbearpig]

I'd say 770 just because it is a newer card and I think the added value in GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay is a great offer. If you do Bitcoin mining, go AMD though.

all kepler based cards have shadow play and all gtx 2xx and up have geforce experience 

[rodrigorodrigues]

Well, you also should factor in the Never Settle Bundle, if you don't already own these games: http://sites.amd.com/us/promo/never-settle/Pages/nsreloaded.aspx

 

That's A LOT of value you can squeeze out of your GPU purchase.

[MzCatieB]

i <3 the cooler on the Titan/780/770. if i wasnt set on liquid cooling mine i would take of the cover and spray all the metal parts to match the system... then do nothing else to it cause it would be sexy as f#@k

[DontUSASme]

all kepler based cards have shadow play and all gtx 2xx and up have geforce experience 

Only the ones with H.264 encoders. As far as I know that's only the Titan, 780 and 770.

[felixbearpig]

Only the ones with H.264 encoders. As far as I know that's only the Titan, 780 and 770.

770 has a GK-104.. same as 680,670,660ti, 

[eshbop]

I have a 3Gb card and some games get to about 1.7Gb so for me at 1080P I would rather have more than less :P

Spot on, I'd try and get a 3Gb (maybe higher) card for 1080p now days.

 

Only 1.5-2years ago the top end cards had ~1Gb RAM, 2Gb models where the exception. If you plan on keeping the card for ~2 years, especially considering the effect console gaming may have on PCs then more GDDR5 is never going to hurt. Even more so important with resolutions over 1080p.

 

I max out my 2Gb frame buffer on 1200p.

 

I could be wrong, but given the similarities between the 770 and 680 I don't think they're will be huge performance gains from a Driver perspective (see 500 to 600 series). GPU Boost still needs to be tweaked but these cards still have clock speed limits no matter how cool you can get them. Voltage delivered through the chip plays a big role too.

[DontUSASme]

770 has a GK-104.. same as 680,670,660ti, 

Didn't know it was coming for all of Kepler. Thought it was just the new-generation.

[900d]

dont buy the 7970 you won be happy!!

[OneGun]

dont buy the 7970 you won be happy!!

Lol he can't even talk right.. Get a 7970.

[TechFan@ic]

I would recommend a 7970, it's as fast as a 680 & faster once both are overclocked.
It also has a significant edge over the 680/770 in higher resolutions & multi monitor setups.
There are 3 models which I feel comfortable recommending, the HIS 7970 IceQ X2, the Sapphire Dual-X & the MSI Twinfrozr III.
The Gigabyte & XFX models are voltage locked so avoid those.


http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/his-iceq-x2-7970-7950-7850.html

The 7970 also has more VRAM than the 670 (7950 3GB, 680/770 2GB) & a significantly wider memory interface (7970 384bit, 770 254bit) this profoundly affects performance with Anti Aliasing (the graphics setting which removes jagged edges) and gives the card an edge on higher resolutions (the higher you go the larger the performance gap).


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-geforce-gtx-650-benchmark,3297-18.html

Another reason why I'd recommend the 7970 is that you get 4 games for free bundled with the card, Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider & Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon.

 

 

This sums up what I think of the 770 as compared to the 7970:

 

 

Posted 30 May 2013 - 09:42 PM

I really don't think so, from what I've seen from all the reviews, the 7970 remains the better option unless you're a hardcore Nvidia fan.
The 7970 and the 770 perform within margin of error most of the time, except in games where the 7970 has a sizable advantage due to its double percision 64bit floating point performance like Hitman Absolution & Sleeping Dogs.
The 7970 also comes as standard with 3GB of VRAM so you don't find yourself in a situation like you do with the 770 where you have to think about whether you need to pony up for the larger 4GB buffer or stick to the standard 2GB.

Another bonus is having the assurance that most if not all next-gen titles will be automatically optimized for your card because of the GCN based Radeon heart in the XBOX One & the PS4.
AMD also tries to swing you their way by their extremely attractive game bundle of Crysis 3, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite & Far Cry : Blood Dragon.

You also feel safe knowing that if you decide to upgrade your monitor & migrate to higher resolutions that performance will scale better than the 770 & you will have enough memory.

There are still some advantages to the 770 however like GPU based PhysX and currently frame pacing in SLI, this advantage however will soon become irreverent when AMD release their Heart Beat pacing technology.
CUDA used to be an advantage in premiere pro software but Adobe & AMD went ahead and released OpenCL support on the new Premiere Pro CC software.

All in all though, I still maintain the 7970 is the better overall package.

• Scia, Lukiose, Kruziik_Kel and 7 others like this

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/21273-gtx-770-a-game-changer/?p=256932