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7850 vs 6950

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mstersmith

Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2009
I believe I am reading that the 7850 beats the 6950 in 1900x1200 gaming. Is this true? I am looking to upgrade when I get home.
 
Cool thanks. May have to go with the 7870 then. I appreciate doing research out here is a pain! I have very limited access to the internet.
 
At stock speeds the 6950 and 7850 are close to the same performance with the 7850 having the edge in some titles. But if you are not afraid of overclocking, the 7850 has way more headroom while using much less power and taking up less space in your case. An decent overclocked 7850 will exceed the performance of a stock 7870 and cost $100 less. At the price of a 7870 ($330 in US for cheapest at NewEgg), I would honestly start looking at a 7950 ($379) or GTX670 instead as they offer superior performance for not much more $$.
 
At stock speeds the 6950 and 7850 are close to the same performance with the 7850 having the edge in some titles. But if you are not afraid of overclocking, the 7850 has way more headroom while using much less power and taking up less space in your case. An decent overclocked 7850 will exceed the performance of a stock 7870 and cost $100 less. At the price of a 7870 ($330 in US for cheapest at NewEgg), I would honestly start looking at a 7950 ($379) or GTX670 instead as they offer superior performance for not much more $$.

the 670 will trounce the 7950, it will perform mor on par with a 7970. + if you get a 670 like the gigabyte / asus/ evga ones with the 680 pcb and pre factory overclock and your adventurous with overclocking you are looking at at least 680 stock speeds when you hit 1300mhz core.
 
the 670 will trounce the 7950, it will perform mor on par with a 7970. + if you get a 670 like the gigabyte / asus/ evga ones with the 680 pcb and pre factory overclock and your adventurous with overclocking you are looking at at least 680 stock speeds when you hit 1300mhz core.
a lit less than that do u see 680 speeds...
 
the 670 will trounce the 7950, it will perform mor on par with a 7970. + if you get a 670 like the gigabyte / asus/ evga ones with the 680 pcb and pre factory overclock and your adventurous with overclocking you are looking at at least 680 stock speeds when you hit 1300mhz core.

At stock speeds I agree the 670 is certainly faster and if you do not OC, it is the better card. But it is not as cut and dry if you are willing to OC. You do realize that a 7950 is only about 3% slower than a 7970 at equal clock speeds and they both tend to overclock to similar levels. The stock 7950 is painfully underclocked from AMD. For instance my 7950 does 1200/1750 all day long at 1.2v but if I wanted to add more voltage (1.25v) does 1280/1775. That is 60% core OC and 42% memory overclock over standard 7950 speeds and my overclocks are not uncommon at all. I highly doubt a overclocked 670 will "trounce" a decently oc'd 7950. It will of course be better in a couple games and be more energy efficient, but it will not "trounce" it, not even close.
 
Not trounced, but the 670 has a clear advantage. This generation, NVIDIA has AMD beat in every category except availability.
 
well AMD has bitcoin mining which make money (i think $40-$60 a month)
thats why if i buy a card i will always go for AMD
 
At stock speeds I agree the 670 is certainly faster and if you do not OC, it is the better card. But it is not as cut and dry if you are willing to OC. You do realize that a 7950 is only about 3% slower than a 7970 at equal clock speeds and they both tend to overclock to similar levels. The stock 7950 is painfully underclocked from AMD. For instance my 7950 does 1200/1750 all day long at 1.2v but if I wanted to add more voltage (1.25v) does 1280/1775. That is 60% core OC and 42% memory overclock over standard 7950 speeds and my overclocks are not uncommon at all. I highly doubt a overclocked 670 will "trounce" a decently oc'd 7950. It will of course be better in a couple games and be more energy efficient, but it will not "trounce" it, not even close.

trust me i know the point your are trying to make. I had a decision to make between the 7970 and the 670 and i was leaning towards the 7970 for a very long time ( until the 670's dropped in price and they brought out 670s with 680 PCB's and sweet aftermarket coolers). And for the price the 670 wins outright at the moment even taking overclocking into account. You can get a gigabyte 670 with a nice aftermarket cooler ( the one i have) for exactly the same price as a 7950 equivalent.

At stock speeds the 670 will roughly perform about 10-15% better. Which which just outperforms a 7970. Most people are posting boost overclocks of 1300+ on the 670s ( with the reference 680 pcb+aftermarket cooler).When you take an overclocked 7950 against a overclocked 670 the gap closes to about 5%. The issue is that 670's are posting Max overclocks on air aftermarket coolers, i doubt 7950's will manage the same with such low temps. If you are going water the 7970/ 7950 are a viable option. But youll have to get at least 1300mhz to beat a 670 on a decent air cooler probably more like 1350 tbh because clock for clock the 670 is faster than the 7950. The issues for the 670 is there isnt much headroom even if you go with water. Because we cant tweak the volts past 1.175. This will hopefully be change at some point soon. IF we can push the volts higher on the 670/80 it will put them beyond anything that the 7970/50 could reach.

So on air your best bet is probably going with a 670. If you plan to watercool the 7950 because a viable option. When i say trounce i am referring to the fact that is performs better across most of titles, its exactly the same price. Runs cooler, draws less power etc. Also gimiky things like physX ( which isnt THAT importance, but its always nice to have) Adaptive VSync, FXAA etc. So at the moment there is little or no point going with the 7950 unless you mine bitcoins/ use OpenCL accelerated programs, ( even then you wont see any difference) you might want to go with an AMD.

Now the 7970 is only a little more expensive than a 670 it also means you have the take that into account. not to mention ( from what ive heard) SLI tends to scale better, nivida also apparently has less microstutter than AMD cards.

Overall i would call that a trounce considering it pretty much beats it in every area, and at the same price. ;).

One note: it does change from game to game in relation to performance. The 670 on average performs around 10-15% better on bf3 but then on shogun 2 amd cards tend to fair better.
 
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