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Thinking About Going Back To The Red Team
- Thread starter SMOR3S
- Start date
If I had to buy a card in that price range purely for gaming right now I would buy the 7950. In Canada I can get a 7950 for $450 or a GTX 580 for $400 and while the 580 is close in performance and sometimes better the deciding factor for me would be power consumption. At idle the 7950 draws about 15w versus the 580 at about 30. At load the 7950 draws something like 150 watts compared to the 580 drawing about 280 watts. Also, depending on what you are doing now or future plans the extra VRAM may be nice to have.
Then again if you wait a little bit I'm betting the rest of the 600 series from Nvidia has some nice value to offer.
Then again if you wait a little bit I'm betting the rest of the 600 series from Nvidia has some nice value to offer.
- Thread Starter
- #3
I need that extra VRam for 1080P, cause my 1GB of VRam is hurting me bad at the moment.
- Thread Starter
- #5
I can barely run 1080P let alone run 1080P with Medium settings... I have to run 1080P with low... 1080P eats up my VRam.
- Joined
- May 29, 2005
Sounds like something else may be having a problem. There are a ton of users that also have a 560ti here that play at 1080p (arguably the most used resolution by any gamers here). You shouldn't be needing to play on medium or low, as most people can play with high settings from what I've read anecdotally from other members here.
How are you sure that it is choking on that amount of vRAM?
How are you sure that it is choking on that amount of vRAM?
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2008
- Location
- Birmingham, UK
Some games need over 1GB for smooth framerates - I got a lot of stutter in BF3 with my HD5970 just because of Vram. Switching to a GTX680 (overall similar performance to the HD5970) resulted in much more consistent FPS and Vram usage is always over 1GB in BF3 (1920x1200). I think the HD7950 will be a good upgrade, it has a lot of room for overclocking with additional voltage.
- Joined
- May 19, 2011
- Location
- Amsterdam, Holland
Just set textures for bf3 at medium or high. Ultra requires 2GB vram.
As for the rest, you need 1GB vram for smooth 1080p resolutions.
It's true though that bf3 eats as much vram as you have available.
The 7950 will ensure you can play that game smooth.
As for the 560TI cards, they run bf3 fine, high at 1080p is not a problem in general.
crossfire and sli users do experience stuttering in bf3.
Creating a user.cfg in your bf3 directory with the following commands should eliminate the stuttering:
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0
RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 1
There are more commands, you can google them.
As for the rest, you need 1GB vram for smooth 1080p resolutions.
It's true though that bf3 eats as much vram as you have available.
The 7950 will ensure you can play that game smooth.
As for the 560TI cards, they run bf3 fine, high at 1080p is not a problem in general.
crossfire and sli users do experience stuttering in bf3.
Creating a user.cfg in your bf3 directory with the following commands should eliminate the stuttering:
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0
RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 1
There are more commands, you can google them.
- Thread Starter
- #11
If I sell my 560 Ti, My Second AC, My RASA, and a few other things, I should have enough for a 7950.
+ I am not a noob to graphics cards
I know when a game is to much for the VRam. I have tested the card with a lower resolution, and higher textures/etc... and it frees a lot of stress off the card. I doubt it's a CPU bottleneck, but I do get high CPU loads in game.. around 80%-90%.
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2002
- Location
- California, US
I say go for the 7950 for sure. I almost purchased a 7970 and had canceled my order for the 680, specifically cause games are starting to require more and more vram with textures and texture mods (skyrim).
Few reasons I have decided for the 7950:
1) Surprisingly I like ATI drivers as they have never given me a single problem (except for old old drivers back in something like 2001). Where as I've had issues with Nvidia drivers here n there, which required either rollbacks or trying out different driver versions. Never did SLI and don't ever plan to.
2) Have a 3rd party arctic cooling heatsink that I could always transfer over to the newer card, which would keep noise down and increase cooling/oc.
3) Wanted the 7970, but benchmarks show that the 7950 is only a few percent difference. Yes, the 7970 has a higher overclock limit, but I don't find the performance difference enough to justify $70-80.
4) 3GB Vram, seeing as how games will be using higher quality textures, whether stock or from texture mods.
5) Have a 120hz monitor that I want to try to maintain 100+ FPS at all times. Which is why I'm not going for the 7870.
Just my reasoning to getting a 7950.
Few reasons I have decided for the 7950:
1) Surprisingly I like ATI drivers as they have never given me a single problem (except for old old drivers back in something like 2001). Where as I've had issues with Nvidia drivers here n there, which required either rollbacks or trying out different driver versions. Never did SLI and don't ever plan to.
2) Have a 3rd party arctic cooling heatsink that I could always transfer over to the newer card, which would keep noise down and increase cooling/oc.
3) Wanted the 7970, but benchmarks show that the 7950 is only a few percent difference. Yes, the 7970 has a higher overclock limit, but I don't find the performance difference enough to justify $70-80.
4) 3GB Vram, seeing as how games will be using higher quality textures, whether stock or from texture mods.
5) Have a 120hz monitor that I want to try to maintain 100+ FPS at all times. Which is why I'm not going for the 7870.
Just my reasoning to getting a 7950.
- Thread Starter
- #13
It is proven also that AMD cards perform better than Nvidia on an AMD chipset correct? that's why they have platforms like Dragon, and Scorpio.
I've never heard that before
- Thread Starter
- #15
I have just heard that from a few people. I really don't know whether to believe it my self, but one thing is for sure, AMD cards do have better compatibility with AMD chipsets than Nvidia, but I don't know about performance.
- Thread Starter
- #17
The NB has control over Ram, Rom, Bios, CPU, and GPU etc... so I feel with an AMD chipset, designed around AMD specs, that AMD cards should have better compatibility.
:/ or I am probably just being paranoid as usual.
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2002
- Location
- California, US
AMD chipset vs Intel chipset with video cards make zero difference from my understanding. There isn't any extra code other than maybe SLI low end AMD video cards with onboard. Never quite understood why they add that feature.
I could see there being lawsuits or some sort of anti competitive lawsuit if there was something setup. Don't know though, but is probably a big reason why they don't do anything like that.
I could see there being lawsuits or some sort of anti competitive lawsuit if there was something setup. Don't know though, but is probably a big reason why they don't do anything like that.
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2008
I started with the powercolor PCS+ 7950, which was an awesome card, but alas the prototype had a bad VRM that toasted on me so I had to send it for RMA. I picked up a Sapphire 7950 OC and it performs just as nice. Powercolor doesn't have any 7950's in stock and they don't wanna make me wait to fix my card so they are shipping out a 7970 in its place, i mentioned that i had the PCS+ version and i wouldnt accept a ref. 7970 and they said they would send the PCS version of the 7970....Anyway i guess ill use it for hybrid crossfire, maybe i get lucky and they send me a vortex II.
In bf3 my sapphire is using 2.3gb of vram when i have everything maxed and using Danoc's FXAA injector, I do have FPS dipping into the upper 40's on some 64 player maps at 1080p so i'd be interested to see what kind of performance ill get in crossfire @ 1150/1600.
In bf3 my sapphire is using 2.3gb of vram when i have everything maxed and using Danoc's FXAA injector, I do have FPS dipping into the upper 40's on some 64 player maps at 1080p so i'd be interested to see what kind of performance ill get in crossfire @ 1150/1600.
