On my U2711 I can't even tell if it is upscaled or not, 1080p or even 1200p runs like a dream.
Windows desktop doesn't look good below 1440p, but games run 100% brilliant at any rez I want, tried till 1680x1050 and it looked just as sweet as native.
Well, my monitor doesn't have scaling circuitry so I'm not sure how it would be on an Ultrasharp, but... I don't think playing at 1080p and upscaling is acceptable (or necessary in the vast majority of games). It looks terrible.
Wrong IMO. Even if both the 7970 and 670 are $400 the 670 will outsell the 7970 4-1. Whatever the reason (better drivers, physX, or twimtbp) nvidia is the preferred brand of PC gamers.
A bunch of games suffer even today at 1080p with single cards.
You should start playing at 720p then
Cool. Thanks.Whatever card you prefer really. These are all voltage locked, so 8+6pin or 6+6pin power connectors and/or additional phases makes next to no difference at all.
The small reference boards are overclocking as well as the larger non-ref boards or 670 cards using the ref 680 PCB.
Pick whatever you want and you'll just be playing the OC lottery like you do with any card.
Half the games there are only playable at 2560 with no AA; some of them aren't even playable at 2560 at all. Sorry if you don't see it that way, but I'm not spending $700+ on a new monitor to play at lowered settings.*snip*
I wish Kepler was better at bitcoin mining...I'm hankering for change
I disagree, G80 blew every single GPU out of the water at its release by a large margin (that did not happen with Kepler). And the 8800GT gave 8800GTX performance for $300 (?). The performance increase and mid-end prices are nowhere near G80/G92 levels.
A bunch of games suffer even today at 1080p with single cards.
You should start playing at 720p then
Which games? All I've played in the past few months are uhh...
Skyrim
Mass Effect 3
Blades of Time
Diablo 3 (the beta)
and they ran fine. Granted I don't have much time for video games anymore so I'm waaay out of the loop lately...
My point is, buy a card that is (for the most part) fit for your resolution (unless of course you cannot see the difference between AA on/off or need SSAA, then it's a different story). To focus on 1600p and say, card A is 5% faster than card B is silly when both are struggling as it is.
Half the games there are only playable at 2560 with no AA; some of them aren't even playable at 2560 at all. Sorry if you don't see it that way, but I'm not spending $700+ on a new monitor to play at lowered settings.
The HD 7970 wins at 2560, but that's merely academic for the reasons outlined above. If you're going with CF/SLI, then clearly the HD 7970 would be a better choice. BTW, the 3GB of VRAM was included and huge memory bus was designed exactly for that reason: more than enough VRAM and bandwidth for CF at 2560x1440 and higher.
Personally, I'm not planning to spend more than $350 on a single monitor (like most people), so the HD 7950 doesn't look like that good of a proposition against the GTX 670 unless there's a price spread of at least $50 between both. Overclocked to 975-1000MHz the HD 7950 will definitely catch a stock GTX 670, but at higher power consumption (remember the GTX 670 can still overclock too, and even if scaling isn't as good it'd still gain performance). I care about performance/watt, and I'm pretty sure at 900-925MHz with a small undervolt the HD 7950 would have higher PP/W than a GTX 670, but it'd have a bit lower performance, and a decent amount less performance if the 670 is running at 1100MHz.
As usual, wrong.
nvidia will outsell AMD even if AMD costs half as much for the same performance.
But if both cards are $400, 7970 > 670. PERIOD
At $450 7970 is just fine for an unbiased buyer.
And I play at 1440p (some games with AA some games without AA), only in a few games and very rarely that too, do FPS drop below 60 and I play games like BF3, Alan Wake, Skyrim etc.
I already said that. 7970 is perfectly fine at 450. It is a better card, no doubt. But 7950 should be $350 and I already said that. Even 7870 needs to be sub $300 imo
Again, what you don't understand is, if a card is 5-10% faster at 1440p today, in games which release 6-12 months down the line the same difference would be visible at 1080p when both cards need that extra power. This has happened since the beginning of computer history and will happen till the end. Period.
At 1600p a 7970 OC doesn't suffer. PERIOD. If you have a doubt you should go buy it first. And yes, with AA there is a problem but that is irrelevant as I have already said because 1440p no AA > 1080p 8x AA
In Europe GTX680 is 20% more expensive than 7970, so GTX670 will be priced the same as 7970. I think given the price parity 7970 is a better deal than GTX670 because it's a better OCer.
Tell me three games apart from the following which get less than 40 FPS avg at 1440p no AA on a 7970 at 1125 1575:
Apart from: Metro Crysis2 Anno Shogun
And you really don't read do you,
1440p without AA HAS LESS JAGGIES than 1080 8x AA. This is what I mean.
Also, if you don't OC your card, forget about AMDs for this season. And I don't know many AMD cards which haven't overclocked really well in this round, forget many, I would say any for that matter.
On my U2711 I can't even tell if it is upscaled or not, 1080p or even 1200p runs like a dream.
Windows desktop doesn't look good below 1440p, but games run 100% brilliant at any rez I want, tried till 1680x1050 and it looked just as sweet as native.