2 years at 1080p with 2gb of vram will be just fine. If a game hits a vram wall with this card more than likely it isn't going to be performing well before the vram wall was hit in the first place.
I thought about it. But i think 2GB is enough because the card is not fast enough for future games anyway.
Why buy it if it's not going to handle future games? Presumably you'd want 2 years out of it.
Amazing in that it ties a 7970 which sells for roughly the same price?...
Ties a 7970? What review did you read?
If you run an average of the single-card frame rates generated in this review, GeForce GTX 770 is a 52.4 FPS card. The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition lands at 53.8 FPS.
The $425 USD Gigabyte GTX 770 OC is about 10% faster than the $449 USD 7970 GHz Ed at 25x16 resolution, with lower power consumption too: http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GeForce_GTX_770_WindForce_OC/images/perfrel_2560.gif
One like this.
Or like this one.
For each review the 7970 loses by a few percent, there's one where it wins by a few percent.
And the $400 MSI card may be 10% slower but is $25 cheaper and comes with 4 free games, plus the ability to match the 770 when both are overclocked to the limit...
You said the 7970, not the 7970 Ghz :hmm:
But the 770 has PhysX and 3D Vision. Quite a few games use these features, and more will be coming a long the way. Metro Last Light is the latest game to use both PhysX and 3D Vision. Arkham Origins will also use them as well, and so will the Witcher 3 when it debuts.
And Battlefield 4 will be free to everyone with the Never Settle bundle. I'll take free games over PhysX effects in a few games!
Are you saying anyone who gets the Never Settle bundle now will be able to get BF4 for free when it is released? I don't think that is how it works...
2 years at 1080p with 2gb of vram will be just fine. If a game hits a vram wall with this card more than likely it isn't going to be performing well before the vram wall was hit in the first place.
The $425 USD Gigabyte GTX 770 OC is about 10% faster than the $449 USD 7970 GHz Ed at 25x16 resolution, with lower power consumption too: http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GeForce_GTX_770_WindForce_OC/images/perfrel_2560.gif
So I was told to wait (by ocre? and tomshardware dropped a hint as well) and I was willing to and the GTX 770 appears. Figures as much. So I didn't pull the trigger on a 7970 vanilla and this pops up.
I read the review, looked at the benches, but just want to see what ya'll think.
-Will the 2 GB on the GTX 770 hold it back moving forward?
I think anandtech brings up a solid point. Textures are going to get more and more detailed. Skyrim with all mods looks BEAUTIFUL and takes up a ton of VRam in the process. I'm expecting games to move in this direction. Will the 770 hold up 2 years from now, or will the 7970 still be the best bet?
-Considering this, is the GTX 770 really a better value than the 7970?
I know I'm going to get a lot of fanboy response types, so if it helps simplify it for yourself and ask yourself this:
Given your favorite of the two cards (GTX 770 or 7970), how much is the minimum ram you think the card needs? for the next 2 years at 1080p 2GB, 3GB, or 4GB.
This card looks like NV's 680 Ghz edition. Power consumption did go up a lot, in every review but techpowerups (dont know what happend there, but something is wrong, why are 6+8 pin power connectors required?)
If you're so worried about VRAM, then buy the 4GB model..
You can't really use modded games as a measuring stick though. Skyrim is also DX9, so the texture compression isn't as efficient as what can be found in DX11 games.
Yes it is, because you get added bonuses like PhysX and 3D Vision. Plus SLI is still superior to Crossfire last time I checked. And even more importantly, the 770 is quite a bit faster than the 7970 at all resolutions.
I can play Crysis 3 at very high settings @ 1440p on my GTX 580 SLI rig, and that only has 1.5GB of VRAM. DX11 games have much better texture compression than DX9, so the textures don't take up as much space.
That said, I personally will be going for the 4GB models just to be on the safe side..
If you play modded Bethesda games, the extra 1-2GB is very nice especially at 1440p or above. I was hitting 2.5GB with Skyrim and the game played just fine on one OCed 7970. Outside of modded games and multi-gpu, the extra vram probably isn't worth it until we know what future games will require.
So looking at other cards of the same architecture (gk104), currently it doesnt seem to make much difference at all. There are a lot of things to consider here. Its not just 2gb vs 3gb. AMD and Nvidia have completely different designs from start to finish. The memory management is totally different, worlds apart. You have a drastically different environment.
As a quick example, look back at the core2 front side bus vs the Athlon64's imc. There was no comparison, the Athlon had mega multitudes more bandwidth yet the core2 was the much more powerful system. It held its own, even to this day its capable. I know the bus and memory are two different things, but they go hand in hand on a GPU. The key is to keep the cores busy and to do that you need a system that works together.
Nvidia seems to manage very well with less than AMD right now. The gk104 works so well that adding another 2gb normally does very little. But who can say for sure what the future will hold. My opinion is that niether the 7970ghz nor the 770 will out last one another in the grand scheme. By the time one is too slow, so will the other.
Its really up to you though. And waiting gave you more options. And now you have to decide whats best for you. If your set on the ghz, i promise it will go down now that the 770 is out. It may take a minute for AMD to respond, but i am sure they will. My opinion, personally dont think the ram will make a lot of difference. We see the 770 holding its place even at the higher resolutions and settings. But its up to you
AMD "optimized", I don't think it works that way. The thought process is just an ill gotten product of a time when AMD didn't have a dev relation program and it was used as an excuse as to why AMD was slower.
Why would you buy a $450 GHz edition, there are better options within a percent or two of performance for $400ish.
So what would you call TombRaider? Or Hitman? Games that become Never Settle games generally have more AMD friendly optimization.
The statement that the 7970 GHz Ed. performs the same as the GTX 770 for the same price is flat out wrong. The GTX 770 reference model performs slightly better on average than the 7970 GHz Ed., all for less money and lower power consumption than the 7970 GHz Ed., period. This isn't rocket science here, so just get over it and deal with the reality of the situation.
Depending on driver iteration, Tomb Raider runs equally well on AMD and Nvidia hardware. At one point, better on Nvidia hardware than AMD hardware.
The statement is simply that, as long as you have any use/need of the game bundles, the 7970GE is just as good of a buy as the GTX770. If you don't need the games, then the 770 is probably the better option. The 770 doesn't "stomp" the 7970GE, it's just a stalemate with the favour tipped in Nvidia's direction.
7970 GE 3GB + 4 games = $400
GTX 770 2GB + no games = $400
7970 GE 3GB + 4 games = $400
GTX 770 2GB + no games = $400
I don't have any bias to either company, but based on this I would buy a 7970GE over a GTX 770. Games are $$ and these are all pretty good games.
Balla post
Technically the 7970 GHz Ed. is $449. The 7970 GHz Ed. variant is specially binned to have lower voltage (and hence lower power consumption) at it's specified clock operating frequency compared to other overclocked 7970's. And FWIW, the bundled game codes can be purchased separately for very little money online if people want those games with an NVIDIA card.