GTX 670 or 7970?

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blitzkommando

Gawd
Joined
Oct 25, 2009
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I'd like to stay under $400, but I've decided to choose between one of those two cards to replace my current GTX 470. I somewhat (slightly) lean towards the GTX 670 if only because I've had really bad luck with AMD cards the last two rounds (multiple RMAs during my tenure with 4870 Crossfire and a faulty 5870). And, I've honestly had very few problems with the Nvidia cards I've owned (7800 GTX, 8800 GTX, and my current). But, anyway, I'm looking between these two:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130802

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202008

If you have better suggestions, I'm up for that too. I'm pretty set on EVGA though if I go with the GTX 670 because I've had no issues with EVGA cards. As far as AMD goes, I won't go with Powercolor again but aside from that I'm open.

One final note, I'm currently running 1920x1200 but hopefully I'll have enough saved soon to go with either a 2560x1440 or one of those new 2560x1080 monitors, so make of that as you will. I'm fairly confident I won't have any issues with either card even at those resolutions, but I imagine the 7970 will maintain an advantage due to the higher memory bandwidth and the additional 1GB of VRAM.
 
For what it's worth, I just ordered a Gigabyte Geforce 670 GTX to replace my stock XFX Radeon 6970. I didn't have too many problems driver wise with the Radeon card, but most of my issues were hardware related (fan was too loud, it ran too hot, etc.) so I'll be glad going to an Nvidia card with a custom cooler.

Like you mentioned above, I've had very few problems with Nvidia cards in the past and every time I got a Radeon card, I always felt like I should have gotten an Nvidia instead.
 
I have an EVGA 4GB 670 right now and the fan is very annoying, the only sound I can hear out of my whole system and it sounds like a little diesel engine. I don't mind much as it will go under water soon enough, but this is the 4th reference style EVGA 670 that I have had that has an obnoxious fan. If noises bother you, get one on a 680 PCB or with a custom cooler design.

If you look at Gigabyte, I highly recommend the windforce cooler, it is very very quiet and performs excellently.
 
Pretty much any nVidia or AMD GPU in your target price but with factory applied non-reference cooling.

If going AMD, be sure to also look hard at the models with Boost.
 
3 Days ago I bought a Galaxy 4GB 670 card. Today is the first day I have had the new system up and running. I can't believe how quiet this card is and how much cooler it runs over my old 470. If Nvidia is what you want you can't go wrong with this card. It is the dual fan version and it runs nice.
 
if you will be taking advantage of physx, gtx670 is the way to go. other than that, the hd7970 is pretty much superior to the gtx670, and in most cases with the newest driver, even the gtx680
 
Well, I decided to bite the bullet and went for the Sapphire 7970. It should be here on the 24th according to FedEx. I just couldn't ignore the differences in general purpose compute and gaming. And, yeah, PhysX isn't a selling point for me really. So, I'm looking forward to seeing how it runs. Thanks for the help.
 
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