400-600$ to spend on a video card, recommendations?

[Delias]

I assumed before that when buying a new video card it would be a 680 after some research, but now that I'm actually about to buy one I checked Tomshardware recommendations again to double check to make sure I was still making the right choice it turns out I'm not. There seems to have been a price drop on 7970s, so it comes more recommended at the moment. Oh, also, I have a 500$ gift card for Amazon.ca so recommending deals from other places is unnecessary. Here are a few I was looking at and would be very grateful if people could give me their opinions on which would be the wisest choice and why, or if there is a better option for me to take from Amazon.ca.
Note: the price does not have to be under 500$, I'm willing to spend up to 650$ if it is the best option for me to take.

Asus DC II 7970

Gigabyte 7970

MSI 680

Gigabyte 680

Thanks in advance.

[Nab]

The Gigabyte 680 is your best bet.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

http://www.amazon.ca/Gigabyte-PCi-Ex...3253122&sr=8-1

Gigabyte HD 7970 GHz Edition/OC WindforceX3

[Keller]

http://www.amazon.ca/Gigabyte-PCi-Ex...3253122&sr=8-1

Gigabyte HD 7970 GHz Edition/OC WindforceX3

Unless you can get your hands on a GPU like the devil13 or the mars 3, you should get this one.

[Delias]

Any reason why that one over other 7970s or 680s? You both seem pretty adamant about it, curious why.

[Deleted]

It's called being an AMD fanboy. I'd pick the gigabyte 680 aswell, although the 7970 GHz edition is not a bad pick either. I have better experience with nvidia when it comes to general satisfaction though.

[Deleted]

It's called being an AMD fanboy. I'd pick the gigabyte 680 aswell, although the 7970 GHz edition is not a bad pick either. I have better experience with nvidia when it comes to general satisfaction though.

So you are an nvidia fanboy than?

The 7970 GHz edition performs better than the 7970 out of the box. It is some kind of upgrade version, with a boost clock and some other minor things. It should perform on par or better than the 680, depending on the game.

This is a review with the latest beta drivers from AMD:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...ormance/1.html

Just check which games you play, and see which cards performs better. But both cards should do fine.

[yurano]

So you are an nvidia fanboy than?

The 7970 GHz edition performs better than the 7970 out of the box. It is some kind of upgrade version, with a boost clock and some other minor things. It should perform on par or better than the 680, depending on the game.

This is a review with the latest beta drivers from AMD:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...ormance/1.html

Just check which games you play, and see which cards performs better. But both cards should do fine.

Actually, most games are neck in neck between the 680 and 7970 GE. The only outliers are SC2 and Metro 2033. Buy based on price and which games you play.

[vipers]

get nvidia but not amd because they just cant make good drivers

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

get nvidia but not amd because they just cant make good drivers

This hasn't been true for at least three years.

[Deleted]

http://www.amazon.ca/Geforce-Signatu...260593&sr=1-35
or
http://www.amazon.ca/Zotac-Geforce-D...260731&sr=1-10 (when it's in stock again)
also nvidia has severly less issues in performance regarding new tittle releases. (zotac one is just a beast overclocked wise and cooling wise, evga just is good clocked, good cooled and awesome warranty support in/for north america i believe)

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

evga just is good clocked, good cooled and awesome warranty support in/for north america i believe

The EVGA cooler is average at best and the lifetime warranty is only for USA and Canada.

[Deleted]

The EVGA cooler is average at best and the lifetime warranty is only for USA and Canada.

well the OP wants from canadian amazon? (also one linked has a fine double fan don't see any issue there)

[BicycleMafioso]

The Gigabyte cooler is the best 2-slot cooling solution at this time, in my opinion.

The HD7970 GHz outperforms the GTX 680 even in nVidia-centric games (albeit not all) and is better at resolutions 1920x1080 and up; Incl multimonitor gaming.

I would be advocating Gigabyte even stronger if you were going for the nVidia-team; Kepler's cards are lacking in memory bandwidth, and thus improve greatly with memory overclocking (although Radeon-cards scale arguably better or at least equal) due to the weaker membus. Gigabyte's cooler is the one that I've seen that most reliably cools the memory chips actively.

However, if you intend to in the future run multi-GPU solutions, I'd go nVidia. I would recommend against dual GPU-solutions however.

[Delias]

So apparently I didn't do enough research, because only one of my two monitors is plugging into the 7970. Is there some kind of adapter I could use to get around this? I can't go from using two monitors for years to being restricted to one, it simply won't work for me.

[Deleted]

if we know what exact card you got and what kind of connection is on the monitors then yea, likely an adapter of some sort will fix it.

[Delias]

The monitors use DVI-D cables, and the video card has a DVI-D port (used by one of the monitors), an HDMI port, and two uhh.. mini DP ports that I have never heard of.
I could just use a DVI male to HDMI male cable, right? And it will act the same as my Nvidia card did when it had two DVI cables plugged into it?

[Deleted]

No reason to start fanboy wars.
You pick either one and you get more than enough performance.
Differences are game based and pretty small anyways, so just pick your side.

[Deleted]

The monitors use DVI-D cables, and the video card has a DVI-D port (used by one of the monitors), an HDMI port, and two uhh.. mini DP ports that I have never heard of.
I could just use a DVI male to HDMI male cable, right? And it will act the same as my Nvidia card did when it had two DVI cables plugged into it?

Yes, adapters will work fine.

[Deleted]

yup should work the same, avoid DP ports good adapters for those are expensive!