ASUS HD 7850 or ASUS HD 7950 or ASUS 7950 OC ? PLEASE REPLY ASAP

[Deleted]

So ASUS HD 7850 or ASUS HD 7950 or ASUS 7950 OC ?

The video card is going to work with an i5-3570k , 1600 MHz RAM , on a 650w power supply, tell me what you think
(justification would be appreciated)

Thanks in advance for your time and help

[Iamanerd]

Personally I'd go with this: Gigabyte 7950. But that's because I really like the Windforce Cooler and for $299 you can't really go wrong, plus you can OC and it will run cooler then the ASUS cards.

[Daverid]

Ditch them all .. Nvidia all the way ... Get yourself a nice GTX660/GTX670.

However if you're content on getting AMD, I would naturally assume you should go with the 7950. You haven't stated that money is an issue, so why not just get the more powerful card?

Also a quick google and I couldn't find any "Factory Overclocked" versions of the ASUS 7950, so unless you link the price difference between the OC'd and the Non-OC'd ... All I can say is just go for the normal one, most of the Factory OC'd ones charge you an extra $20-30 bucks for something you can easily do yourself once you get the card.

[Majesticii]

That Blue PCB looks hideous though :P If you are about aesthetics or have a window it's gonna look like shit. ASUS has a backplate and a equally good/better cooler. If you only care about performance/price take the gigabyte.

Ditch them all .. Nvidia all the way ... Get yourself a nice GTX660/GTX670.

However if you're content on getting AMD, I would naturally assume you should go with the 7950. You haven't stated that money is an issue, so why not just get the more powerful card?

Also a quick google and I couldn't find any "Factory Overclocked" versions of the ASUS 7950, so unless you link the price difference between the OC'd and the Non-OC'd ... All I can say is just go for the normal one, most of the Factory OC'd ones charge you an extra $20-30 bucks for something you can easily do yourself once you get the card.

I'd say nvidia and amd are on par, some games nvidia leads, and some games amd leads. Lets not go down that road again, besides the OP asks to choose between 3 amd cards.
However it is worth it to watch a few performance reviews for the games you want to play. For example BF3, borderlands 2 etc it's better to go with an nvidia card, whereas hitman it is better to go with AMD.
The OC version he is referring to is the "boost" version. AMD released a new 7950/7970 (ghz editions) when kepler came out, granting the 7series to do the same as nvidia's core clock boost. The card "Iamanerd" posted is an older model (i think), and i'd advise not taking that one, and go with either a ghz edition card, or a 660/670.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/550?vs=645
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/508?vs=618
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/550?vs=647

[Daverid]

I'd say nvidia and amd are on par, some games nvidia leads, and some games amd leads. Lets not go down that road again, besides the OP asks to choose between 3 amd cards.
However it is worth it to watch a few performance reviews for the games you want to play. For example BF3, borderlands 2 etc it's better to go with an nvidia card, whereas hitman it is better to go with AMD.
The OC version he is referring to is the "boost" version. AMD released a new 7950/7970 (ghz editions) when kepler came out, granting the 7series to do the same as nvidia's core clock boost. The card "Iamanerd" posted is an older model, and i'd advise not taking that one, and go with either a ghz edition card, or a 660/670.

Not trying to 'go down that road', simply just putting it out there Hence why I was happy to follow up with whatever AMD info I could provide (Although I am lacking in that department these days since I haven't owned a AMD card since the start of this year), some folks prefer AMD and some Nvidia, I completely get that

Anyway if the OC edition is simply a 'Boost' version to make it as powerful as the Kepler cards, I would recommend just getting a standard 7950 with a decent fan pre-attached. With a respectable fan you'll probably be able to self overclock the card far higher then the 'OC' edition would be at and they'll most likely still charge you more anyway for a 'OC' Edition.

[Iamanerd]

That Blue PCB looks hideous though :P If you are about aesthetics or have a window it's gonna look like shit. ASUS has a backplate and a equally good/better cooler. If you only care about performance/price take the gigabyte.



I'd say nvidia and amd are on par, some games nvidia leads, and some games amd leads. Lets not go down that road again, besides the OP asks to choose between 3 amd cards.
However it is worth it to watch a few performance reviews for the games you want to play. For example BF3, borderlands 2 etc it's better to go with an nvidia card, whereas hitman it is better to go with AMD.
The OC version he is referring to is the "boost" version. AMD released a new 7950/7970 (ghz editions) when kepler came out, granting the 7series to do the same as nvidia's core clock boost. The card "Iamanerd" posted is an older model (i think), and i'd advise not taking that one, and go with either a ghz edition card, or a 660/670.

Ahh yeah I forgot about the "boost" editions, but hey I like the looks of the Gigabyte card, but maybe it's just me :P But yeah definitely get a Boost edition card such as this

[Deleted]

Hi all and thanks for your speedy replies

I forgot to mention that the card is also targeted at 3d rendering, video editing and the like , not just gaming, and i know that some programms do utilize cuda so i should probably go with nvidia for that reason but i have also found out that gtx cards are mainly focused on the gaming part so which one do you think would be better (in general not just between those 3) ?

PS i mentioned wattage along with a "k" processor because I plan to overclock the cpu ram and possibly the gpu so please keep in mind the power consumption (650w power supply). also keep in mind that i cant afford anything astronomical :P

Thanks

[Majesticii]

Anyway if the OC edition is simply a 'Boost' version to make it as powerful as the Kepler cards, I would recommend just getting a standard 7950 with a decent fan pre-attached. With a respectable fan you'll probably be able to self overclock the card far higher then the 'OC' edition would be at and they'll most likely still charge you more anyway for a 'OC' Edition.

Difference is though, the boost overclocks the card within TDP, whereas standard overclocking tends to go over that.

[EllishaPally]

Hi all and thanks for your speedy replies

I forgot to mention that the card is also targeted at 3d rendering, video editing and the like , not just gaming, and i know that some programms do utilize cuda so i should probably go with nvidia for that reason but i have also found out that gtx cards are mainly focused on the gaming part so which one do you think would be better (in general not just between those 3) ?

PS i mentioned wattage along with a "k" processor because I plan to overclock the cpu ram and possibly the gpu so please keep in mind the power consumption (650w power supply). also keep in mind that i cant afford anything astronomical :P

Thanks

Well, the 7950 has better compute than Nvidia's offerings but the 660/670 has better ray rendering iirc.

Also, 650w is way more than enough for a single 7950 and oc'd i5. My 3770k @ 4.6GHz and GTX 680 Lightnings in SLI don't pull more than 650w under maximum load.

[Deleted]

I chose 650w because I kept in mind that Sli or Crossfire would be possible in the following years because I was planning to get a second graphics card but I've done some research and everybody actually advises me to just get a better GPU..So what wattage are you suggesting?

[EllishaPally]

Oh the 650w is fine, just make sure it's a reputable brand like corsair, seasonic, antec. Make sure to do brand/model research on the psu and you'll be golden. google search johnny guru reviews, the crew there really knows what they're talking about

I was just letting you know that it'll be able to power quite a bit of upgrades

[Fascinate]

Sigh@these forums.

You need to look at few things when deciding a video card:

1. What resolution do you play at. This makes more of a difference than anything. For example if you played at 1680x1050 or lower there is zero reason to spend more than 150.00 on a video card (7850 range).
2. What games do you play the most often. This is the second most important factor. Some games heavily favor nvidia cards (like blizzard games) the opposite is not true, no game that i know of HEAVILY favors radeon cards, this is why you must ask this question before recommending a card.

You also need to have a a beefy enough power supply to handle whatever you are going to throw in your rig, i list this last because these newer cards are so efficient that most of them will run on a 450w power supply.

[Majesticii]

Sigh@these forums.

Atleast we have you to show up on "these forums" and post an accumulated version of all the previous posts, pretending it hasn't been said already. Nice job.

However it is worth it to watch a few performance reviews for the games you want to play. For example BF3, borderlands 2 etc it's better to go with an nvidia card, whereas hitman it is better to go with AMD.

PS i mentioned wattage along with a "k" processor because I plan to overclock the cpu ram and possibly the gpu so please keep in mind the power consumption (650w power supply). also keep in mind that i cant afford anything astronomical :P

Cba linking it all, you get the gist of it.

[Fascinate]

No one mentioned the massive lead nvida holds over amd in blizzard games, that is the only one that really matters (most other games nvidia and amd are with a few percentages of each other)

No one mentioned the most important factor of resolution. If he plays at 1680x1050 he would be literally throwing money away if he bought a 7950.

Not sure why you felt the need to make such a post.

[n0cturnal]

No one mentioned the massive lead nvida holds over amd in blizzard games, that is the only one that really matters (most other games nvidia and amd are with a few percentages of each other)

When it comes to WoW that is no longer true, AMD negated the gap that used to be with Catalyst 12.11 drivers.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...rmance/20.html

[Fascinate]

Oh its definitely still true, i own a 6850 machine and a gtx 465 machine and my nvidia rig is at least 10 FPS in scenarios where it matters (raids, large scale pvp etc).

[Deleted]

When considering anything above 7850 for WoW, difference in fps between similar priced cards between AMD and Nvida have little value. If you were to set optimal image quality settings for each card you'll certainly not notice much difference in quality of play.

It would help if you could mention a budget we could work with

[Deleted]

Uhm I noticed that almost everybody focused on picking a card based on fps and games, I also am going to need the GPU to perform as well at 3d rendering and video editing as games so please go ahead and debate a bit on it, because it actually made me shift a little over to getting an GTX660.I would also like your opinion on that. Thanks

[n0cturnal]

Uhm I noticed that almost everybody focused on picking a card based on fps and games, I also am going to need the GPU to perform as well at 3d rendering and video editing as games so please go ahead and debate a bit on it, because it actually made me shift a little over to getting an GTX660.I would also like your opinion on that. Thanks

What programs are you going to use?

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Uhm I noticed that almost everybody focused on picking a card based on fps and games, I also am going to need the GPU to perform as well at 3d rendering and video editing as games so please go ahead and debate a bit on it, because it actually made me shift a little over to getting an GTX660.I would also like your opinion on that. Thanks

Some programs use OpenGL processing (AMD cards), some use CUDA (nVidia). If you tell us which you use/will be using we can help there.

And if you really want to push CUDA performance, get a Fermi card like a 580; much, much better CUDA performance than the 680.