OK ATI Radeon HD 7970 Review OR Why did I listen to ERGO

[{ESC}Pappy]

WHAT?

[{ESC}Amoniac]

great but what is this hehehhehehehe

[{ESC}ErgoProxy]

hey don't blame me I wanted you to get the 660ti instead of the 7970 it was too costly for something your not going to fully utilize. I have never used any of gigabytes products before so I know nothing about them and you shouldn't try to base your purchase on cosmetics when you can easily get a aftermarket heat sink for it in what ever design you want! Like I said I was pushing the 660ti on you for its a hell of allot cheaper and it is on par with the 7950 which is only about 20% slower than the 7970 and there is even a 3gb version of the 660ti for use of eyefinity or multiple screens which is pointless when only using anything equal or less than 2 monitors. If I were you I would return it and get the 660ti or even get two 660ti's so you don't have to deal with them giving your money back and I know two 660ti 2gb versions will out perform one 7970 any day for about the same price as the 1 7970. oh and just so you know my buddy has the 7970 matched up with a 2nd gen I7 clocked at 2.9 and he gets out performed by pretty much the same system with a 7950 but the cpu clock is at 4.2 instead of 2.9 so I bet there is a bottle neck in there somewhere if your getting such low scores!

[{ESC}ErgoProxy]

Lane do you even have all your cores active??? by default windows locks all cores except for 1 in msconfig/boot/advanced except for games that require multiple cores and then it only uses the bare minimum speeds and effective cores so lets say your playing BF3 which can utilize a I7 with all cores (and that doesnt mean it uses 100% of your cpu it just means it uses a percentage of each core to run smoothly without stuttering and what have you. but! if you unlock those cores inside MSCONFIG you can put a stop to it not fully utilizing each core to the maximum efficiency. it will require a reboot and the pc does have to get use to it running all cores at once/ and once you do that and rebooted it for a 2nd time go into your bios and setup the C1E config so it can idel with just 1 core but when you start a program that requires heavy usage of your CPU/GPU then C1E is switched off and your pc can then run at max without bogging! this was just me asking if you knew or not and if you did not then there you go. you can also make sure that your PCI E slot is running and can support PCIE 3.0 at x16 lanes I know my mobo supports it but I do not know your mobo specs and system info but I herd in the past of some mobos disableing that function due to advanced tech not being fully available for the public! and also to get a affective OC of the CPU your going to have to lower the timeings of your RAM so you do not get a bottle neck. like for me I have a 4.2ghz cpu overclocked from 3.2 with C1E configed to where it only uses that 4.2 when im in game and idels at 2.5ghz to save power and life span. but to get effective OC of that 4.2 I had to raise my ram timeings to 11/11/11/32. so I wouldnt get a bottleneck instead of having it at 9/9/9/24 and I also had to bump the voltage of the CPU and RAM. just something to know about AMD cpu/gpu setups is that they are allot different from intel/nvidia and gets most people confused, hence why people think AMD sucks when they just dont know how to set everything up right to get a effective OC and overall good gaming exp! I know that since I have had this 550ti I notice a huge bottleneck with the C1E config like when I start up a heavy program like BF3 or TR and bioshock and black ops 2 it lags at first startup with C1E config setup so i had to disable it to remove this lag and give me a better gaming exp, I think its because of the Nvidia drivers not fully supporting the C1E setup as intel has a C1E type of program ( I do not recall the name of it since I have never used intel but I know there is one) but I know that FX can easily reach 4.5ghz with the right voltage and ram timings. but I think that for 90% sure that 3.5ghz is a bottle neck to a 7970 and 16gb of ram @ 1600mhz, Dont know if your cpu is a BE (black edition) but I know CCC can soft clock your cpu for you meaning it raises your mhz in cpu while lowering your ram timings and upping the voltage of your cpu for maximum effectiveness it also saves time from having to restart and run benchs over and over again! mine does and that is how I got to 4.2ghz I am pretty sure it would of taken me days to reach that in my bios setting all the ram timings and upping the voltage manually. good luck

PS I still think the 660ti 2gb version is a better choice for you the 680 you will never fully utilize and would be a waste for cod4 and bf3 unless you want bragging rights lol

[=|Vampie|NL|=]

Was your wife happy with the package material? I'm thinking about buying that card too and that would be a great selling/buying point for me

[Bas]

I do not understand anything you guys just said, at all... :P

[{ESC}Amoniac]

i feel the same bas and also i feel dumb and all ehhehehehe

[Zeroxe]

nice review Lane,the GTX680 it's a beast

[Zeroxe]

ok but the negative point for nvdia (my opinion) is a lot of the time the driver make some game crash... how can i say that..exp the driver 310.90 all my game work well like(bf 2 et 3,black OPS 1 )but when hi start BO II the game crash ,i never had a ATI before...they more stables in they driver or not ?