Flagship GPU Rematch: AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680

The Flagship GPU Rematch of 2012

If you're thinking about building a new gaming system for 2013, you might be looking at one of these two enthusiast-class, flagship graphics cards: AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. Both have recently released updated drivers, which look likely to be the final set of driver updates for the year, Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 and ForceWare 310.70 respectively. As such, we feel the time is right to take a look at which is of these two flagship cards is the better buy right now. 

 

Opening Arguments

First, a little retrospective on the year. While AMD started strong, getting a headstart early in the year by being first to market back in February with its 28nm process GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture card, the Radeon HD 7970, its lead was not to last as NVIDIA released its 28nm Kepler architecture GeForce GTX 680 a mere one month later.

Comparing hardware specifications, AMD's HD 7970 clearly had the advantage in terms of pure processing power, utilizing a transistor count some 760 million higher, and possessing 512 more stream processing units. It also utilized 3GB GDDR5 VRAM compared to the GTX 680's 2GB, although NVIDIA's memory did boast a higher clock speed.

The GPU Boost Advantage

However, NVIDIA's real trump card came in the form of an innovative new technology called GPU Boost. GPU Boost is a technology that combines both hardware and software to dynamically adjust the GPU's clock speed according to the operating environment of the graphics card. This proved to be a significant advantage when it came to benchmarks. 

After the initial dust had settled, NVIDIA's GTX 680 was the clear winner, with its GPU Boost technology helping it run away with an overall average 10-15% performance lead against the HD 7970. 

AMD Strikes Back With Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition

AMD was not to be outdone however. In June this year, it attempted to close that gap by releasing the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, a factory overclocked version of the original HD7970, with an increase in core clock speed from 925MHz to 1050MHz, and with memory bumped up from 5000MHz DDR to 6000MHz DDR. This version of the HD 7970 proved to be much more competitive, rivaling and even surpassing the GTX 680 in some benchmarks. However, it also suffered from high temperatures and fairly high power consumption.

For this rematch, we'll be using the more up to date HD 7970 GHz Edition as AMD's contender. Here's a look at how each card compares, specs wise:

[hwzcompare]

[products=298166,269094]

[width=200]

[caption=AMD vs. NVIDIA Flagship GPUs Compared]

[showprices=0]

[/hwzcompare]

Test Setup

We've finally replaced our old test rig with a brand new one for 2013. Here are the new specs we'll be running with:

• Intel Core i7-3960X (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P9X79 Pro (Intel X79 chipset) Motherboard
• 4 x 2GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill Ripjaws Memory
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive (OS)
• Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1TB SATA hard drive (Benchmarks + Games)
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

As previously stated, we're using the most recently released drivers for both cards in this rematch:

• AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 310.70)

We've also updated our benchmark list. Say goodbye to Far Cry 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, and welcome Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 3 and Hitman: Absolution. We've also updated Unigine from version 2.1 to 3.0. We may also be adding more games to this list for future reviews, so stay tuned!

• Futuremark 3DMark 11
• Unigine 3.0 "Heaven"
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2
• Crysis Warhead
• Crysis 2
• Batman: Arkam City
• Dirt 3
• Far Cry 3
• Assassin's Creed 3
• Hitman: Absolution

Futuremark 3D Mark 11 & Overclocking

As usual we begin with synthetic benchmark 3D Mark 11. Surprisingly both cards were extremely close with almost nothing to separate them on the Performance preset and NVIDIA holding a mere 4% lead at the Extreme preset. 

For our overclocking efforts, both cards final results were again remarkably close, with the HD 7970 GHz Edition catching up on the Extreme Preset, narrowing the gap to just 2%.

Gaming Benchmarks

We saw a similar pattern when it came to gaming benchmarks with both cards trading leads across various tests and settings. AMD generally maintained a slight advantage at higher resolutions and with games with more demanding AA settings, however the actual tangible gaming experience was effectively identical. 

Both Crysis Warhead and Batman: Arkham City exist as outliers with Warhead's tessellation heavy DX10 engine traditionally favoring AMD cards, and Arkham City's PhysX engine skewing towards NVIDIA. 

Temperature

Operating temperature was our main point of contention in our previous review of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, and things haven't changed much since then. Running a full 14 degrees (20%) hotter than the GTX 680, and coupled with an extremely loud fan, it just can't compete with the GTX 680. In comparison, the GTX 680 runs extremely quietly thanks in part to a fin stack made from acoustic dampening material positioned next to its fan.

Power Consumption

In terms of power consumption, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition was again much higher than the GTX 680, requiring a massive 33% more juice to attain the same level of performance.

Which One Should You Buy?

Earlier in 2012, NVIDIA held a fairly considerable performance lead over AMD. However, the way things stand now, AMD has been able to catch up and, at present, both cards are almost exactly equal in terms of gaming performance (barring a few games optimized in favor of one over the other).

As such, your choice of which camp to side with will have to come down to other considerations:

Usage Potential

As previously mentioned, AMD's Radeon HD 7970 is, components-wise, a more powerful card. It boasts a higher transistor count, more stream processors and 1GB more VRAM. While this won't effect most gamers, it may be relevant for those planning on running 2 or 3-way configuration CrossFireX setups, or for those with 3D or multi-monitor gaming in mind, as the extra VRAM will definitely help. We've already seen that the HD 7970 was able to edge out a slight advantage at the more challenging games at our highest 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution setting and we expect this lead to grow at even higher resolutions.

Advantage: AMD Radeon HD 7970

Temperature and Power Consumption

In theory, there is no question here, NVIDIA boasts far superior thermal design and more efficient power consumption. However, do remember that we are considering reference cards in this match-up, which are not exactly known for their cooler designs. The likely reality is that, if you're in the market for a new graphics card, you will probably be looking at a custom cooler design. With this in mind, the reference card temperatures and power consumption levels shown in this match-up will be, perhaps, less pertinent to you.

Do note that custom HD 7970 GHz Edition cards are next to impossible to find in this region. However, as previously noted, the GHz Edition is functionally identical to a first generation HD 7970, except overclocked. As such, it's a fairly simple matter to bring any HD 7970 card up to GHz Edition specs, requiring only a moderate overclock.

Once you start looking at the different variety of custom cards available, each with their own cooler design and accompanying power efficiency, can a well designed cooler effectively nullify any temperature disadvantage lost from using a stock Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition? Considering the pair of OC-edition Radeon HD 7970 cards from ASUS and Sapphire that we've tested previously, they look very promising. Of course, you could also argue that a similarly well designed cooler applied to a GTX 680 would result in the same drop in temperature and thus recreate the same disparity - and that they did when we tested a trio of custom-designed GTX 680 cards from Gigabyte, MSI and Palit. Considering that the trio were overclocked GTX 680 cards, this means their thermal output would have been a lot lower if they were running at reference clock speeds (which is when they match-up with the overclocked Radeon HD 7970 cards in the form of the GHz edition).

So in all fairness, NVIDIA still retains a notable lead in operating temperatures and power consumption.

Last but not least, consider as well that a case with good air flow and sufficiently powerful fans can have a large effect on GPU temperature. 

Advantage: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680

Pricing 

While temperature and power consumption are important, many gamers are indifferent to these values as long as they don't exceed acceptable levels and reach the point where they start causing problems. As such, pricing is likely to be the biggest determining factor in which card you end up with. And in this arena, there is a huge difference.

When first released, the GTX 680 was priced cheaper the HD 7970, making it quite an attractive buy at the time. Things are now, however are very different. AMD's summer price cuts have managed to trickle down to this region and, a quick look at HWZ's Price Lists and our Graphics Cards Price Guide will show that local pricing on the HD 7970 is much lower than the GTX 680. The average price of the HD 7970 is around S$650, with the lowest we've seen priced at S$580. Conversely, the average price for a GTX 680 remains at around S$800, with the cheapest we've seen priced at S$695.

In fact, as far as pricing goes, the competing NVIDIA SKU appears to be the lower tier GeForce GTX 670, which varies between $499 to $600 in price and faces off against a reference clocked Radeon HD 7970. We're unable to find any GHz edition of the Radeon HD 7970 retailing locally at this point of time. As such, remember that any reference clocked Radeon HD 7970 cards you buy in this region will be based off of the first generation 915MHz core clock speed model, so you will have to overclock core speeds to at least 1050MHz and memory to 6000MHz DDR to achieve the same results we've shown in this article.

Advantage: AMD Radeon HD 7970 (not the GHz edition since it's unavailable in this region)

Our Pick

This one was a very tough one to call. While we started out comparing the AMD Radeon HD 7970 1GHz Edition, we had to get back to reality since actual availability locally is almost next to impossible, and we don't blame it since the GHz Edition is nothing more than an slight overclocked and tweaked edition of the standard Radeon HD 7970. In fact, some of the add-in board partners offered a BIOS update to customers using the standard Radeon HD 7970 to ramp them up to a GHz Edition. As such, when considering actual retail availability, the several pre-overclocked and custom edition Radeon HD 7970 cards are technically (and value-wise) a fair match against a stock GeForce GTX 680 graphics card. Using the GHz Edition card as a reference mark, we found gaming and overclock performance effectively at a dead heat with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. In the end, we chose AMD's Radeon HD 7970 for its better overall functionality due to its higher potential with multi-GPU, multi-monitor and 3D gaming (more VRAM), as well as its much lower cost in this region.

Of course, the choice comes with several caveats such as being comfortable to overclock your graphics card, putting up with the louder operational noise, higher operating temperatures and power consumption. While the custom cooler equipped Radeon HD 7970 cards fare much better in some of these traits, they can't best the GeForce GTX 680. So for the best out-of-the-box experience, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 cards are still the best around, but they come at quite a cost. They too are available in non-reference editions that excel better than the reference model and there are even 4GB editions for the extreme enthusiasts.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.