GTX 670 or HD 7970

[LONEWOLF]

I’m assembling a new gaming rig for my wife. She wants a “minimalistic” and quiet system and mainly plays Battefield 3, Starcraft II and Diablo III online.

Main components assembled thus far: Antec P280, Antec HCP 750, Antec Kuhler 620, Intel i7 3770, ASUS Maximums V Gene, 8GB Corsair Dominator GT 2133 and 240GB Corsair Force GT.

To complete the build, I need to budget wise choose between an ASUS DirectCUII HD 7970 or GTX 670 (EVGA FTW or Gigabyte Windforce as ASUS is still unavailable) GPU.

With the release of the new 12.7 beta drivers, it appears as if the performance of the HD 7970 has increased substantially, many say surpassing the GTX 670 slightly. I read the GTX 670 runs cooler, draws less power and includes technologies such as PhysX and adaptive Vsync. It also runs faster in games such as Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2. On the other hand I understand the HD 7970 has more raw power, more RAM, and outperforms even the GTX 680 in newer games that employ compute-assisted antialiasing, which is maybe a sign of things to come.

Any suggestions as to which GPU is better for the same money...

[StarBound]

The 7970 is faster than the 670. But I feel safer in the nvidia camp.

As far as I can tell adaptive vsync is a frame limiter. If your playing at 120fps on a 120hz screen its locked to 120fps, if your fps drops to say 90fps the game goes down to a 60 frame limit and if it drops again then it goes to a 40 or 30fps limit.

The 670 is also less power hungry.