770 vs 670

[Refuge88]

I'm looking for my first investment into wide screen gaming.

I've been pondering this, and haven't been able to find a satisfactory answer. I also did a quick forum search for 770 v 670 before posting this.

I believe in buying the single best card affordable and then doubling up later when needed/prices drop. I know that for triple screen gaming memory (capacity/bandwith) becomes a problem on even the best cards.

Which would be the better way to go for price performance? I don't need to play on ultra but I would like it to be beautiful.

the 670 has smaller bandwith (and currently) more memory

while the 770 has bigger bandwith, and by the time I'm ordering could possibly have the memory capacity.

I will only put a blower styled card in my system, and I'm partial to EVGA, they currently only over 2g memory sku's in blower form and 3gb for the 670.

I'm not afraid to go somewhere other than EVGA so long as its a solid performer, with a similar blower style cooler, and a solid warrenty.

if my game catalogue is SWTOR, WOW, BF3, Lol, Civ 5, Starcraft 2, diablo III.

Would saving the money and going with a 670 hurt me with that bandwith?

[LuckyNoS7evin]

I'm looking for my first investment into wide screen gaming.

I've been pondering this, and haven't been able to find a satisfactory answer. I also did a quick forum search for 770 v 670 before posting this.

I believe in buying the single best card affordable and then doubling up later when needed/prices drop. I know that for triple screen gaming memory (capacity/bandwith) becomes a problem on even the best cards.

Which would be the better way to go for price performance? I don't need to play on ultra but I would like it to be beautiful.

the 670 has smaller bandwith (and currently) more memory

while the 770 has bigger bandwith, and by the time I'm ordering could possibly have the memory capacity.

I will only put a blower styled card in my system, and I'm partial to EVGA, but as long as its a solid performer with a good warrenty and a blower style cooler, I'm not afraid to hop camps either. They currently only over 2g memory sku's in blower form and 3gb for the 670.

if my game catalogue is SWTOR, WOW, BF3, Lol, Civ 5, Starcraft 2, diablo III.

Would saving the money and going with a 670 hurt me with that bandwith?

By "wide screen gaming" do you mean widescreen or multi-monitor? As this will make a huge difference to what you want/need to buy in terms of GFX cards.

If it's a single big monitor what resolution are you thinking?

EDIT:
Oh and are you against going "team red" over "team green"

[Refuge88]

A 3x1 Multi-Monitor setup with some simple 20-24 inch 1080p monitors.

I'm not opposed to team red, but I am partial to green I won't lie.

I just want something affordable that will look and perform great both single and in sli/xf. Because I will be getting the single best GPU I can, then adding a second later when the price drops and I need the extra oomphf.

I am hesitant to make the leap from green to red, due to the microstutter issues AMD has been recieving as of late, as well as just overal driver support.

But if you run with Red and have no problems with games like the ones i'm trying to run and it could save me some money, I woulnd't mind other options at all.

[LuckyNoS7evin]

A 3x1 Multi-Monitor setup with some simple 20-24 inch 1080p monitors.

I'm not opposed to team red, but I am partial to green I won't lie.

I just want something affordable that will look and perform great both single and in sli/xf. Because I will be getting the single best GPU I can, then adding a second later when the price drops and I need the extra oomphf.

I am hesitant to make the leap from green to red, due to the microstutter issues AMD has been recieving as of late, as well as just overal driver support.

But if you run with Red and have no problems with games like the ones i'm trying to run and it could save me some money, I woulnd't mind other options at all.

To be honest reading and being a part of this forum for nearly 7 months you will find that most know there is better multi-monitor support from the AMD drivers than Nvidia.

In terms of bang for buck you are better off with team read also.

When it comes to memory on any card go 3GB or above.

I know what you mean about a switch from Green to Red however I made the switch in Nov after having 2x560 Tis in SLI to one 7950 and now 2 in CF. Yes there is Microstutter, I however do not notice it on "faster" paced games as I'm concentrating on Killing over "Is there stutter". BF3 and Civ5 I have and play. BF3 is fast enough not to notice a stutter and Civ5 I haven't played it long enough in Eyefinity to notice.

Now the title of your post says it all when you also say within this quoted post that you are "The Single Best GPU", why not the 680 or 780, well as you probably know there is little difference in terms of performance between the 70s and 80s. This seems to be the same between the 50s and 70s when it comes to AMD and the 9750 and 7970. The hardest game I've pushed at my cards is Crysis 3. This did "hammer" the memory however I was still able to get 30-60 FPS in most situations on "low" settings, although low settings in Crysis 3 still look beautiful.

Sorry for the wall of text, this is just my opinion.

TL:DR:
Go Red for drivers, support and cost
Go Green for better dual card support!

[Refuge88]

I suppose I should have worded that differently as well, I do want the single best card, but I need one that I can afford. and while a 780 is definately the way to go for the single best GPU money can buy, I just don't have the money to buy that.

The x70 sku's are much more price/performance friendly IMO.

Now as far as red goes what single card solution would you reccomend? I am looking for a single card that can push all the pixels on its own with low/med settings preferably med/high, and then add a single card in later for better performance or to skip upgrading a generation or two.

I've been told that team red has better multi monitor support (suppose the best way to put it would be more flexible)

And I'm no videophile, I don't need perfection, but I also want to feel like my money is/was worth it. Which is why the micro stutter problem intimidated (Not sure if thats the best word for it) me and pushed me more towards the green team.

I'm not as well read with team red, is there any difference in memory bandwith I should be making note of when looking between their cards? Or are they more "consistent" than team green when it comes to memory?

[Refuge88]

I just got done doing some lite research (I'm at work so I can't go too in depth.)

As expected they do appear to be a greater value, but the problem I'm running into is that there don't seem to be any reliable blower styled cooler designs for them.

The ones that exist run hot/loud, or have the fan ontop of the GPU sending air in all directions from the heatsink.

My OCD won't allow me to put anything but a blower styled GPU in my case. It destroys my airflow vortex of awesome inside my case I've worked hard to build.

The only day I would put a non blower card in would be if I were planning on ripping it off and putting on a water block. Which right now simply isn't in the cards for me.

[helifax]

I don't really know much about the Red team as of late.
But AMD/ATI practically invented multi-monitor support in their drivers.
I, however went to the green team due to Multi-monitor and stereo 3D support. All I can say is that the nvidia drivers never ever gave me trouble with setting or using multi-monitor resolutions at all.
As for the drivers overall they are "better" optimized and so on (I say better since this is not always the case) However I read about alot of people having some trouble configuring multi-monitor to work when they are using different monitors and such due to different factors.
If you plan to use 3 same monitors I would go the nVidia way, but this is again a matter of preference I believe.

[Refuge88]

I have no interest in 3d I won't lie.

But i am attracted to team green for their sheer umph and well designed coolers and nice thermal/noise performance.

I will be using three identical monitors, although later I might slap a 4th smaller one ontop, but Greens surround already has specific support for such an "Accessory" Monitor.

Since you use team green perhaps you could fill me in, what card are you using? Do you find the smaller bandwith to be an issue with hig res gaming? 192 bit in the 600 series does seem quite low, but the 670 is really a pretty place for me in price/performance as far as my budget is willing to allow. The only reason I decided to toss the 770 into the mix is because it has the higher bandwith with the same Kepler oomph. But as of right now its slim pickings for more than 2g cards. Which I suppose won't be a problem for me as it will be a few months before I get this all together of course.

[Haldi]

770 ist just a 680 rebranded and some small changes.

So you're going 670 vs 680. And thats both the same chip, and IIRC also the same BUS bandwith.
Tought there should be some new 7704gb version right ?

depends on how much you want to spend, but you're better off with a 770!

[helifax]

I have no interest in 3d I won't lie.

But i am attracted to team green for their sheer umph and well designed coolers and nice thermal/noise performance.

I will be using three identical monitors, although later I might slap a 4th smaller one ontop, but Greens surround already has specific support for such an "Accessory" Monitor.

Since you use team green perhaps you could fill me in, what card are you using? Do you find the smaller bandwith to be an issue with hig res gaming? 192 bit in the 600 series does seem quite low, but the 670 is really a pretty place for me in price/performance as far as my budget is willing to allow. The only reason I decided to toss the 770 into the mix is because it has the higher bandwith with the same Kepler oomph. But as of right now its slim pickings for more than 2g cards. Which I suppose won't be a problem for me as it will be a few months before I get this all together of course.

I haven't moved to the Keplar series yet. I am still using a Fermi chip.
The card that I use is a GTX 590.
The card performs very nicely so far, still. the Memory interface for this card is a 384-bit per GPU for a total of 768-bit bandwidth as stated in the datasheet:

GPU Interfaces
• Designed for PCI Express 2.0 ×16 for a peak bandwidth (counting both directions) of
up to 20 gigabytes (GB) per second (PCIe 2.0 devices are backwards compatible
with PCI Express 1.x devices).
• 768-bit GDDR5 memory interface (384-bit per GPU)
http://www.geforce.co.uk/Active/en_US/en_US/pdf/GTX-590.pdf

The only problem that I am facing is the memory size. The GTX 590 features a 3GB shared memory size. That means 1.5GB VRAM per GPU.
1.5GB VRAM is a bit to little for Surround. And here comes the most interesting part. Most of the games will use constantly 1.4-1.5GB or VRAM in Surround. But I haven't seen a game so far to be affected by this in means of performance. Both GPU's will run at 99% in any game and I can still play any game on the highest texture settings at acceptable framerates (30+) in 3D Surround (that equals to 6 monitors resolution rendering) without being affected by the limited VRAM. How nVidia handles the VRAM allocation and texture management is beyond me but I don't have any problems.
I know some people complain about the limited VRAM and I agree it can be troublesome, but I suspect driver VRAM management is the one true culprit in this problem. I might be wrong, or I might be right based on my experience so far.
Having a dual-gpu card can also introduce micro-stuttering, again a driver issue. So far on Nvidia Side I saw 2 games where this is visible , both being AMD sponsored games, when the graphics settings are pushed to extreme. Again a driver issue.

Why I talk about dual GPU?
When the 680 was released, it's power was aprox equal with a 590. BUT this was true on one monitor resolutions. In some cases it even out-performed the 590. However when I made some tests between the 590 and 680 in 3D Surround I quickly saw the benefit of having a secondary GPU as the GTX 590 offered better performance than the 680 by quite a nice margin. Again this could have been a driver issue since the drivers for 680 were not matured enough, but I would recommend a dual GPU solution in most cases.

Hope this helps

[Refuge88]

@Haldi - I know I've seen 3g and I would imagine there are 4g. But my requirement for a blower styled cooler limits me, as soo far I've only seen 2g blower 770's so far that interest me.

@Halifax, perhaps the difference between sli in surround is a similar effect as a multi threaded benchmark between a quad core i5 and a i7 (Hyperthreading).

Single monitor with SLI, extra "Cores/threads" wasted, put it on 3/6 screens, its used.

i7 plaing games wasted, encoding? Its used?

Not sure if its a proper analogy, nor one that I have done any research into, but depending on how Nvidia does their drivers for SLI it could be a similar situation.

As it stands now I'm gunna have to go single GPU, I can't afford an sli setup now, and even if I could it would make upgrading in the future a bit rougher than simply slapping in a second card a year or two down the road at a then cheaper price.

But since I don't plan on doing any 3d, perhaps a single 670 would be alright? I just really wanna save that $50 if its possible without hamstringing my gaming. I'm not expecting 5760 maxed balls to the walls settings for BF3, but if I could hit high/ultra textures, and keep the AA down a bit I would be a very happy man.

As it stands now though would you see a 256 bit interface hamstringing me now or in the near future? Also would 2g be enough for triple screen gaming?

If so, then I suppose the 770 will be the way to go and I'll just have to eat the $50. I feel like an idiot trying to save it when we are talking this kinda of price point for a system. I just don't have that much to work with.

Also do people here sell gently used parts here at discounts? That might help things along for me quite a bit!

[Mawrtin]

Just a heads up, playing BF3 with a 670 in 5760x1080 (or even higher with bezel correction) in high will probably net you <30-40fps which isn't that much fun imo but you can lower the resolution a bit and get it running fine.

edit: on <high settings. I'm pulling these numbers out of my rear but it's a guesstimate.

[Haldi]

As it stands now though would you see a 256 bit interface hamstringing me now or in the near future? Also would 2g be enough for triple screen gaming?

If so, then I suppose the 770 will be the way to go and I'll just have to eat the $50. I feel like an idiot trying to save it when we are talking this kinda of price point for a system. I just don't have that much to work with.

You won't have problems with a 256bit interface, and you should be able to play Games on middle/high settings for the next 2 years with a 670 and 2gb.

It's just that i myself dislike buying a smaller product for little less cash if i could have the better one.

[Refuge88]

I do too, and back in the heyday of the 90's I never comprimised...

Now? I don't quite have the monetary freedom I once had.

I do appreciate all the input from you guys though

It was a fun covnersation