buying new pc under 60 -65 k

1. What is the purpose of the computer? What all applications and games are you going to run? (Stupid answers like 'gaming' or 'office work' will not work. Be exact. Which games? Which applications? Avoid the word 'et cetera.')
Ans:hardcore heavy gaming, light programming, watching hd movies, net surfing, image editing using photoshop and other tools. in gaming, games like need for speed -(the run, latest most wanted), ac 3, Crysis 3, Far Cry , max payne 3, call of duty black ops 2, GTA IV, GTA V(when it comes)

2. What is your overall budget? If you can extend a bit for a more balanced configuration, then mention this too.
Ans: around 60-65k. The last i can extend is 70k for really considerable config..

3. Planning to overclock?
Ans:have no knowledge how to do so... therefore no.

4. Which Operating System are you planning to use?
Ans:windows 7 and windows xp(pro) simultaneosly. will upgrade to win 8 later.

5. How much hard drive space is needed?
Ans:1TB-2TB

6. Do you want to buy a monitor? If yes, please mention which screen size and resolution do you want. If you already have a monitor and want to reuse it, again mention the size and resolution of monitor you have.
Ans:yes,preferably any >20 inches monitor with LED display will do. resolution full hd

7. Which components you DON'T want to buy or which components you already have and plan on reusing?
Ans:eyboard , mouse and speaker (i already have 5.1 channel speakers)

8. When are you planning to buy the system?
Ans:january

9. Have you ever built a desktop before or will this be done by an assembler?
Ans:no... will be done by assembler don't want to mess up the new rig

10. Where do you live? Are you buying locally? Are you open to buying stuff from online shops if you don't get locally?
Ans:bangalore, koramangala, planning to buy components from s.p.road

11. Anything else which you would like to say?
Ans: i want the rig should be like that it can play the games that will be releasing for atleast one year or so....
and ram should be >=8 GB
if suggesting intel processor please suggest gen III model integrated intel 4000 hd graphics(i7 prefarably)
have no idea about amd processors..
also any news on intel 4th gen cpu???

Intel Core i5 3570 / i7 3770 - Rs 12750 / 17000 ( All Generation 3)
Gigabyte H77DS3H - Rs 7200
Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL- Rs 2750
GPU - Gigabyte GTX 660Ti / Sapphire HD 7950 - Rs 19700 / 21000 ( you can game on for more than a year no problem!)
HDD - WD Caviar Blue 2TB - Rs 5400
SMPS - Corsair CX500V2/CX600V2 - Rs 3450/3750
Cabinet - NZXT Beta EVO/Source 210 - Rs 2600
OPD - Samsung SH-S 223F - Rs 975
Monitor - Dell ST2220MB (21.5 inch LED Full HD 1920 x 1080) - Rs 8200

Total
Rs 62,775 (i5) / 67,025 (i7)

Add an SSD later on.And you wont need an i7 for gaming you are better off with an i5 at that budget.

Aren't you under quoting the prices? WD Blue 2TB at 5.4k? lol?
The rig is good btw, just change the ram to 4gb * 2 gskill ripjawsx 1600mhz

The Incinerator said:
Intel Core i5 3570 / i7 3770 - Rs 12750 / 17000 ( All Generation 3)
Gigabyte H77DS3H - Rs 7200
Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL- Rs 2750
GPU - Gigabyte GTX 660Ti / Sapphire HD 7950 - Rs 19700 / 21000 ( you can game on for more than a year no problem!)
HDD - WD Caviar Blue 2TB - Rs 5400
SMPS - Corsair CX500V2/CX600V2 - Rs 3450/3750
Cabinet - NZXT Beta EVO/Source 210 - Rs 2600
OPD - Samsung SH-S 223F - Rs 975
Monitor - Dell ST2220MB (21.5 inch LED Full HD 1920 x 1080) - Rs 8200

Total
Rs 62,775 (i5) / 67,025 (i7)

Add an SSD later on.And you wont need an i7 for gaming you are better off with an i5 at that budget.

ok the GTX 660Ti has 2GB memory while sapphire hd7950 has 3 gb
which one is better?

1st of all, Video Ram is not a good measure of performance, even GTX 680 does have 2GB memory but it performs far faster than HD 7950. Now coming to the topic, HD 7950 is a better card than GTX 660 Ti. Opt for the Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC with boost model, available around 22K.
I am also suggesting you another AMD alternative, the FX 8 Core processors as you've mentioned applications like Photoshop and other editing tools.

AMD FX 8350 (8 Core, 4GHz, 4.2GHz Turbo, 8MB L2+ 8MB L3) @ 12.5K
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 @ 9.5K
G-Skill RipjawX 1600 MHz 4GB X 2 DDR3 @ 2.9K
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB (ST2000DM001) 64MB Cache, 7200 rpm SATA III @ 5.8K
Corsair GS600 80+ PSU @ 4.2K
Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC @ 21.8K

Rest of the parts are same as incinerator has suggested.

gta0gagan said:
ok the GTX 660Ti has 2GB memory while sapphire hd7950 has 3 gb
which one is better?

As Cilus already explained that performance does not depends on VRAM much specially at lower resolution, it would take advantage on very high resolutions which is not the case for OP. As for GPU with latest drivers by AMD 7950 is better.

RIG suggested by Incinerator and Cilus are both very good, Cilus RIG would give better performance in Application than Intel RIG. Choose what you want.

Intel Core i5 3570 / i7 3770 - Rs 12750 / 17000 ( All Generation 3)
Gigabyte H77DS3H - Rs 7200
Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL- Rs 2750
GPU - Gigabyte GTX 660Ti / Sapphire HD 7950 - Rs 19700 / 21000 ( you can game on for more than a year no problem!)
HDD - WD Caviar Blue 2TB - Rs 5400
SMPS - Corsair CX500V2/CX600V2 - Rs 3450/3750
Cabinet - NZXT Beta EVO/Source 210 - Rs 2600
OPD - Samsung SH-S 223F - Rs 975
Monitor - Dell ST2220MB (21.5 inch LED Full HD 1920 x 1080) - Rs 8200

change the mobo to MSI ZH77A-G41 @ Rs.5880 on expensivekart

hey guys will i need to buy some sort of cooling arrangement in this rig???

Till now this is the hardware m planning to go for

Processor:
Intel Core i7 3770 - Rs 17000

mobo:
Gigabyte H77DS3H - Rs 07200

RAM:
Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - Rs 02750

GPU:
Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC - Rs 22000

HDD:
WD Caviar Blue 2TB - Rs 05400

SMPS:
Corsair CX600V2 - Rs 03750

Cabinet:
NZXT Beta EVO - Rs 02600

OPD:
Samsung SH-S 223F - Rs 00975

Monitor:
Dell ST2220MB - Rs 08200

Total - Rs 68975

waiting for recommendations on cooling system(is it required)
and also any further performance changes
and is the price of WD Caviar Blue 2TB Rs 5400??

hey one more thing i read somewhere in the blog cilus mentioned that fx8350 is better than 3770 .
is it true??
and will it make any huge performance upgrade if choose 3770k over 3700??
which gpu should i prefer as gtx 660 ti got new driver updates and is almost same in performance as hd 7950??

gta0gagan said:
hey one more thing i read somewhere in the blog cilus mentioned that fx8350 is better than 3770 .
is it true??
and will it make any huge performance upgrade if choose 3770k over 3700??
which gpu should i prefer as gtx 660 ti got new driver updates and is almost same in performance as hd 7950??

Well Cilus don't make pointless posts so yes he is right. In multi threaded applications FX8350 performs better but choosing it over 3770K is not a good idea if you have the budget.
As for 3770 and 3770K. The K version means it has unlocked multiplier which means that its easily and more overclockable than their non K counterparts so its better to choose a K version rather than the simple version of the same CPU.

gta0gagan said:
which gpu should i prefer as gtx 660 ti got new driver updates and is almost same in performance as hd 7950??

HD7950 performs better than the GTX660Ti

Get 7950 as it also have awesome computing performance.

Man, I never mentioned FX-8350 is better than i7 3770 or 3770K, I mentioned than it is better than similarly priced 3470 in terms of raw performance and features and better than slightly higher priced i5 3570K in terms of value for money and Multi threaded performance. If you have the budget then go for i7 3770 (non K).

Regarding performance of GPU, with the latest Nvidia Beta driver, GTX 660 Ti has narrowed the performance gap compared to HD 7950 with Catalyst 12.11 beta Driver but that is for only couple of gaming, specially the Nvidia promoted games like Far Cry 3. But HD 7950 does have an advantage that can't be caught by Nvidia 660 Ti, the higher Vram (3 GB compared to 2 GB) and wider memory bus (384 bit compared to 192 bit of 660 Ti). Due to these two reason, with AMD card, user can use higher Anti-Aliasing and Anisotrophic Filtering (AF) values and still can get playable or good FPS. in 660 Ti, the performance drops quickly in most cases with higher AA and AF setting.

Cilus said:
Man, I never mentioned FX-8350 is better than i7 3770 or 3770K, I mentioned than it is better than similarly priced 3470 in terms of raw performance and features and better than slightly higher priced i5 3570K in terms of value for money and Multi threaded performance. If you have the budget then go for i7 3770 (non K).

Regarding performance of GPU, with the latest Nvidia Beta driver, GTX 660 Ti has narrowed the performance gap compared to HD 7950 with Catalyst 12.11 beta Driver but that is for only couple of gaming, specially the Nvidia promoted games like Far Cry 3. But HD 7950 does have an advantage that can't be caught by Nvidia 660 Ti, the higher Vram (3 GB compared to 2 GB) and wider memory bus (384 bit compared to 192 bit of 660 Ti). Due to these two reason, with AMD card, user can use higher Anti-Aliasing and Anisotrophic Filtering (AF) values and still can get playable or good FPS. in 660 Ti, the performance drops quickly in most cases with higher AA and AF setting.

Looks like he got the wrong idea about the CPU. In some cases FX8350 comes very near to even 3770K and in some it was able to beat it IIRC but choosing it over 3770K is plain stupid.

H

gta0gagan said:
hey one more thing i read somewhere in the blog cilus mentioned that fx8350 is better than 3770 .
is it true??
and will it make any huge performance upgrade if choose 3770k over 3700??
which gpu should i prefer as gtx 660 ti got new driver updates and is almost same in performance as hd 7950??

gagan if you are willing to spend 25k for cpu and motherboard than it is better if you opt for FX8350 and asus Sabretooth 990fx....
or i5 3570k and gigabyte z77x d3h.....

Thanks for your replies guys.
Sorry got confused cilus u said this:
"At stock speed, i5
3470 is even faster than i7 3770 but that does
not stop us recommending i7 3770."
Is it true ...?
Then i7 3770 is not worth its cost...
And too bad we don't have vedant here at bangalore...

H

gta0gagan said:
Thanks for your replies guys.
Sorry got confused cilus u said this:
"At stock speed, i5
3470 is even faster than i7 3770 but that does
not stop us recommending i7 3770."
Is it true ...?
Then i7 3770 is not worth its cost...
And too bad we don't have vedant here at bangalore...

he said i7 3770K NOT i7 3770

gta0gagan said:
1. What is the purpose of the computer? What all applications and games are you going to run? (Stupid answers like 'gaming' or 'office work' will not work. Be exact. Which games? Which applications? Avoid the word 'et cetera.')
Ans:hardcore heavy gaming, light programming, watching hd movies, net surfing, image editing using photoshop and other tools. in gaming, games like need for speed -(the run, latest most wanted), ac 3, Crysis 3, Far Cry , max payne 3, call of duty black ops 2, GTA IV, GTA V(when it comes)

Is the image editing and photoshop is of primary importance or it is like a normal non pro user.... day to day basis. Are you in to encoding and decoding heavily? Is this Rig primarily for gaming?

V

i5 3470 is not faster than i7 3770/3770k at stock.It might be a typo

No Vkl, that is not a typo. 3470 performs better than i7 3770K in most games, . I don't know why but it does.

Check here: Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 : AMD FX-8350 Review: Does Piledriver Fix Bulldozer's Flaws?

The Incinerator said:
Is the image editing and photoshop is of primary importance or it is like a normal non pro user.... day to day basis. Are you in to encoding and decoding heavily? Is this Rig primarily for gaming?

its primarily for gaming.... secondaey works are light image editing

Cilus said:
No Vkl, that is not a typo. 3470 performs better than i7 3770K in most games, . I don't know why but it does.

Check here: Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 : AMD FX-8350 Review: Does Piledriver Fix Bulldozer's Flaws?

shouldn't the i7 be the next version to i5 in terms of performance???

also one more thing guys.... Dell ST2220MB Dell S2240L and BenQ GL2250HM . which one is better?? all are at almost same price.

Cilus said:
No Vkl, that is not a typo. 3470 performs better than i7 3770K in most games, . I don't know why but it does.

Check here: Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 : AMD FX-8350 Review: Does Piledriver Fix Bulldozer's Flaws?

On that page - there are 3 games - and out of the 3 - its only one i.e - BF3 in which the 3470 is ahead of the 3770K. In the other two, its the 3770K is quite superior.

V

Cilus said:
No Vkl, that is not a typo. 3470 performs better than i7 3770K in most games, . I don't know why but it does.

Check here: Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 : AMD FX-8350 Review: Does Piledriver Fix Bulldozer's Flaws?

Cilus,it is not what always happen as in other games the i7 3770k and i5 3570k are ahead of i5 3470.In the same review in Skyrim and World of warcraft :Mists Of Pandaria benchmarks both i7 3770k and i5 3570k are ahead of i5 3470.
In BF3 i7 quad-cores with hyper-threading perform lower than when hyper-threading is set off.Though dual core processor like i3 2100 and likes benefit from hyper-threading.
i7 2600K Hyper-Threading impact:BF3

In Tomshardware test in BF3,both the i5s were ahead of i7 3770k in majority of tests but i5 3470 was ahead of even i5 3570k,now that might be just one off with the tested systems.The difference in fps between the tested processors in that test is low.

Some other games -

Anandtech - blue is 3770k, the other - 3470.

*imageshack.us/a/img525/4188/capturesfj.png

Dell S2240L - Eyes wide shut. Get it.

If gaming is primary get an Intel i5.

H

gta0gagan said:
RAM:
Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - Rs 02750
HDD:
WD Caviar Blue 2TB - Rs 05400

Where are You getting these prices...?

The Incinerator said:
Dell S2240L - Eyes wide shut. Get it.

If gaming is primary get an Intel i5.

At 8.7K there is a BenQ Display available with superior VA panel which I also suggested in Hitman4's thread. The Dell one is TN panel and VA panel is better than it.

Cilus said:
At 8.7K there is a BenQ Display available with superior VA panel which I also suggested in Hitman4's thread. The Dell one is TN panel and VA panel is better than it.

its IPS panel

hitman4 said:
Where are You getting these prices...?

Actually i m not incinerator told me the prices m first finalizing the config on estimated prices after that i'll check for prices...

hitman4 said:
Where are You getting these prices...?

*bwindia.net/content/bupc-memory

*bwindia.net/content/bupc-hard-disc-drive

Cilus said:
At 8.7K there is a BenQ Display available with superior VA panel which I also suggested in Hitman4's thread. The Dell one is TN panel and VA panel is better than it.

Cilus....that Dell is an I-PS panel !

Check Here : S2240L 54.6 cm (21.5") Monitor with LED Panel Details

The Incinerator said:
Intel Core i5 3570 / i7 3770 - Rs 12750 / 17000 ( All Generation 3)
Gigabyte H77DS3H - Rs 7200
Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL- Rs 2750
GPU - Gigabyte GTX 660Ti / Sapphire HD 7950 - Rs 19700 / 21000 ( you can game on for more than a year no problem!)
HDD - WD Caviar Blue 2TB - Rs 5400
SMPS - Corsair CX500V2/CX600V2 - Rs 3450/3750
Cabinet - NZXT Beta EVO/Source 210 - Rs 2600
OPD - Samsung SH-S 223F - Rs 975
Monitor - Dell ST2220MB (21.5 inch LED Full HD 1920 x 1080) - Rs 8200

Total
Rs 62,775 (i5) / 67,025 (i7)

Add an SSD later on.And you wont need an i7 for gaming you are better off with an i5 at that budget.

hey u mentioned the 2tb wd caviar blue but in this link they r saying there is no 2tb wd blue

Correct that to WD AV-GP 2 TB (WD20EURS) @ Rs 5900 while the Green 2TB is cheaper.

The Velociraptor and Blue stops at 1TB.

The Incinerator said:
Correct that to WD AV-GP 2 TB (WD20EURS) @ Rs 5900 while the Green 2TB is cheaper.

The Velociraptor and Blue stops at 1TB.

can u tell me some other 2 tb alternatives with price also a good mobo for i7 3770 and i7 3770 k

m going with i7 3770 because i think that way i can b more future proof i.e. i can upgrade more over same mobo and proccesor

also m taking that Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC ,CX600V2 plz take that into account while suggesting....

any one from Bangalore please suggest me some good shops around here (near SP road) as i m new in Bangalore........

With i7 3770K and a supporting board will push your budget considerably. For eg i7 3770K = Rs 19500 + Gigabyte Sniper M1 = 11850 + HD 7950 =21700 = Total 53,500 and then there is everything else ! And for gaming you are better off with an i5. Google and read reviews you will know. Honestly IMO in this world of computers there is no such thing as future proofing. An i5 3570 ,H77 and a 7950 is great at your specified budget.

also the reviews are telling gtx 660 ti is better and cheaper
Radeon HD 7950 vs. GeForce GTX 660 Ti revisited - The Tech Report - Page 1

7950 has higher potential due to its 3gb vram and 384bit memory interface.
Either wait for some more reviews or take whichever suits you.

gta0gagan said:
also the reviews are telling gtx 660 ti is better and cheaper
Radeon HD 7950 vs. GeForce GTX 660 Ti revisited - The Tech Report - Page 1

With Nvidias new 310.70 driver update the gap has closed considerably in fact the GTX 660ti can also be safely recommended now. You wont go wrong with either cards.You never know as AMD can update their driver again and close that gap too.

Burt one thing, Nvidia's driver update can't improve is Compute Performance where HD 7950 is light years ahead of GTX 660 Ti. So even both the cards perform equally, my pick will be 7950 due to the Compute performance advantage. In my opinios, when Direct Compute based Gaming features will be more prominent in most games, 7950 will show some advantages due to its superior compute performance. Apart from couple of games like BF3, Civilizations, most of the DX11 features like FOV, DOF, AO etc are hybrid of Pixel shader and Direct Compute algorithms but in near future games will stress over the algorithm based on DirectCompute.

Thanks for your help guys I m really concentrating on performance here ....
As I will update my desktop after like 8 years (its still operational) and I won't spend anything for at least 3-4 years..

The Incinerator said:
Correct that to WD AV-GP 2 TB (WD20EURS) @ Rs 5900 while the Green 2TB is cheaper.

The Velociraptor and Blue stops at 1TB.

please suggest a good alternative for 2tb hard disk as WD AV-GP 2 TB (WD20EURS) is primarily for security surveillance...

Well I did the math and the total with 3770 k is coming to 79k at the max..

well my question is if I go for this rig is the performance of 3770k rig with the worth 7-8k more than the 3770 rig

gta0gagan said:
please suggest a good alternative for 2tb hard disk as WD AV-GP 2 TB (WD20EURS) is primarily for security surveillance...

So what if its for security surveillance ? :-?

Try the Western Digital Green WD20EARX 2TB 64MB or this one Seagate 2TB 64MB Cache 5900 RPM Green .
Confirm the warranty period for seagate.

gta0gagan said:
Well I did the math and the total with 3770 k is coming to 79k at the max..

well my question is if I go for this rig is the performance of 3770k rig with the worth 7-8k more than the 3770 rig

Why do you need an i7 ? An i5 3570k is more than enough and then you OC it some.
If you are only into gaming, you cant use the full potential of an i7, that too unlocked.

There's definitely NO NEED to go for an i7...
Invest in a HD 7970 instead!

There's definitely NO NEED to go for an i7...
Invest in a HD 7970 instead!

Cilus said:
Burt one thing, Nvidia's driver update can't improve is Compute Performance where HD 7950 is light years ahead of GTX 660 Ti. So even both the cards perform equally, my pick will be 7950 due to the Compute performance advantage. In my opinios, when Direct Compute based Gaming features will be more prominent in most games, 7950 will show some advantages due to its superior compute performance. Apart from couple of games like BF3, Civilizations, most of the DX11 features like FOV, DOF, AO etc are hybrid of Pixel shader and Direct Compute algorithms but in near future games will stress over the algorithm based on DirectCompute.

I don't think 7950 has a directcompute advantage over 660-ti or any kepler cards. I'm yet to see a game where GCN has any sort of advantage over kepler in directcompute tasks
that games utilize. Kepler has enough compute resources to harness directcompute api in games used for ambient occlusion and illumination features. far cry 3, hitman absolution are the latest games that use heavy directcompute features and i don't see GCN to have any advantage there.

Crysis 3 will also implement heavy AO using directcompute and i honestly don't think GCN cards will have an edge there. Game developers don't seem to force direct compute in game code to
harness the absolute compute potential of a gpu. This is still a long way to go when compute becomes norm.

GCN has MUCH better absolute compute potential than kepler in pure opencl based tasks but not in games where directcompute is used. Kepler doesn't have zero compute resources but has more than enough to harness directcompute api.

Here's a small example:

*i.imgur.com/ZVVEf.png

Drivers also seem to increase directcompute performance as seen here in case of 7950 around 10 fps.

*i.imgur.com/CdAuc.png

Here 660-ti is not miserabled by 7950 and besides , this is a synthetic benchmark. In realworld games, the implementation of DC is neutral
to take advantage of gpu's universally and not a particular architecture favoring absolute compute performance.

vkl said:
i5 3470 is not faster than i7 3770/3770k at stock.It might be a typo

Presence of HT doesn't help in case of gaming at all. And that's the reason.
Same happened between 2500K & 2600.

Ok I m seriously getting confused here....
HD 7950 or gtx 660 ti, have budget for both but some are saying that 7950 has no effective advantages over 660ti
also m thinking about i7 because I don't want to limit my self in terms of hardware performance as I have faced problems due to hardware limitations previously
also i7 will be better for other works that i have mentioned
and I think as new software and games are soon becoming multi threaded it will b advantage to go for it...
And ya finally i7 has more procc power than the rest...
So....

gta0gagan said:
Thanks for your help guys I m really concentrating on performance here ....
As I will update my desktop after like 8 years (its still operational) and I won't spend anything for at least 3-4 years..

please suggest a good alternative for 2tb hard disk as WD AV-GP 2 TB (WD20EURS) is primarily for security surveillance...

Well I did the math and the total with 3770 k is coming to 79k at the max..

well my question is if I go for this rig is the performance of 3770k rig with the worth 7-8k more than the 3770 rig

A security surveillance HDD lasts longer way longer than normal HDDs and it costs a bit more. It is a better alternative than the WD Green . Otherwise get a Seagate Barracuda or a Toshiba DT01ACA200

The Incinerator said:
With Nvidias new 310.70 driver update the gap has closed considerably in fact the GTX 660ti can also be safely recommended now. You wont go wrong with either cards.You never know as AMD can update their driver again and close that gap too.

Thanks for the review link buddy. Some new insights were unfolded in that link you gave speaking of which the smoothness of geforce gpu's other reviewers were speaking of were not false.
In fact they are completely true and also applicable to single gpu's too. Radeon cards seem to have a problem rendering frames in lesser time and this is where geforce seem to have a very strong advantage.

This conclusion says it all:

This certainly isn't the outcome we expected going into this little exercise. Given AMD's expanded involvement with game developers and a claimed across-the-board increase in driver performance, we expected the Radeon HD 7950 to assert itself as the best choice in its class. Instead, the Radeon's performance was hampered by delays in frame delivery across a number of games.

Our first instinct upon seeing these results was to wonder if we hadn't somehow misconfigured our test systems or had some sort of failing hardware. We test Nvidia and AMD GPUs on separate but identical systems, so to confirm our numbers, we switched the cards between the systems and re-tested. The Radeons still exhibited the same patterns of frame latency, with no meaningful change in the results. We wondered about the possibility of a problem with our Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X card or its Boost BIOS causing the slowdowns, but swapping in an older, non-Boost Radeon HD 7950 card from MSI produced very similar results.

We're also quite confident the problem isn't confined to a single set of drivers. You see, this article has had a long and difficult history; it was initially conceived as an update comparing Catalyst 12.8 and 12.11 beta drivers. However, driver updates from AMD and Nvidia, along with some additional game releases, caused us to start testing over again last week. I can tell you that we've seen the same spiky frame time plots in most of these games from three separate revisions of AMD's drivers—and, yes, Catalyst 12.11 is an improvement over 12.8, all told, even if it doesn't resolve the latency issues.

In the end, we're left to confront the fact that the biggest change from our prior graphics reviews was the influx of new games and new test scenarios that stress the GPUs differently than before. (The transition to Windows 8 could play some role here, but we doubt it.) For whatever reason, AMD's combination of GPU hardware and driver software doesn't perform as well as Nvidia's does in this latest round of games, at least as we tested them. That's particularly true when you focus on gameplay smoothness, as our latency-focused metrics tend to do.

Speaking of which, we can show you the overall performance picture using our famous value scatter plots. The performance results come from all seven of the games we tested, averaged via a geometric mean to reduce the impact of outliers. The prices come from current listings at Newegg for the exact cards we tested. As always, the most desirable combinations of price and performance will be located closer to the top left corner of the plot.

Pop back and forth between the 99th percentile and average FPS plots, and you'll see two different stories being told. The FPS average suggests near-parity performance between the 7950 and the GTX 660 Ti, with a tiny edge to the GeForce. The 99th percentile frame time, though, captures the impact of the Radeon's frame latency issues and suggests the GTX 660 Ti is easily the superior performer. That fact won't be a surprise to anyone who's read this far.

Armed with that info, we can dispense with the talk about game bundles, rebates, and pricing shenanigans that might shift the value math in favor of one camp or another. Instead, we have a crystal clear recommendation of the GeForce GTX 660 Ti over the Radeon HD 7950 for this winter's crop of blockbuster games. Perhaps AMD will smooth out some of the rough patches in later driver releases, but the games we've tested are already on the market—and Nvidia undeniably delivers the better experience in them, overall.

Besides, this test was done on 310.54 drivers. 310.70 has improved performance especially in hitman , far cry 3, bf3 ,ac3 and others. It seems 6 series seem to have smoothness even in single gpu mode as one can see in those graphs. Radeons have too many spikes and erratic behavior in overall frametime.

Imo, for fullhd gameplay, 660-ti is the better buy. 7950 for resolutions more than 1080p.

And 7970 is way too much costly than 7950
and if 7950 gives good payable fps at fhd resolution at high settings then there is no use of going with 7970...

Please correct me if I m wrong ...
Thanks in advance to all...

gta0gagan said:
Ok I m seriously getting confused here....
HD 7950 or gtx 660 ti, have budget for both but some are saying that 7950 has no effective advantages over 660ti

Buddy i suggest the 660-ti. Read the spoiler i posted or perhaps read the entire review that incinerator posted.
I feel 660-ti delivers a better experience as said by the reviewer and i think his points are justified. For fullhd gaming, go for 660-ti.

This is the card tested in that review - ZOTAC NVIDIA GTX660 Ti 2GB AMP! Edition ( ZT-60804-10P) 2 GB DDR5 Graphics Card: Flipkart.com

If you can grab this at the same price of a sapphire 7950 vapor-x, then get it eyes closed.

Or consider this:

GIGABYTE GRAPHIC CARD GTX 660 TI 2GB DDR5

vickybat said:
Buddy i suggest the 660-ti. Read the spoiler i posted or perhaps read the entire review that incinerator posted.
I feel 660-ti delivers a better experience as said by the reviewer and i think his points are justified. For fullhd gaming, go for 660-ti.

This is the card tested in that review - ZOTAC NVIDIA GTX660 Ti 2GB AMP! Edition ( ZT-60804-10P) 2 GB DDR5 Graphics Card: Flipkart.com

If you can grab this at the same price of a sapphire 7950 vapor-x, then get it eyes closed.

Or consider this:

GIGABYTE GRAPHIC CARD GTX 660 TI 2GB DDR5

Well i have already read the whole review( i only posted it) but people told me 7950 has high vram and greater memory bandwidth so amd might release driver update and can close the hap b/w the two cards....

gta0gagan said:
Ok I m seriously getting confused here....
HD 7950 or gtx 660 ti, have budget for both but some are saying that 7950 has no effective advantages over 660ti

Whichever you can get at cheaper price.

gta0gagan said:
Well i have already read the whole review( i only posted it) but people told me 7950 has high vram and greater memory bandwidth so amd might release driver update and can close the hap b/w the two cards....

For your setup and needs, there may not be much of a noticeable difference.
So pick any.

gta0gagan said:
Well i have already read the whole review( i only posted it) but people told me 7950 has high vram and greater memory bandwidth so amd might release driver update and can close the hap b/w the two cards....

Oh my bad buddy. I thought it was incinerator.

Anyway, i don't think amd has any sort of driver advantage now and they are equal. Driver updates will be from both camps and the gap will always stay the same.
7950 having higher vram is true. It also has a wider bus, which is again true. But more bandwidth always producing better performance is not true. In fact kepler has a better memory transfer rate measuring 6.6GT/s for 660-ti. For 7950, its 5 GT/s.

In earlier reviews, most reviewers had spoken about the efficient memory management unit of kepler and how despite the gtx 680 having lower bus and vram than 7970 offers same AA performance even in resolutions higher than 1080p. Sometimes even better. So vram and buswidth matter but not always.

If you are gaming at 1080p , you will never miss the additional bus width and those tests you saw didn't benefit from 7950's 384bit bus at 1080p either.
Besides, there are new AA techniques like TXAA which don't depend on memory bus like MSAA. Crysis 3 will throw more light on this coz its the first shader heavy game to implement TXAA. Comparisons with MSAA in that game with TXAA will give a decisive conclusion about TXAA.

Finally, 2gb vram that 660-ti offers is more than enough for 1080p gameplay. If you can get a 660-ti below 20k, then grab it.

Ok I'll go with 7950 as I think that huge looking card at current technology must have some juice in it and amd will release some new drivers which i think will remove any difference b/w two...
As it is mentioned in the review that amd was also shocked to learn about the problem of hd 7950 and they are working on it...
Also because of its higher vram and mem bandwith it might have higher potential In near future with new drivers....
While I think the 660 has reached its limit in performance wid the new driver update....

any one from Bangalore please suggest me some
good shops around here (near SP road) as i m
new in Bangalore........

Vicky, in evey post you're just referring two games Far Cry 3 and Hitman absolution. how can only two games be measure of performance anyway? the developers of Far Cry 3 has already admitted the fact about several bugs at the games resulting lower performance in AMD cards and they have released several updates to resolve it.
Consider other games like Crysis 2, BF3 or old Metro 2033 and even sleeping Dogs which also offer several DirectX 11 features and you will find HD 7950 still has performance edge.

V

Go for hd7950.Those spikes in frames are not that frequent with hd7950.These can be ironed out with a driver update.
HD7950 does let you play some titles with better image quality in games.
Even if we check two of the new games viz. Far cry 3 and Hitman absolution then also hd7950 makes sense.
In Far cry3 hd7950 was step above gtx660ti in image quality.

Quote by hardocp
Even though the GTX 660 Ti has the same clock speeds as the GTX 670, and the same CUDA core count, its lesser memory bandwidth and ROP count means we had to back off on Alpha to Coverage. We found that we could have 2X MSAA enabled at 1080p, but we had to turn off Alpha to Coverage completely. In doing so this allowed 2X MSAA to be playable. Otherwise, with Enhanced Alpha to Coverage it was not playable at 2X MSAA. Therefore, the aliasing quality is slightly less than the GTX 670 and HD 7950, but still higher than the 7870 as you will see below.

Also check Hitman Absolution:Hitman Absolution Performance comparison:1080p:highest playable settings

Quote by Hardocp
The AMD Radeon HD 7950 Boost performed better at 1080p than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 did. It was 8.3% faster and averaged 45.8 FPS. When comparing these two video cards that normally provide equal performance, the advantage again goes to the AMD video card. The AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition was nearly playable by our standards at 1080p with 8X MSAA enabled. It averaged 37.1 FPS. The slowest video card at 1080p was the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti which averaged 31.7 FPS. We did not have an enjoyable time with the GeForce GTX 660 Ti at these settings, and found it extremely hard to maneuver through the entire mission. We don't recommend trying to run a GeForce GTX 660 Ti with 8X MSAA at 1080p.

Even hd7870 was better than gtx660-ti in it.HD7950 was well above gtx660-ti and provided the same-gameplay as gtx670 while getting a bit better frame-rates.
HD7950 makes more sense simply because of image quality levels that can be pushed with it while getting playable frames which would get more demanding with newer games.
The thing is with hd7950 one would be able to get higher frame-rates for a certain AA levels which maybe quite less in case of gtx660ti to be as playable/smooth
as hd7950.
In majority of games hd7950 is ahead of gtx660ti.

Cilus said:
Vicky, in evey post you're just referring two games Far Cry 3 and Hitman absolution. how can only two games be measure of performance anyway? the developers of Far Cry 3 has already admitted the fact about several bugs at the games resulting lower performance in AMD cards and they have released several updates to resolve it.
Consider other games like Crysis 2, BF3 or old Metro 2033 and even sleeping Dogs which also offer several DirectX 11 features and you will find HD 7950 still has performance edge.

No i did not. In fact that review had so many games including borderlands 2, medal of honour warfighter ( better than BF3 lookwise) , and lot others. Farcry 3 was not even tested in that review.

vkl said:
Go for hd7950.Those spikes in frames are not that frequent in single GPU configs.These can be ironed out with a driver update.
HD7950 does let you play some titles with better image quality in games.
Even if we check two of the new games viz. Far cry 3 and Hitman absolution then also hd7950 makes sense.
In Far cry3 hd7950 was step above gtx660ti in image quality.

Quote by hardocp
Even though the GTX 660 Ti has the same clock speeds as the GTX 670, and the same CUDA core count, its lesser memory bandwidth and ROP count means we had to back off on Alpha to Coverage. We found that we could have 2X MSAA enabled at 1080p, but we had to turn off Alpha to Coverage completely. In doing so this allowed 2X MSAA to be playable. Otherwise, with Enhanced Alpha to Coverage it was not playable at 2X MSAA. Therefore, the aliasing quality is slightly less than the GTX 670 and HD 7950, but still higher than the 7870 as you will see below.

Also check Hitman Absolution:Hitman Absolution Performance comparison:1080p:highest playable settings

Quote by Hardocp
The AMD Radeon HD 7950 Boost performed better at 1080p than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 did. It was 8.3% faster and averaged 45.8 FPS. When comparing these two video cards that normally provide equal performance, the advantage again goes to the AMD video card. The AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition was nearly playable by our standards at 1080p with 8X MSAA enabled. It averaged 37.1 FPS. The slowest video card at 1080p was the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti which averaged 31.7 FPS. We did not have an enjoyable time with the GeForce GTX 660 Ti at these settings, and found it extremely hard to maneuver through the entire mission. We don't recommend trying to run a GeForce GTX 660 Ti with 8X MSAA at 1080p.

Even hd7870 was better than gtx660-ti in it.HD7950 was well above gtx660-ti and provided the same-gameplay as gtx670 while getting a bit better frame-rates.
HD7950 makes more sense simply because of image quality levels that can be pushed with it while getting playable frames which would get more demanding with newer games.
The thing is with hd7950 one would be able to get higher frame-rates for a certain AA levels which maybe quite less in case of gtx660ti to be as playable/smooth
as hd7950.
In majority of games hd7950 is ahead of gtx660ti.

Buddy that is the reference GPU. The link that op provided had two custom gpu's and that zotac card had significant higher clocks, a good cooler and an ideal form factor.
Hardocp compares reference 660-ti with 7950-boost and thus it has an edge. Factory overclocked 660-ti's like the zotac will have good AA performance at 1080p as we had seen in several custom 680 and 670 gpu's in many hardocp reviews.

The link that op provided compared an equal match coz both were custom gpu's and the best to come out of their respective stables. 7950 has better AA performance at high resolutions but not that an advantage in 1080p. Besides that smoothness factor is hindering my decision to favour 7950.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Smoother Than AMD Radeon HD 7950 – Video

This thing is posted everywhere. Radeons seem to have a much lower frametime which hampers its smoothness. How can frametime be increased by driver updates??
Geforce and not only 660-ti seem to have a big lead here and this also results in lower stuttering in sli and not only adaptive v-sync. I'm waiting for more reviewers to do a thorough comparison.

Any one from bangalore?? please reply

Send a pm to forum member "d3p". He's from bangalore and can guide you to various shops. I think you should contact golcha computers at sp road. I had been to sp road before when i lived in bangalore but can't guide you to any specific shops.

Thanks all for ur time and good suggestions.

vickybat said:
Send a pm to forum member
"d3p". He's from bangalore and can guide you to various shops. I think you should contact golcha computers at sp road. I had been to sp road before when i lived in bangalore but can't guide you to any specific shops.

thanks man that is really helpful..

V

vickybat said:
No i did not. In fact that review had so many games including borderlands 2, medal of honour warfighter ( better than BF3 lookwise) , and lot others. Farcry 3 was not even tested in that review.

Buddy that is the reference GPU. The link that op provided had two custom gpu's and that zotac card had significant higher clocks, a good cooler and an ideal form factor.
Hardocp compares reference 660-ti with 7950-boost and thus it has an edge. Factory overclocked 660-ti's like the zotac will have good AA performance at 1080p as we had seen in several custom 680 and 670 gpu's in many hardocp reviews.

The link that op provided compared an equal match coz both were custom gpu's and the best to come out of their respective stables. 7950 has better AA performance at high resolutions but not that an advantage in 1080p. Besides that smoothness factor is hindering my decision to favour 7950.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Smoother Than AMD Radeon HD 7950 – Video

This thing is posted everywhere. Radeons seem to have a much lower frametime which hampers its smoothness. How can frametime be increased by driver updates??
Geforce and not only 660-ti seem to have a big lead here and this also results in lower stuttering in sli and not only adaptive v-sync. I'm waiting for more reviewers to do a thorough comparison.

Mate,the boost is available for all reference hd7950s.A reference gtx660ti was compared to a normal hd7950 not a factory overclocked one.I don't see any unfair comparison here.
A sapphire vapor-x hd7950 can be found for ~22k which can also give the other custom gtx660Ti a run for there money.

Now,the gameplay with Hitman Absolution was quite good with hd7950 but was not good with gtx660ti.Nowhere did they report of bad game play experience with hd7950.
HD7950 was smoother in Hitman absolution,you can't override that fact.Another thing that ~50% deficit in fps to hd7950 at highest playable settings can't be compensated by a custom card by much.
If gtx660ti can be overclocked so can be an hd7950.
In Far Cry3 also nothing dramatically wrong with hd7950 was reported by hardocp.

Talking about the latency spikes that are seen in case of hd7950.First of all they are not that frequent in all titles.
Even in the test by techreport that can be seen in some games that it is not that frequent in every game.
In the games in that article you will notice that the latency for hd7950 were different in windows7 and windows8 often lower in windows8.
Check this
You can see with different catalyst drivers the average latency was different.This issue can be worked upon by drivers.

AMD has admitted to this issue and has said it would work upon it.

Quote from techreport from the article ""Does the Radeon HD 7950 stumble in Windows 8"
AMD spokesman Antal Tungler told us that our article had "raised some alarms" internally at the company, and he said they hoped to have some answers for us "before the holiday." He also noted that AMD is continually working to improve its drivers and that the 7950 does perform well in FPS-based benchmarks

Quote from techreport from the article "Radeon HD 7950 vs. GeForce GTX 660 Ti revisited"
We're also quite confident the problem isn't confined to a single set of drivers. You see, this article has had a long and difficult history; it was initially conceived as an update comparing Catalyst 12.8 and 12.11 beta drivers. However, driver updates from AMD and Nvidia, along with some additional game releases, caused us to start testing over again last week. I can tell you that we've seen the same spiky frame time plots in most of these games from three separate revisions of AMD's drivers—and, yes, Catalyst 12.11 is an improvement over 12.8, all told, even if it doesn't resolve the latency issues.

Quote from techreport from the article "Radeon HD 7950 vs. GeForce GTX 660 Ti revisited"
Perhaps AMD will smooth out some of the rough patches in later driver releases

We have to see all aspects of the card and image quality level is also one of them and can't be overlooked.
HD7950 clearly maintains the lead in outright performance and image quality levels.
Smoothness is subjective.
"With hd7950 one would be able to get higher frame-rates for a certain AA levels which maybe quite less in case of gtx660ti to be as playable/smooth as hd7950".
For games like Far Cry3 radeon was better as it could go a step up in image quality.
In Hitman Absolution without doubt HD7950 was smoother than gtx660ti at 1080p with highest im-game settings.It was more playable.

R

Why not w8 for HD 8000 series ?

Speculations suggest that they will b too much costly and they'll deliver almost similar performance with few tweaks...

vkl said:
Mate,the boost is available for all reference hd7950s.A reference gtx660ti was compared to a normal hd7950 not a factory overclocked one.I don't see any unfair comparison here.
A sapphire vapor-x hd7950 can be found for ~22k which can also give the other custom gtx660Ti a run for there money.

Now,the gameplay with Hitman Absolution was quite good with hd7950 but was not good with gtx660ti.Nowhere did they report of bad game play experience with hd7950.
HD7950 was smoother in Hitman absolution,you can't override that fact.Another thing that ~50% deficit in fps to hd7950 at highest playable settings can't be compensated by a custom card by much.
If gtx660ti can be overclocked so can be an hd7950.
In Far Cry3 also nothing dramatically wrong with hd7950 was reported by hardocp.

Talking about the latency spikes that are seen in case of hd7950.First of all they are not that frequent in all titles.
Even in the test by techreport that can be seen in some games that it is not that frequent in every game.
In the games in that article you will notice that the latency for hd7950 were different in windows7 and windows8 often lower in windows8.
Check this
You can see with different catalyst drivers the average latency was different.This issue can be worked upon by drivers.

AMD has admitted to this issue and has said it would work upon it.

We have to see all aspects of the card and image quality level is also one of them and can't be overlooked.
HD7950 clearly maintains the lead in outright performance and image quality levels.
Smoothness is subjective.
"With hd7950 one would be able to get higher frame-rates for a certain AA levels which maybe quite less in case of gtx660ti to be as playable/smooth as hd7950".
For games like Far Cry3 radeon was better as it could go a step up in image quality.
In Hitman Absolution without doubt HD7950 was smoother than gtx660ti at 1080p with highest im-game settings.It was more playable.

Well hitman absolution is an AMD title and belongs to the AMD evolved program. Even a 670 performs lower than a 7950 boost in that game at fullhd with 8x msaa.
But at 2560x1600, its nvidia again at front except for the 660-ti.

In far cry 3, its a close call and both are almost neck and neck at fullhd and both were playable with 4xmsaa with alpha to coverage enhanced.
No image quality advantage for 7950 here.

*i.imgur.com/zI9NB.gif

But if we refer the link op provided, out of 7 games tested, the following is a quick summary:

Games @ 1080p	Sapphire 7950 vapor-x	Zotac 660-ti amp
Sleeping Dogs	36fps	32fps
Assassin's Creed 3	38 fps	68 fps
Hitman Absolution	61 fps	39 fps
Medal Of Honour Warfigher	41 fps	42 fps
Skyrim	69 fps	74 fps
Guild Wars 2	62 fps	61 fps
Borderlands 2	64 fps	72 fps
Far cry 3	33.7 fps	31.6 fps

In the above table 660-ti wins 4 titles whereas 7950 wins in other 4. I would consider guild wars 2 and MOH to be a tie coz the fps difference is 1.
If 7950 wins big in hitman absolution then 660-ti wins big in Assassin's creed 3. Note that there is no advantage of image quality for 7950 here as both were playable in same settings and level of AA in 1080p.

So i don't see a reason why 7950 is a comprehensive and unanimous suggestion over 660-ti. From op's context 1080p matters and i don't see 660-ti to be weak anywhere. In fact it does show a strong showing against a 7950 which is undeniable and can't be overridden.

I simply don't understand why people suggest 7950 blindly to people gaming at 1080p. Just my query and i'm not confusing op here.
7950 is a good card no doubt but is it really that good to completely overshadow 660-ti? I don't see it doing at 1080p.

vickybat said:
Well hitman absolution is an AMD title and belongs to the AMD evolved program. Even a 670 performs lower than a 7950 boost in that game at fullhd with 8x msaa.
But at 2560x1600, its nvidia again at front except for the 660-ti.

In far cry 3, its a close call and both are almost neck and neck at fullhd and both were playable with 4xmsaa with alpha to coverage enhanced.
No image quality advantage for 7950 here.

*i.imgur.com/zI9NB.gif

But if we refer the link op provided, out of 7 games tested, the following is a quick summary:

Games @ 1080p Sapphire 7950 vapor-x Zotac 660-ti amp
Sleeping Dogs 36fps 32fps
Assassin's Creed 3 38 fps 68 fps
Hitman Absolution 61 fps 39 fps
Medal Of Honour Warfigher 41 fps 42 fps
Skyrim 69 fps 74 fps
Guild Wars 2 62 fps 61 fps
Borderlands 2 64 fps 72 fps
Far cry 3 33.7 fps 31.6 fps

In the above table 660-ti wins 4 titles whereas 7950 wins in other 4. I would consider guild wars 2 and MOH to be a tie coz the fps difference is 1.
If 7950 wins big in hitman absolution then 660-ti wins big in Assassin's creed 3. Note that there is no advantage of image quality for 7950 here as both were playable in same settings and level of AA in 1080p.

So i don't see a reason why 7950 is a comprehensive and unanimous suggestion over 660-ti. From op's context 1080p matters and i don't see 660-ti to be weak anywhere. In fact it does show a strong showing against a 7950 which is undeniable and can't be overridden.

I simply don't understand why people suggest 7950 blindly to people gaming at 1080p. Just my query and i'm not confusing op here.
7950 is a good card no doubt but is it really that good to completely overshadow 660-ti? I don't see it doing at 1080p.

its not like that people suggested me both gtx 660 and 7950 they told at 1080p both will give same performance but at higher resolution 7950 dominates

At first I was thinking of going with nvidia one I didn't even knew about these amd series
but when i got to know about it, the price and specs it started looking as a good alternative
largely I have played games that promoted nvidia like unreal tournament(all series)

gta0gagan said:
its not like that people suggested me both gtx 660 and 7950 they told at 1080p both will give same performance but at higher resolution 7950 dominates

At first I was thinking of going with nvidia one I didn't even knew about these amd series
but when i got to know about it, the price and specs it started looking as a good alternative
largely I have played games that promoted nvidia like unreal tournament(all series)

Yeah mate that's more like it. 7950 definitely has advantage at ultrahigh resolutions over 660-ti owing to its wide memory bus. But no advantage in 1080p worth telling a tale.
660-ti's 192 bit bus cripples it at higher resolutions when tinkering with AA.

But the upcoming TXAA is considered to be the answer for cards having lower bus width but still get same or better quality AA as MSAA without significant loss in performance.
Its currently implemented in Call Of duty black ops 2 and Assassin's creed 3 and show a lot of promise. Crysis 3 will be the first shader heavy game to implement this and if it manages to outshine the highest MSAA settings without significant fps drop, then it will be really worth considering.

TXAA is completely an nvidia feature and exclusive to kepler cards.I won't force this unto you or anybody until we see some positive results against MSAA in crysis 3.

My suggestion for you is to go for the cheaper card between the two.

(i got the game of the year title unreal tournament 2004 as a demo with digit magazine in playware and mindware)

V

vickybat said:
Well hitman absolution is an AMD title and belongs to the AMD evolved program. Even a 670 performs lower than a 7950 boost in that game at fullhd with 8x msaa.
But at 2560x1600, its nvidia again at front except for the 660-ti.

In far cry 3, its a close call and both are almost neck and neck at fullhd and both were playable with 4xmsaa with alpha to coverage enhanced.
No image quality advantage for 7950 here.

*i.imgur.com/zI9NB.gif

But if we refer the link op provided, out of 7 games tested, the following is a quick summary:

Games @ 1080p Sapphire 7950 vapor-x Zotac 660-ti amp
Sleeping Dogs 36fps 32fps
Assassin's Creed 3 38 fps 68 fps
Hitman Absolution 61fps 39fps
Medal Of Honour Warfigher 41fps 42fps
Skyrim 69fps 74fps
Guild Wars 2 62fps 61fps
Borderlands 2 64fps 72fps
Far cry 3 33.7fps 31.6fps

In the above table 660-ti wins 4 titles whereas 7950 wins in other 4. I would consider guild wars 2 and MOH to be a tie coz the fps difference is 1.
If 7950 wins big in hitman absolution then 660-ti wins big in Assassin's creed 3. Note that there is no advantage of image quality for 7950 here as both were playable in same settings and level of AA in 1080p.

So i don't see a reason why 7950 is a comprehensive and unanimous suggestion over 660-ti. From op's context 1080p matters and i don't see 660-ti to be weak anywhere. In fact it does show a strong showing against a 7950 which is undeniable and can't be overridden.

I simply don't understand why people suggest 7950 blindly to people gaming at 1080p. Just my query and i'm not confusing op here.
7950 is a good card no doubt but is it really that good to completely overshadow 660-ti? I don't see it doing at 1080p.

Mate,in Far Cry3 test by hardocp at 1080p they had to turn off alpha to coverage at 2xMSAA and 16xAF with gtx660ti.
Different sites can come up with a little different results.
But still for majority of games hd7950 is ahead.
The PowerColor PCS+ HD7870 Myst review
Well in this review the Tahiti LE came out head to head with gtx660ti and the drivers used were catalyst12.11 for the radeon and the 310.70 forceware for gtx660ti.
Fall GPU comparison from most of the sites tell the story in favor of hd7950.
From most of the recent reviews hd7950 is a tad above gtx660ti.
Yes 310.70 is a performance update from nvidia,but we have to see a more clearer image as how it stands with hd7950.
The higher specs might become more relevant in more demanding games as the time passes by.

d6bmg said:
Presence of HT doesn't help in case of gaming at all. And that's the reason.
Same happened between 2500K & 2600.

Check my earlier posts I have already explained that.
For a quad core processor HT doesn't help in most of the cases in gaming.
In BF3 single player HT results in a little lower perfomance in case of quad core i7 while turning it off gives higher performance.
In case of i3 HT helps in many games,BF3 SP is an example.
And in BF3 MP, HT helps in performance for i3s and i7s.

vickybat said:
Yeah mate that's more like it. 7950 definitely has advantage at ultrahigh resolutions over 660-ti owing to its wide memory bus. But no advantage in 1080p worth telling a tale.
660-ti's 192 bit bus cripples it at higher resolutions when tinkering with AA.

But the upcoming TXAA is considered to be the answer for cards having lower bus width but still get same or better quality AA as MSAA without significant loss in performance.
Its currently implemented in Call Of duty black ops 2 and Assassin's creed 3 and show a lot of promise. Crysis 3 will be the first shader heavy game to implement this and if it manages to outshine the highest MSAA settings without significant fps drop, then it will be really worth considering.

TXAA is completely an nvidia feature and exclusive to kepler cards.I won't force this unto you or anybody until we see some positive results against MSAA in crysis 3.

My suggestion for you is to go for the cheaper card between the two.

well the thing is at the time if purchase I'll compare the prices of both if difference is large I'll go with 660 and buy some other stuff like gaming mouse from the saving....

H

gta0gagan said:
well the thing is at the time if purchase I'll compare the prices of both if difference is large I'll go with 660 and buy some other stuff like gaming mouse from the saving....

hmmmm 660.... :-?

better go for 7870 then...

hitman4 said:
hmmmm 660.... better go for 7870 then...

I think OP meant to say 660Ti, not just 660.

H

Myth said:
I think OP meant to say 660Ti, not just 660.

l

l

Thanks all for your suggestions
anyone please suggest me a good cabinet and also will there be any need of extra cooling arrangement...

I live here in bangalore so temp is not that much high here during summer...

Also will Corsair CX600V2 be enough ?

V

CX600V2 is more than enough.If you can add a bit more then get GS600.
For cabinet get corsair carbide 400R ~4.8k.
Intel stock coolers are not good,in summers the temperatures can go high especially with i7 3770.
Add a CM Hyper TX3 EVO~1.4k,would suffce.

The price difference between CX650V2 and GS600 is just around 600 rs. For Corsair, its like VS<CX<GS<TX<HX<AX
So its better to get GS600 at this price point of 4.5k

gta0gagan said:
Thanks all for your suggestions
anyone please suggest me a good cabinet and also will there be any need of extra cooling arrangement...

I live here in bangalore so temp is not that much high here during summer...

Also will Corsair CX600V2 be enough ?

It's enough for your PC. If you can spend more, then get GS600.

How nice!!
Now you guys started deleting posts which emphases on the flaws of suggestions (ofcourse in the name of 'off-topic posts').
Keep it up!!

I stand with you d6bmg.
Same thing happened with me last week in one of the discussions. My post was deleted as well.

@Mods - please stop doing this. My sincere request once again. You seem to be favoring other "mods" when we try discuss or point out wrong info they posted.

I'll tell you why I deleted the posts.

One guy says, CX600v2 is okay for his system. If he wants to spend more, he can get GS600.

Other guy jumps in and starts off with an argument, "What you are saying is wrong info. CX600v2 is a bad PSU etc. GS600 ftw." There are pleasant ways of making your point.

The other guy is trying to pick up an argument for no reason and derail the thread. Posts deleted.

hmmm... you got a point there.

Thanks all can't wait for the next month just want to keep my handson this rig it will b huge....
For me it will b like 500-600 times performance upgrade
once again thanks all for suggesting this perfect rig....

So what exactly is your final config ?

ico said:
Other guy jumps in and starts off with an argument, "What you are saying is wrong info. CX600v2 is a bad PSU etc. GS600 ftw." There are pleasant ways of making your point.

Ok. Got it.
Nowadays you are inferring too much from any posts.
I like your style of replying. You, really, are growing up.

mandarpalshikar said:
I stand with you d6bmg.
Same thing happened with me last week in one of the discussions. My post was deleted as well.

@Mods - please stop doing this. My sincere request once again. You seem to be favoring other "mods" when we try discuss or point out wrong info they posted.

Your post was right. It's still there. vkl's post was right. It's still there.

The other guy was picking up an argument unnecessarily. His posts are not there.

erm...
derailing aside
some points were given if my eyesight's have not failed me..
a simple editing could have been done

@ico

Till now Finalized rig is:
Processor:
Intel Core i7 3770/i7 3770 k(will depends upon comparing prices)
mobo: Gigabyte H77DS3H /Gigabyte Sniper M1
RAM:
Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - Rs 02750
GPU: Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC - Rs 22000
HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB (ST2000DM001) 64MB Cache
SMPS:
Corsair gs600
Cabinet:
NZXT Beta Evo/carbide 400R
OPD:
Samsung SH-S 223F
Monitor:
Dell S2240L ips panel
prices not confirmed yet will go on 7th to sp road and will enquire at various shops to get idea about price and availability
some higher parts I'll choose only if there is not a very large difference ....

I'll add a ssd and blu-ray and cpu cooler later .... (budget problems)

Please check what do you mean by - Gigabyte Sniper M1 ? Do you mean M3?

The Incinerator said:
With i7 3770K and a supporting board will push your budget considerably. For eg i7 3770K = Rs 19500 + Gigabyte Sniper M1 = 11850 + HD 7950 =21700 = Total 53,500 and then there is everything else ! And for gaming you are better off with an i5. Google and read reviews you will know. Honestly IMO in this world of computers there is no such thing as future proofing. An i5 3570 ,H77 and a 7950 is great at your specified budget.

its written here....

there's no sniper M1

Ok sniper m3 then...
I didn't do the checking for this ....
Just thought it would b good

But then what about your budget ? i7 3770K itself will cost you 18k :shock:

I'll actually have to break my piggy bank budget was 70k+ 6-7k from saving + 2-3k I'll manage from here and there....
Also this setup is worth the money I think....
Last time I calculated with i7k
max budget was around 79k

For gaming i7 3770k wont give you anything extra than i5 3570k. So go for i5-3570k instead of i7.

It will save you 5k, which you can use for a good CPU cooler.

d6bmg said:
Ok. Got it.
Nowadays you are inferring too much from any posts.
I like your style of replying. You, really, are growing up.

You know you have been left off lightly over here and were left off very very lightly in the past as well.

Actually its not that much high temperature here these times so I'll add cpu cooler after 3-4 months when required ...
Till then stock cooler should work..
And i7 because its not only gaming but also other stuff video making , photoshop
I know i7 won't help that much in gaming compared to i5 , but in other things it shows good benchmarks...
Also I'll b able to say after some years that I bought the best procc available at market that time...
Actually not the best but still best for middle class people extreme edition us way more good than this ...

Till now Finalized rig is:
Processor:
Intel Core i7 3770/i7 3770 k(will depends upon
comparing prices)
mobo: Gigabyte H77DS3H /Gigabyte Sniper M1
RAM: Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - Rs 02750
GPU: Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC - Rs 22000
HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB (ST2000DM001) 64MB
Cache
SMPS: Corsair gs600
Cabinet:
NZXT Beta Evo/carbide 400R
OPD:
Samsung SH-S 223F
Monitor: Dell S2240L ips panel

AMD BASED:
AMD FX 8350 (8 Core, 4GHz, 4.2GHz Turbo, 8MB
L2+ 8MB L3) @ 12.5K
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 @ 9.5K
RAM: Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - Rs 02750
GPU: Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC - Rs 22000
HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB (ST2000DM001) 64MB
Cache
SMPS: Corsair gs600
Cabinet:
NZXT Beta Evo/carbide 400R
OPD:
Samsung SH-S 223F
Monitor: Dell S2240L ips panel

ok tomorrow I m going for a
local market quotation please suggest me some god mobo alternatives because there its a high chance that I won't get the exact same model locally(p.s: I know that I m wasting a lot of time of u guys, but I have to get the best thing possible in my budget )
please ensure following on mobo:
good sound card on it (support for atleast 5.1 channel)
good gui for overclocking
4 ram slots
at least 2 * pcie 3 slots for crossfire in future
if possible dedicated onboard graphics
also I'll not change mobo and processor for atleast 3 years so i need all this....
Thanks again all for your suggestions....
Also whether can we crossfire two different series cards I.e. a 7950 with 8000 series....

Buddy, when you're going with the AMD config, you can save (20K -12,5K) = 7.5K in just CPU and almost 2K for the Motherboard. With that saved money, you can easily opt for a HD 7970, currently available as cheap as 28.5K.

Thanks for the suggestions but I won't buy any more costly gpu (although I want to) social conditions around me don't permit that the saved bucks can go for good mouse ,kb or cpu cooler...
(also dude at 29k one can get a good low end pc)....

Buddy, don't bother about "Social Conditions".. They won't change until someone tears them apart.. If u are a gamer, you must get a GPU that you can afford! After all, its your money that you are spending, not the neighbor's/aunt's/any others'.. Enjoy your life to fullest.. Break social "Rules", change them, be an outlaw, dude..

Then I suggest you to go with the AMD configuration if you want to save Money. It is still not a match for i7 3770K but you have to look at the price too.
Advantages:
1. In certain Multi-threaded apps like Video Encoding, Compressing apps like Winzip, 7Z which are highly multi-threaded, AES based encryption applications, it is just behind i7 3770K.
2. Gaming at 1080P with high setting enabled, Processor matters very little and the performance difference is real low when paired with a powerful GPU.
3. Comes with very good CPU cooler which will let you overclock occasionally up to 4.3 GHz.
4. With Windows 7 Bulldozer Patch and EFI BIOS update which let you enable HPC (High Performance Computing Mode) in BIOS, the performance increased up to 3%. Tested by me.
5. There is a major upgrade coming for Windows 8, known as the Power and Scheduling Upgrade, which will take care of the poor scheduling of Windows for BD and PD processors and might offer some great performance boost.
6. Better upgrade Path. With Intel config, your upgrade path ends here as the upcoming Haswell processors need a completely different Socket Type, socket 1150. With AMD, the AM3+ platforms will support the upcoming StreamRoller CPU.
7. Better instruction set support as PileDriver support FMA3 and FMA4 and that is not present in any current Intel Processors. Future apps will take advantage of those new instruction sets.

^+1..

+1.....

Cilus said:
Then I suggest you to go with the AMD configuration if you want to save Money. It is still not a match for i7 3770K but you have to look at the price too.
Advantages:
1. In certain Multi-threaded apps like Video Encoding, Compressing apps like Winzip, 7Z which are highly multi-threaded, AES based encryption applications, it is just behind i7 3770K.
2. Gaming at 1080P with high setting enabled, Processor matters very little and the performance difference is real low when paired with a powerful GPU.
3. Comes with very good CPU cooler which will let you overclock occasionally up to 4.3 GHz.
4. With Windows 7 Bulldozer Patch and EFI BIOS update which let you enable HPC (High Performance Computing Mode) in BIOS, the performance increased up to 3%. Tested by me.
5. There is a major upgrade coming for Windows 8, known as the Power and Scheduling Upgrade, which will take care of the poor scheduling of Windows for BD and PD processors and might offer some great performance boost.
6. Better upgrade Path. With Intel config, your upgrade path ends here as the upcoming Haswell processors need a completely different Socket Type, socket 1150. With AMD, the AM3+ platforms will support the upcoming StreamRoller CPU.
7. Better instruction set support as PileDriver support FMA3 and FMA4 and that is not present in any current Intel Processors. Future apps will take advantage of those new instruction sets.

H

Buy this
Intel i5 3570 12500
Asus H77 M Pro 8000
Kingston Hyper X Blu 2 X 4Gb 1600Mhz 3000
WD Caviar Black 1Tb 5900
Asus GTX HD 7970 DCU2 30500
Corsair GS600 4400
NZXT Source 210 Elite 2800
Asus 1000
BenQ GL2450HM 8500
K200 400
G400 1500
Razer 500
TOTAL 79000

Hmmmmmmmm it looks good but I'll go with either i7 or fx8350 rig
ant suggestions about mother board any one , any alternates?

All the possible alternatives have been given for both Intel and AMD. Why you want list of all motherboards? Now make your decision.

H

what is your final budget?

initially it was 70k
I will add the 6k from the savings I was doing from last 3 years finally I think 3 k I will have to borrow for i7
making total 79 k

I'll b bankrupt after this purchase lol XD

^^ If you are not able to save up for i7, then ditch it and stick with 8350.
The entire platform cost will come down and you don't have to break your bank.

Just stick with 7950 as its good enough.

I vote for this:

AMD FX 8350 (8 Core, 4GHz, 4.2GHz Turbo, 8MB
L2+ 8MB L3) @ 12.5K
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 @ 9.5K
RAM: Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - Rs 02750
GPU: Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC - Rs 22000
HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB (ST2000DM001) 64MB
Cache
SMPS: Corsair gs600
Cabinet:
NZXT Beta Evo/carbide 400R
OPD:
Samsung SH-S 223F
Monitor: Dell S2240L ips panel

Get the FX 8350 based rig it will be more sensible than the i7 in your budget and context. For the HDD get a Toshiba DT01ACA200. Its all been said now go hit the store!

Going tomorrow just asked alternative model cause I have a feeling that local sp road stores won't have these high fi mobos anyways I'll confirm tomorrow on price and availability....
Thinking of buying sapphire 7950 vap x oc from vedant ...
I think its cheaper there....

D

Hmm 1 Q. how much does that dell ips panel cost??

alternate mobo *www.flipkart.com/asrock-990fx-extr...icmpid=reco_pp_same_motherboard_motherboard_1

Last time I checked online its less than 9k

gta0gagan said:
Going tomorrow just asked alternative model cause I have a feeling that local sp road stores won't have these high fi mobos anyways I'll confirm tomorrow on price and availability....
Thinking of buying sapphire 7950 vap x oc from vedant ...
I think its cheaper there....

SAPPHIRE GRAPHIC CARD HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC WITH BOOST

Is MDComputers cheaper than Vedant now? The quoted vedant price here is quite old now. Update required.

draco21 said:
Hmm 1 Q. how much does that dell ips panel cost??

Dell S2240L 21.5 inch Monitor with LED
Local will be cheaper.

D

That is one great monitor......( lower than 10K of course )

That's y m going for it eyes closed....

Myth, the price of Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X is around Rs 21000 including vat in Vedant. One guy confirmed that and post the prices in some place of our forum. It is 20.2K + 4% Vat.

Another thing, although M.D. Computers mention the prices are including tax, they still add 4% vat over the Included Tax prices mentioned their site.

Well cilus I'll need ur help if I couldn't find a good priced 7950 here ....
What are the shipping charges , payment options and ya most importantly reliability?

I can guaranty you the reliability. For shipping charge, call them and verify. I don't think it is gonna be over 100 bucks.

Cilus said:
Myth, the price of Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X is around Rs 21000 including vat in Vedant. One guy confirmed that and post the prices in some place of our forum. It is 20.2K + 4% Vat.

Another thing, although M.D. Computers mention the prices are including tax, they still add 4% vat over the Included Tax prices mentioned their site.

Thanks for clarifying.

Cilus said:
I can guaranty you the reliability. For shipping charge, call them and verify. I don't think it is gonna be over 100 bucks.

will that's just great.....

Guys ummm.. I was thinking to add another extension to HDD space.. I hav 14k at most.. Now, should I get an 128GB SSD and 1 TB Caviar black? Or only a 2 TB caviar black for 11k.. I'll mainly use it for gaming..

V2IBH2V said:
Guys ummm.. I was thinking to add another extension to HDD space.. I hav 14k at most.. Now, should I get an 128GB SSD and 1 TB Caviar black? Or only a 2 TB caviar black for 11k.. I'll mainly use it for gaming..

For 14k, WD Velociraptor is the best performing hdd.
128GB SSD + 1 TB HDD is way to go.

Neo said:
For 14k, WD Velociraptor is the best performing hdd.
128GB SSD + 1 TB HDD is way to go.

Price and capacity?

V2IBH2V said:
Price and capacity?

Why are you asking your questions in someone else's thread, its gets kinda confusing. If you want suggestions for you its better to make another thread in respective section.

As for GAGAN
I think that AMD setup will be better for you, with the saved money as suggested by Cilus get a better GPU and input devices.

@V2IBH2V , please stop asking questions about your requirements in others' thread. If you need something then create your own thread. Otherwise we have to take some moderation actions.

do i have the option of installing a ssd in Gigabyte Sniper M3

as it only has esata and i think i read somewhere ssd require msata....(i don't know anything about ssd that's y m asking for options of expanding in future....)

Okay Okay..

gta0gagan said:
do i have the option of installing a ssd in Gigabyte Sniper M3

as it only has esata and i think i read somewhere ssd require msata....(i don't know anything about ssd that's y m asking for options of expanding in future....)

SSD will work with normal SATA ports. There are certain SSD available with smaller size and they need mSATA port to be connected. Most of them are used in Laptop.

ok guys i went to the local shops in sp road most of the guys there have no good knowledge about the computer parts....
they are telling me prices that are really hard to believe (idk if they were joking)

Processor:
Intel Core i7 3770k - 19000

mobo:
Gigabyte Sniper M3 - not available

RAM:
Gskill 8GB RAM F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - Rs 03350

GPU:
Sapphire HD 7950 VAPOR-X OC - not avialable
sapphire hd 7950 boost model- Rs23500

HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB (ST2000DM001) 64MB/Toshiba DT01ACA200 - Rs 05800/didn't ask

SMPS:
Corsair gs600 - Rs 04500

Cabinet:
source 210 elite - Rs 2950
k380 - Rs 2950
corsair r200 -rs 3350

OPD:
Samsung SH-S 223F - Rs 01000

Monitor:
Dell S2240l - Rs 9100
(without hdmi) -rs 8500

amd rig:

fx 8350- Rs 11500

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 - not avialable
are the prices ok and should i go ahead???

also suggest me alternatives for the unavailable mobos

i asked previosuly for more suggestions on mobos cause of this

and ya my confirmed final budget is 80k so m going with i7 (because i can accommodate it)

For AMD based Motherboard, check if MSI 990FXA-GD65 is available or not. In smcinternational.in, it is available at 9.2K. For Intel Motherboard, look for Gigabyte Z77X-UD3S which will be around 13.5K.

For Monitor, get the Display w/o HDMI cable. A good HDMI cable costs around 400 bucks and you'll save 200 bucks for it.

For, Ram, you can get them for FLipkart too. Their prices are little lower.

Thanks cilus I didn't assume that it would be so dificult to find parts here
I think I would need ur and vedant contact details for sapphire card please pm me....

i contacted vedant and the guy told me that sapphire vapour x oc will cost around 21632+500 shipping charges....

^^ Get it without second thoughts.

For motherboard, have a look at this:-

GIGABYTE GA-990XA-UD3

990FXA-UD3 is out of stock in flipkart but you may find it locally or maybe vedant. Its 2k more than the above 990X board.

Finally guys I bought it...

hey guys i seriously need help regarding os installation....

i purchased the following ....

intel core i7 3770k
gigabyte ga-z77x-ud3h
seagate baracuda 2tb
gskill ripjaws 8gb 1600 mhz cl10
corsair gs600
cooler master hyper 212 evo
lg dvd writer
dell s2240l
microtek 800va
cooler master elite 431 plus

prices:
intel core i7 3770k - 18.5k
gigabyte ga-z77x-ud3h - 14k
seagate baracuda 2tb - 5.4k
gskill ripjaws 8gb 1600 mhz cl10 - 3.1k
corsair gs600 - 4k
cooler master hyper 212 evo - 2.1 k
lg dvd writer -.9k
dell s2240l - 8.8k
microtek 800va - 3k
cooler master elite 431 plus - 4k
all prices without tax
the problems i m facing

1. unable to install os from usb i followed the procedures mentioned in websites
2. front fan led not working
3. gs 600 has some weird connector that can't connect to the microtek ups directly.....

Congrats on the purchase.
Pics and price please :razz:

1. Where is the problem ? Did you press F8 and 'boot from usb' ?
2. Checked the fan plug in other slots on the mobo ?
3. Use the cable from the previous psu, if you have one. I had the same problem.

Thanks
i'll post them as son as possible ...
I still have to buy gpu....
Going to save money for it
I changed default boot order to usb first
it gives message ....
Anyways I had to instal xp now till I get some to write the dvd for win7 and win 8

hey guys any help in overclocking???

Myth said:
Congrats on the purchase.
Pics and price please

1. Where is the problem ? Did you press F8 and 'boot from usb' ?
2. Checked the fan plug in other slots on the mobo ?
3. Use the cable from the previous psu, if you have one. I had the same problem.

here is what i did:
1. i tried installing with usb but it didn't work in any way , so finally i burned a dvd and installed it...
2. ya it seems the fan was plug was removed so i put it into system fan 1 slot
3. i used a spike buster i had in which the plug could be fixed then i connected that spike buster to ups...

although i purchased and double checked i bought 1600 mhz RAM it is showing only 1333 MHZ ????
and i have no clue how to overclock or anything also have no idea about this huge BIOS i have ( sorry for that its because i have been using an old pc for so long time)...
any one can tell how to post pics directly in the reply rather than hyperlinks...

you can go to tinypic.com upload your images and after uploading copy/paste the forum code here.....

ok rig finally completed with last addition of r9 280x..........

@mods plz close this thread...........