I hate it when companies just change te dollar sign to a pound sign and be done with it. Like the recent Adobe CS6 Suite, we pay £2,600 odd whereas the USians pay £1,900 odd.
As cool as the pitch was for Kepler and I was very very tempted to go.. but right near the end there was a great deal for the AMD 7950 which comes with 3 games too. So I went with this option instead. I haven't had an AMD card inside my PC for a very longtime. I have always been a nvidia fanboi so this is going to be an interesting experience for me.. At £269.99 it was £30 cheaper than the cheapest GTX 670 and £70 cheaper than the EVGA GTX 670 that I was after. The spare cash has been invested in a nice 750 Watt PSU.
Only half my games are playable right now. Nvidia has a bug in their drivers that affects all 6XX series cards. I know it's hard to believe since we all know only AMD cards have driver issues, but it has happened. Nvidia says the work around is to disable vsync but that doesn't seem to help.
Wow, that's a major screwup. I haven't heard of Nvidia screwing up a driver that badly in quite awhile.
It’s a bizarre bug. For instance in Counter Strike and Alan Wake I can move in any direction using the keyboard but as soon as I move the mouse the FPS drops to 0 and I get a slide show. What’s really annoying is they are taking their sweet time getting a new driver out.
It's strange that it was able to make it to release in such a state. I could see something like that occasionally surfacing in a preview driver, but I don't get how no one noticed this before it was officially released.
I did some research before buying the 670, and this was a major issue for me not to ignore. Apparently its a major issue in BF3 too This and the cheaper price of the 7950 made me pull the trigger, and I am happy I did now..
Does AMD have a secret army of saboteurs? Intel and now Nvidia have done their very best to help them stay in the running with bizarre quality control problems, although Bulldozer is still a failure regardless of what happens.
You guys put WAY too much emphasis on the consumer segment. AMD will be just fine, Bulldozer is still VERY competitive in the server segment where core count is king PLUS I don't see Nvidea garnering anything but silly awards. They might be on top right now (if not for the snafoo), but only very recently, and by the length of time AMD has been out there and the (consumer) market saturation they've enjoyed up until now I highly doubt their finished. I like the line of memory AMD rolled out. Quick look at Newegg and it doesn't look like they'd done much with it, but if it ever takes off it is a really good idea due to generic brands hogging all the Llano/ Trinity setups. Might raise the price of your typical AMD build though, and price is a very sensitive issue for them. We'll see... or it's possible we have but hopefully not.
I seriously doubt AMD will still be around in a couple of years to be honest. I see them going bankrupt and/or getting bought out by Intel or nVidia. The smartest move for them would be to scrap their CPU division and just focus on GPUs. They might have a chance at survival if they go that route. They can't keep pumping out turds like Phenom and Bulldozer and expect to stay afloat, that's for sure. It's not like it would be much of a loss either. They haven't been relevant in the CPU market since 2006.
Gotta love the keyboard analysts. AMD have been doomed for 7 years+ now apparently. There's hardly going to be a market for GPU's in 5 years from now. It's all SOC, and their CPU's will be fine when HSA kicks in and whoever has the better GPU will see the real advantages.
I think AMD's GPUs are still very solid even though Nvidia has jumped a bit ahead of them recently, although Nvidia is doing its best to help them hang in there with these weird quality control and driver issues. I don't think AMD needs to get out of the CPU market entirely. It's mainly the top end stuff that I think is inadequate and badly outclassed by Intel.
Anyone know of a good resource to find out which cards fit specific motherboards? I had to perform a minor "surgery" to fit both my 6950s into my current motherboard and cut a small square out of the plastic casing, as there are some prongs to the right of the lower PCIe slot that made it a very tight fit. Thus, just going by the dimensions of the card may not be quite enough. If a card had a different shape in the casing of the card, it could cause problems for me. I don't want to either have a card that just won't fit into a board or start cutting chunks out of a $500-$600 card. Nor do I want to strip down everything and install a new motherboard. I'm interested in either the 4gb editions of EVGA's GTX 680 or GTX 670 cards, and I want to make sure the card will fit in the lower slot of my board if I decide to SLI it. I'm considering just going with the GTX 670 because it's a bit shorter and will probably fit. It would be great if I could find a SLI setup with these cards fitting into my board (MSI P67A-GD65). My haphazard interweb searches have thusfar been unsuccessful.
Not sure about Nvidia but ATI has reference and non-reference boards. Non-reference can have completely different layouts. And then there are reference and non-reference coolers. Perhaps check the EVGA forums.
You'd be better off going with a non-reference cooler edition of either card, something less boxy, unfortunately I think all 4GB models I have seen either use the stock cooler or something very similar looking. What is it that hits your 6950's besides the pins at the end of the second PCI-E slot? It is that angled heatsink on the NB or the SATA ports at the end or something else? If it's only things at the end of the board, how much does your 6950 extend past these points? 680's are only .25" shorter than reference 6950's so probably no luck there, but as you said 670's, even the EVGA 4GB is only 9.5", so that's a 1.25" saving. Might just be enough if your problems are only at the end of the motherboard. I'd have to recommend the 670's anyway, 680's are a bit hard to find and kind of overpriced.
It's the lower edge. I had to cut out a square of the turquoise translucent plastic at the edge of the card, which was touching and would have probably at least bent the prongs on the far right edge of the board had I not modified it. I'll have to go with the GTX 670. Ideally I'd like to find a picture with two of these cards plugged into the board I have, but I've had no luck with that up to this point. Some of the listed measurements of my card are inconsistent from website to website (between 10.24" and 9.7"), so I may actually need to unplug it and measure it myself. Now that I think about it, I think the HIS card was shorter than reference cards. If 9.7" is correct, my card was actually just a tiny bit longer than the GTX 670, so even that could actually be a tight fit thanks to those damn prongs at the edge of the motherboard. It's only the second PCIe slot that is an issue. I don't know why they designed this motherboard this way. It's praised for being constructed of very high quality materials, but you can't even fit the higher end cards into that second slot without damaging it.
Just downloaded the manual for your board and those pins are for the front panel connections (Power, reset, LED's) so you must have cables plugged into them right? That would explain why they are too tall since in the pics it looks shorter than the SATA ports next to them. I assumed you had reference 6950's since they are notoriously square and blocky. Going from that fairly open cooler to the 670/80 reference would definitely be asking for more issues unfortunately.
Yes, I should have clarified it's the fact that they are plugged into the pannel connections that causes the obstruction. Not the best design choice. These connections aren't terribly useful unless they are actually plugged in. The edge of the card was up against the side of it, and I was afraid it would bend it if I didn't cut away a bit of the plastic casing on the card. I really don't want to perform any operations on a $500 card if I decide to SLI. I'll hunt someone down on overclockers who has this card and mobo and ask if they fit I guess. It will be a close call I think.