I'm building a gaming rig soon and would like to hear opinions regarding the AMD Radeon 7870 OC vs the Nvidia GTX 670 (stock clocked) in terms of value for money.
I live in South Africa (with highly inflated prices when it comes to PC parts) and there is a sizeable price difference between the two cards. R3382 (roughly $374) for the Gigabyte 7870 OC edition and R4345 (roughly $480) for the cheapest, no-frills or extra cooling attached Leadtek GTX 670, the overclocked versions of the GTX 670 are around the R5100 mark ($564) and are unfortunately far out of my price range.
I know in terms of raw benchmarking power the 670 is the clear winner, but is it really worth the extra money when you consider that I'm going to be playing games on a single 1920 X 1080 monitor, the new AMD drivers that have been released which have boosted FPS in many games (Battlefield 3 etc.) and taking into account the build quality/warranty on the Gigabyte 7870 OC which is superior to the Leadtek card. I will be using the PC exclusively for gaming and have no use for the advantages that Nvidia cards provide with Adobe software.
I'm a bit particular towards the AMD cards. So I would say shoot for the 7870. You'll be getting better price to preformance and if you can get something with duel fans it'd be a lot nicer as far as sound goes compared to a 670 with a rubish cooler on it.
correct, the 670 is a far much better card, in reality, you must think of the long run.
the 7870 will be good for now, but in a year you will probably be considering upgrading to a newer card.
as for the 670, you will probably be happy with the card for much longer. so think of price and "life" of the card. i always suggest to get something a little better, so it "lasts" a litter longer :)
I would argue however that the marginal difference in preformance wouldn't show you much of a future proofing effect that would actually constitute buying one over the other. 2 generations from now both cards will be quite obsolete, weather one get roughly 5-15 frames more now or not.
The best price/preformance card is always the best buy.