I am new to the whole PC side of gaming so i don't know what video card to get.
Option 1- http://www.microcenter.com/product/410392/02G-P4-2661-KR_GeForce_GTX_660_SC_Signature2_2048MB_GDDR5_PCIe_Video_Card
Option 2- http://www.microcenter.com/product/409682/R7870-2GD5T-OC_Radeon_HD7870_Overclocked_2048MB_GDDR5_PCIe_30_x16_Video_Card
It's generally which GPU supports your regularly used programs such as Games or Photoshop, Sony Vegas etc.....
I don't give a crap what people say, Nvidia and ATI are exactly the same in terms of price to performance (when talking about the same class of cards). The "problem" arises once the programs you use those GPUs for are well compiled for said program. For games just do a little research on which games you will be getting/ already have and find out if they are more optimized of ATI or Nvidia. When it comes to editing/rendering software generally Nvidia has the advantage due to their CUDA technology, although Adobe has announce OpenGL will be supported on all of their programs.
In short all I can say is get the best card with the best price it really won't make such a big difference.
Nvidia cards consume less power.
Nvidia is better for 3D gaming.
Nvidia has better optimization for SLI ( highly dependant on drivers )
Nvidia has less laency jumps.
Source from 2013 test (http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/4041/3/amd-radeon-hd-7870-ghz-edition-vs-nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-frametimes-review-battlefield-3) Also they are comparing a factory OC Radeonwith stock GTX.
NVIDIA features: 1) CUDA 2) Physx 3) 3D Surround
Radeon is better for multi monitor setup.
Radeon is better for higher resolution than 1080p mainly because of faster Bus speed.
Radeon is more affordable. ( If the linked Radeon unit would be stock it defidently be cheaper than Nvidia )
Radeon is better for Bit(Lite)Coin mining.
Radeon features: 1) Eyefinity 2) APP 3) AMD3D
Which overclocks better is depateable as it highly depends on the quality of the chip. ( Samsung chips which are in EVGA have the most OC potential )
Most quiet are ASUS batch, Most chilled are MSI batch. Gigabyte is balanced of these two.
So they are not as equal as the above person made you think.
you forgot
Nvidia has GPU-boost 1.0 & 2.0 which OC's your card for you a little bit depending on certain parameters
AMD has more RAW tesselation power (FLOPS)
AMD is used for bitcoin mining because it's not optimized for Nvidia (you edited that in before i could post)
You linked a very misleading article to the times. that article was using january drivers from nvidia and of the time amd drivers, Not fair. That being said AMD has and is currently making HUGE improvements on their frametimes. try looking up some 13.5beta driver results,... it's doing pretty darn well.