I recently upgraded my Rig to a FX8350 on a Sabertooth 990FX r2.0 with 16GB of 1866 RAM. Now that the CPU is renewed, the GPU is in line. :)
I play pretty much every gametype. From the occasional Minecraft session over Modern Warfare and Battlefield to Starcraft 2 and Anno. I game on a Asus 2560x1440 Monitor.
For AF I don't care much, but AA would be nice on 2-4x.
I chose the GTX670 because the Pricepoint suits me, and I like that the hot air is vented out the back of the Case. The 7970 would potentially be an option, but I don't really like that it sucks so much Power, (I'm on a 600W Powersupply.) and that part of the hot air is vented into the case.
So, the FTW edition has a slightly higher core clock than the SC+ (1006MHZ compared to 967MHZ). But the SC+ has 4GB VRAM which I heard is benefitial at higher resolutions, vs. 2GB on the FTW.
It boils down to higher core clock vs. higher VRAM. The price point is irrelevant for these two, because there fairly equal.
Higher amounts of VRAM help with keeping the textures loaded and such... but as of right now I can't think of any game that takes over 2gb... I have a buddy who plays skyrim with a 650ti 1gb with the 2k texture pack dlc. With the speed from the FTW and the back plate I think it is a better buy... but that is my opinion. I'm gearing up to buy that 670ftw so if you do go for it I'd love to hear how it turns out.
The XFX 7970 was in my inner circle too. But I read that it has a lot of problems with noise and other Hardware problems. The XFX Support doesn't get good grades from "victims" too. :)
Especialy because of the noise I dropped it out of my candidates... The 670 costs the same for me, but is apperantly a lot more silent. I don't want my PC to go all Jet Turbine on me ;)
The Higher clock is an argument for me, but the card should hold for at least 3-better 4 years. Is 2GB futureproof enough for this...? The Clock can be raised a little by hand, but the Vram is set... What is the better value for the buck?
Does anyone have Infos on the build quality and the noise level of the cards? Both of them have a backplate I understand?
The SC+ seems to have a little more build value to it it seems to me. Is there anyone that ones either of the cards?
I went ahead, and bought the SC+ 4GB version. I chose the SC+ because it has a backplate allready mounted, whereas with the FTW you have to buy one seperatly, and mount it yourself, and because I mod a lot of my games and thus figured a little more VRAM couldn't hurt.
If anyone is still reading this thread, and would like a detailed review, I'd be happy to write one. If no one is reading here anymore thoug, I'll save myself the work, lazy as I am ;)