# MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti Power Edition 1 GB



## W1zzard (Oct 5, 2012)

Today MSI launches their new GeForce GTX 650 Ti Power Edition. This card comes overclocked out of the box, runs extremely quiet and has one of the lowest power consumptions we've ever seen. Especially Blu-ray power is ultra-low which might make it a candidate for a media PC.

*Show full review*


----------



## Ikaruga (Oct 9, 2012)

Thank you very much for the great review. I was sure that the 110W is way too high.
It shows how strong Kepler really is in games, but 4xAA is too much for these 128-192bit cards imho. 

Looks like a nice card for the (launch) price.


----------



## 50eurouser (Oct 9, 2012)

Nice review, anyone know the starting prices on euro-stores ? About 125€ for reference is gonna be ok. Amd might need to produce the secret 768-core piticrain gpu.


----------



## dj-electric (Oct 9, 2012)

This


----------



## Ikaruga (Oct 9, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> This
> 
> http://tpucdn.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_650_Ti_Power_Edition/images/perf_oc.gif



That's exactly where I stopped for a while


----------



## raghu78 (Oct 9, 2012)

at 165 bucks this card stands no chance against HD 7850 1GB. the pricing is bad. no other way about it. Also removing features like SLI is not good when products in the same price range come with it. The last gen products HD 6870 and GTX 560 are faster and are also selling for very good deals with prices at 140 - 170 after mail in rebates. 
          Currently through price cuts AMD has the better card at every price point. Nvidia is just milking the market based on the initial rave reviews for the GTX 680 and GTX 670. nice strategy. its a pity not many can see through these tricks.


----------



## Benetanegia (Oct 9, 2012)

Hate to say it, but I was wrong and many other people were right: the card is clearly bottlenecked by memory. And because of it generalyy slow. Great power and noise though.

We can see it in the amazing OC results of this card (greater than core OC) compared to the Asus one. GTX 660's shader performance is only 25-30% higher, but actual gaming performance gain is over 50%, much much more than I expected.

BTW amazing performance gain across the board for Nvidia cards with 306.23 WHQL drivers. Anyone noticed that GTX660 is now just above HD7870, it was 5-10% slower with 304's.


----------



## W1zzard (Oct 9, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> BTW amazing performance gain across the board for Nvidia cards with 306.23 WHQL drivers. Anyone noticed that GTX660 is now just above HD7870, it was 5-10% slower with 304's.



we have changed some benchmarks around, too.


----------



## Benetanegia (Oct 9, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> we have changed some benchmarks around, too.



Thanks, I see. 

new game biases cancel out each other pretty much. And 3 games out of almost 20... I don't see that producing such a change or does it?


----------



## W1zzard (Oct 9, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> new game biases cancel out each other pretty much. And 3 games out of almost 20... I don't see that producing such a change or does it?



i honestly don't know. i never look at benchmarks like that, so nobody can say i'm biased.

when interesting titles are released they get added, and older/less popular ones get kicked out. afaik we have the best selection of games now


----------



## commander calamitous (Oct 9, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> at 165 bucks this card stands no chance against HD 7850 1GB. the pricing is bad. no other way about it. Also removing features like SLI is not good when products in the same price range come with it. The last gen products HD 6870 and GTX 560 are faster and are also selling for very good deals with prices at 140 - 170 after mail in rebates.
> Currently through price cuts AMD has the better card at every price point. Nvidia is just milking the market based on the initial rave reviews for the GTX 680 and GTX 670. nice strategy. its a pity not many can see through these tricks.



This product seems no doubt to be geared toward selling other products; just ones Nvidia hopes will be theirs


----------



## Casecutter (Oct 9, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Hate to say it, but I was wrong


We can't hold it against you!

One word - Underwhelming!
I see partiality... with a 9.2!  If the MSRP was $140 maybe, but now 9 months behind and Nvidia knew exactly where to place and price this card and this OC'd MSI is $165 that's... clearly gouging! This probably can't keep up to a GTX560 Non-Ti, and to top it off not any OC'r. Clearly forget about any price war...


----------



## Benetanegia (Oct 9, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> i honestly don't know. i never look at benchmarks like that, so nobody can say i'm biased.



It was a rhetoric question tbh. The sheer number of benchmarks and the different nature of the games, makes your average performance numbers the most unbiased GPU comparison that can be found.



> afaik we have the best selection of games now



No doubt.


----------



## HumanSmoke (Oct 9, 2012)

Casecutter said:


> One word -Underwhelming!
> I see partiality... with a 9.2!  If the MSRP was $140 maybe


You should take that record back to the store- it's broken. Another post, another bagging.

As for the $140- I'd say give it 3-4 weeks and the price will be exactly that - if not lower as GTX 560/560Ti stocks run dry.
GTX 660 Ti launch price $300....price now, 7 weeks later, from $280
GTX 660 launch price $230...price now, 3 weeks later, from $220


Casecutter said:


> and to top it off not any OC'r.


Reference clock is 925MHz GPU/ 5400MHz effective memory (G3D has a ref. model review >>here<< )
W1zz's OC for this (already overclocked) MSI card 1135/6620 ( 22.7% and 22.6% respectively), doesn't seem overly shabby imo considering the market segment the card is aimed at.


----------



## Casecutter (Oct 9, 2012)

HumanSmoke said:


> As for the $140- I'd say give it 3-4 weeks and the price will be exactly that - if not lower as GTX 560/560Ti stocks run dry.


GTX 660 Ti launch price $300....price now, 7% less after 7 weeks
GTX 660 launch price $230...price now 3-4% drop over 3-4 weeks
with reductions like that we wouldn't see $140 even by Black Friday!  Whoopie!



HumanSmoke said:


> Reference clock is 925MHz GPU/ 5400MHz effective memory (G3D has a ref. model review >>here<< )
> W1zz's OC for this (already overclocked) MSI card 1135/6620 ( 22.7% and 22.6% respectively), doesn't seem overly shabby imo considering the market segment the card is aimed at..


The problem find a reference card that's "wild", you take your chances seeing how it OC's.  We all know that Nvidia sorts these chip and there's mild, wild, and Über; each level you pay the price of admission.  That reference spec is artificially low, so yes such mild chips might provide 1020Mhz (12%), but not like you’ll have an easy time reaching 22% from many reference board at least long term.  YMMV... but hey there's $150 and hope, me I say the jury is still out, and previous marketing history has exhibited it.
http://techreport.com/review/23690/review-nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-ti-graphics-card

While even BF3 Nvidia’s "best of show" W1zzard OC'n went from not really playable 1920x, to still fairly lag-ie after overclock.  I’ll take my chances with a $170 7850 1Gb and give it an extra 20% and enjoy.  Heck W1zzarrd even wrung-out 38% from his Club version 1190Mhz at that it tops even a GTX 660 in BF3 1920x 4AA. 
That's what not too shabby is...


----------



## HumanSmoke (Oct 9, 2012)

Casecutter said:


> with reductions like that we wouldn't see $140 even by Black Friday!  Whoopie!


The other side of that particular coin is that one company feels the need to constantly slash prices, while another doesn't.


Casecutter said:


> The problem find a reference card that's "wild", *you take your chances seeing how it OC's* [snip]..I’ll take my chances with a $170 7850 1Gb and *give it an extra 20%* and enjoy...Heck W1zzarrd even wrung-out 38% from his Club version


So, overclocking is variable with Nvidia cards, and a certainty with AMD cards. Spoken like a true believer.
BTW: There are plenty of reviews- and anecdotal forum evidence, to refute your cherry picked numbers. A quick example taken from TPU's review db. HT4U's  HD 7850  OC numbers- Sapphire 16% and XFX 19%...actually translating into only a 11% and 7% OC respectively, over their shipping clock...somewhat worse that than the MSI card you're ostensively supposed to commenting upon. The only card in their lineup that produced a strong OC of 20% (the PC PCS+) retails for over $200.
BTW#2: W1zzard's kind enough to do these pretty thorough reviews. The least you could do is spell the guys moniker correctly.


----------



## el.miguelo (Oct 10, 2012)

What happened with 7850? 26 fps (32% less)of difference.
Something is wrong.  The difference in the case of gtx 660 is 2.6 fps. But in the case of 7870 is 46.8fps  What happend in two weaks?

In all games 7850 and 7870 get less Fps. In some cases the difference is very high













Sorry for my english


----------



## Melvis (Oct 10, 2012)

Yay finally a card to take on and funny enough beat down the 7770, if only the price was a bit lower, apart from that the card is just what i was looking for, for my mini PC build.


----------



## raghu78 (Oct 10, 2012)

Casecutter said:


> We can't hold it against you!
> 
> One word - Underwhelming! I see partiality... with a 9.2!  If the MSRP was $140 maybe, but now 9 months behind and Nvidia knew exactly where to place and price this card and this OC'd MSI is $165 that's... clearly gouging! This probably can't keep up to a GTX560 Non-Ti, and to top it off not any OC'r. Clearly forget about any price war...



This card does not deserve a 9.2 when cards from last gen in the same price range like HD 6870 and GTX 560 are faster. newegg has 7 GTX 560 models from 165 - 175 even without considering mail in rebate. 

 Computer Hardware, Video Cards & Video Devices, D...

Moreover performance scaling with overclocking sucks because of a 128 bit memory bus and 16 ROPs. this card is only suitable for very small cases where space is a constraint and also where the PSU is a 350 - 400w model.


----------



## Ikaruga (Oct 10, 2012)

el.miguelo said:


> What happened with 7850? 26 fps (32% less)of difference.
> Something is wrong.  The difference in the case of gtx 660 is 2.6 fps. But in the case of 7870 is 46.8fps  What happend in two weaks?
> 
> In all games 7850 and 7870 get less Fps. In some cases the difference is very high
> ...



Just guessing, but perhaps he used a different scene for the benchmark?


----------



## Benetanegia (Oct 10, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> This card does not deserve a 9.2 when cards from last gen in the same price range like HD 6870 and GTX 560 are faster. newegg has 7 GTX 560 models from 165 - 175 even without considering mail in rebate.
> 
> Computer Hardware, Video Cards & Video Devices, D...
> 
> Moreover performance scaling with overclocking sucks because of a 128 bit memory bus and 16 ROPs. this card is only suitable for very small cases where space is a constraint and also where the PSU is a 350 - 400w model.



W1zzard doesn't review prices, he reviews cards, so price should not influence the rating. Now yeah the price is a little bit high and it's specially true for these non-reference cards, and when compared to previous gen cards on the same price range, but that's been a constant with every card this gen. This generation prices are higher, they have been from the beginning. Not a single 28nm card from Nvidia or AMD has been released that offered better perf/price than 40nm counterparts. Of course there's other considerations like features, noise and power consumption (which is also money*).

Putting price aside the 650 Ti is the card on this gen that offers the biggest jump in peformance when compared to the card that it replaces (550 Ti), even if it could have been better. It has class leadership in power consumption and noise levels.

In the equation the only bad thing about it is the price and price doesn't make a product any worse or better.

* Power consumption equals a lot of $ over a 2-3 year period in many countries, especially on cards of this class, because users on this range don't typically upgrade sooner than 3 years. 2 years ago I calculated my PC power spending over a year and I found out that it roughly translates to 1 watt == 1 €. Yeah that's not a typo, for my usage that's it, I play and work on my PC and the result includes calclations for when it's idle and shut down. GTX 650 ti consumes on average 63w, HD6870 consumes 119w and 560 Ti 148w. That's a huge difference, *after 3 years a 560 Ti would end up costing 250 € more than the 650 Ti*. Enthusiasts upgrade more often (once a year) and pay more for their cards, while the consumption difference is hardly bigger than GTX560 vs 650, so it's less important a factor.


----------



## Ikaruga (Oct 10, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> GTX 650 ti consumes on average 63w, HD6870 consumes 119w and 560 Ti 148w. That's a huge difference, *after 3 years a 560 Ti would end up costing 250 € more than the 650 Ti*.



Exactly my thought about low-mid Keplers. This chip is simply amazing when it comes to power consumption. You pair it up with and ivy bridge i3 CPU, and you have the perfect casual gamer setup, what you can easily feed with a picoPSU.


----------



## refillable (Oct 10, 2012)

Sorry to nvidia fans. But for my opinion, This card is a 'meh' for me

My opinion to the 660 and above of the nvidia's kepler cards is like 'wow' (except the 660, not that much of a 'wow' ) and the most awesome thing that they did is that they force AMD to lower their card prices. But Their >$200 card is a little lacking to be honest. 640, only performs like an old 450 but with $100 price tag (7750 is just like $5 more and faster). The 650 performs like the 7750 (only a microscopic 'faster' if you don't agree), yet priced $10 more at least. And, the 7770 is faster and doesn't have that kind of a big gap (just like $5 more).

The same case with this card, minimum at $155 in newegg. This card doesn't touch the 7850 at all. And I am sure it will not even touch the 1GB 7850. And even... I found it for just $175 in newegg (just $20 more). Yes it does beat the 7770, but the 7770 is just minimum at $125 ($30 less).

Just my thoughts... nvidia should concentrate more on their sub $200 division of cards to be quite honest. Although they once released a pretty successful ~<$200 card the 460.

Also, additional stuff. I think tpu should add benchmarks only containing the 650 Ti (or whatever the card is) which is given as sample from nvidia or non-OC'd card so People wouldn't get confused about the result. Also, why is the 660 beating the 7870? I don't think it used to be like that.


----------



## W1zzard (Oct 10, 2012)

refillable said:


> I think tpu should add benchmarks only containing the 650 Ti (or whatever the card is) which is given as sample from nvidia or non-OC'd card



nvidia did not give out samples of their own gtx 650 ti, so i used the nvidia reference bios on one of our cards. this gives perfectly accurate results for performance. next week i'll buy a gtx 650 ti reference card for future results.


----------



## Ikaruga (Oct 10, 2012)

refillable said:


> Sorry to nvidia fans. But for my opinion, This card is a 'meh' for me
> 
> My opinion to the 660 and above of the nvidia's kepler cards is like 'wow' (except the 660, not that much of a 'wow' ) and the most awesome thing that they did is that they force AMD to lower their card prices. But Their >$200 card is a little lacking to be honest. 640, only performs like an old 450 but with $100 price tag (7750 is just like $5 more and faster). The 650 performs like the 7750 (only a microscopic 'faster' if you don't agree), yet priced $10 more at least. And, the 7770 is faster and doesn't have that kind of a big gap (just like $5 more).
> 
> ...



While I stated this in some other threads already, I also do it here now: I think Keplers are not that bad on the sub $200 segment as they might seem to be. I think they do quite well when it comes to casual gaming, except one thing, and that is: "a little high prices", so I'm kinda agree with you, but I also disagree a little.

You are judging the value of the product based solely on the price. If you are an enthusiast, you snap in two 670s into your rig or even two 680s, and you won't give a flying **** about power consumption and price, but if "you" only have $150 for a card, it's suddenly turns into an entirely different story.

With hundreds of built systems behind me, I can tell you that the majority of this segment don't want and won't notice that extra difference what the 7850 offers (let alone the fact that you are comparing launch prices to a price of the product which was released half a year ago, and which will cost a lot more after 2-3 years because of the 10% extra on the electricity bills). There are many of course who want but simply can't afford a better card, and those will go for the 7850 because they still want higher performance. but the majority won't. *If the budget only allows $150 for a card they won't spend $170 on it*, and Nvidia knows this, and that's all they care about when they design/limit the performance of the product and when they set the price. 

Nowadays casual gamers care more about how much power the card will consume, what content or games are you get with the package, 3D support, physx, etc, so these kind of practical extras, and not about fps. Not a long time ago cards like the 6850 were the all around winners, because nobody cared about these secondary attributes, but the trend is changed a lot in the segment. They want games like Call of Duty, Minecraft or Dota to run perfectly in lower resolutions (eg 768p or 1050p), while they also want it quiet and green, and they surely won't care about and/or use >=4xAA (which is one of the main weakness of these 128-192bit cards btw.)

The market of discrete graphics is shrinking rapidly, and I think Nvidia is going in the right direction now, because they give beasts for the enthusiasts and great content and value for the lower segments. All they need to do now is to lower the prices just a little bit to counter AMD's aggressive price policy. 
Well let's be honest here, they are in trouble indeed, but not because the chip is bad, but because lowering prices is really hard when you are selling less..... but that's not our problem, because the greater the price war there is, the better is gonna be for us


----------



## SIGSEGV (Oct 10, 2012)

refillable said:


> Also, additional stuff. I think tpu should add benchmarks only containing the 650 Ti (or whatever the card is) which is given as sample from nvidia or non-OC'd card so People wouldn't get confused about the result. Also, why is the 660 beating the 7870? I don't think it used to be like that.



true story


----------



## Ikaruga (Oct 10, 2012)

refillable said:


> Also, why is the 660 beating the 7870? I don't think it used to be like that.



Latest branch of the Nvidia drivers are adding some noticeable extra performance. Not sure, but perhaps that's the cause.


----------



## refillable (Oct 10, 2012)

Sorry wizzard, I didn't knew that. That's actually good mate .

Power consumption... Hmm, that's a pretty good arguement. But from the experiences that I had, I rarely saw a guy who can't have a 7850 but can put a 650 Ti because of the power limitation. People that has power limitation for them would probably get a 7750. Which don't need an extra PCI-E cable.

I mean, take a look at the 7770. In terms of power it's pretty good, it's $30 less and most people that are in this segment won't find a huge difference in terms of performance. And, with $20 more you can get a much better card in terms of performance, which is the 7850. Yes, your power bills might be more, but I mean it's the risk! You can't have a 680 with low electricity bills. Don't wan't to pay high bills? Then I personally I'll get the 7770.

From my experience, someone's budget is often flexible, so why not pay more for a boost on performance?

I have to agree with nvidia's features. They're pretty good but not all people have to have it.


----------



## el.miguelo (Oct 10, 2012)

Ikaruga said:


> Just guessing, but perhaps he used a different scene for the benchmark?



Yes in first case they used 12.7 beta drivers, and for this review they used 12.8. Amd drivers fail XD



Ikaruga said:


> Latest branch of the Nvidia drivers are adding some noticeable extra performance. Not sure, but perhaps that's the cause.






Benetanegia said:


> Hate to say it, but I was wrong and many other people were right: the card is clearly bottlenecked by memory. And because of it generalyy slow. Great power and noise though.
> 
> We can see it in the amazing OC results of this card (greater than core OC) compared to the Asus one. GTX 660's shader performance is only 25-30% higher, but actual gaming performance gain is over 50%, much much more than I expected.
> 
> BTW amazing performance gain across the board for Nvidia cards with 306.23 WHQL drivers. Anyone noticed that GTX660 is now just above HD7870, it was 5-10% slower with 304's.



If you pay attetion the 7870 gets less fps in many game, in connection with previous reviews

For example, in the review of 7870 powercolor ( http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_7870_PCS_Plus_Vortex_II/1.html )

Alan wake  (before) 63.9 in this review 60.9 Difference = 3 fps (4.7% less)
Crysis 2 (before) 47.8 (now) 43.9 Difference = 3.9 fps (8.2% less)
Diablo III (before)145 (now) 98.2 Difference = 46.8 (32.7% less)
Dragon Age II (before) 44 (now) 33.5 Difference = 10.5 fps (23.9% less)
Starcraft (before) 137.7 (now) 119.6 Difference = 18.1 fps (13.1% less)
Skyrim (before) 70.3 (now) 65.4 Difference = 4.9 fps (7% less)

The difference is in the drivers, the catalyst 12.8 are very bad drivers. I can't find other explanation.


(sorry for my english)


----------



## Casecutter (Oct 10, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> W1zzard doesn't review prices.


Really not in W1zzards "Performance/$" or the "Value and Conclusion" Right... Keep up the smoke!


Benetanegia said:


> the biggest jump in performance when compared to the card that it replaces (550 Ti)


That’s not saying much the bar was really Low! 


Benetanegia said:


> In the equation the only bad thing about it is the price and price doesn't make a product any worse or better.


 So, you'd have no problem giving Nvidia $300?


Benetanegia said:


> GTX 650 ti consumes *on average *63w, HD6870 consumes 119w and 560 Ti 148w. That's a huge difference, *after 3 years a 560 Ti would end up costing 250 € more than the 650 Ti*.


So *"on average"* you spend every day gaming 24/7? How do you pay for all that?  On average a 650Ti is 3W lower than a 7850 *at idle* that's nifty. Although you ignore that most computers are set to sleep probably 75% of a day. At which point Radeons switch to an ultra-low-power state when the display goes to sleep and  Kepler gets used to wipe the floor.  

And, yes absolutely over older products it matters and improves with  evolution, and 28Nm which makes that possible is a more costly this time around.  While some would be influenced to upgrade, you can't live in a vacuum...  You buy when/because you no longer are enjoying the experience you want.  Spending money to only to save on power, while not completely improving your experience is never going to provide any payback if it really about gaming... its' just throwing good money after bad. 

Anyone contemplating any of todays previous generation cards and especially Fermi is definitely better off with newer hardware.  And, that brings us back to price… Nvidia can’t won’t lower this GTX650Ti while there are ton of GTX550Ti – GTX560 – GTX560Ti to flush out of the channel, and nobody smart should want them... So here we sit!


----------



## Casecutter (Oct 10, 2012)

el.miguelo said:


> The difference is in the drivers, the catalyst 12.8 are very bad drivers. I can't find other explanation.


Good catch... but really drivers there's no way in hell it's just drivers.  Sure AMD/Nvidia would forgo 2-3% to fix a problem, but was there any complaints on Diablo III (32.7% less) or Dragon Age II (23.9% less) that AMD had to forfeit that much of a performance delta?  Heck I could understand if AMD cut Diablo III, it's still plenty playable at 98FpS, but Dragon Age II down to 33FpS? Sorry there's something more.


----------



## W1zzard (Oct 10, 2012)

Casecutter said:


> but Dragon Age II down to 33FpS? Sorry there's something more.



i was wondering about that too, but it seems consistent across all cards. i retested dragon age ii just to be sure

starcraft and diablo have released new patches recently, maybe that affected the cards


----------



## Benetanegia (Oct 10, 2012)

Casecutter said:


> Really not in W1zzards "Performance/$" or the "Value and Conclusion" Right... Keep up the smoke!



So? Again, is the product worse or better according to price? Nope. Should W1zzard review every card again, each time they get a price cut and change the score? More so since I think W1zz said that he uses lowest Newegg price to compare, he should rebench and adapt the score everytime there's a sale in Newegg?

Performance/$ and the conclusions is a very different thing to how good a card is. If it costed $50 you would be saying "Oh wow amazing card bla bla"? The card would be the same, performance, consumption and noise the same. So why should the score be different in that case than in this case? It shouldn't plain and simple.



> That’s not saying much the bar was really Low!



Not really. Not lower than other Fermi cards (or AMD cards) in respective segments. So no.



> So, you'd have no problem giving Nvidia $300?



Who said that? I didn't. Read above.



> So *"on average"* you spend every day gaming 24/7? How do you pay for all that?  On average a 650Ti is 3W lower than a 7850 *at idle* that's nifty. Although you ignore that most computers are set to sleep probably 75% of a day. At which point Radeons switch to an ultra-low-power state when the display goes to sleep and  Kepler gets used to wipe the floor.



Maybe you could read instead of imagine what I said. Because I already said that idle and shutdown times are included in the calculus:



> I play and work on my PC and the result includes calclations for when it's idle and shut down



If it was on load 24/7 it would probably amount to 5 € ++ per watt per year. And I think that sleep mode is for lazy people. If I'm not going to be using my PC in a time, I shut it down.


----------



## Ikaruga (Oct 10, 2012)

el.miguelo said:


> Alan wake  (before) 63.9 in this review 60.9 Difference = 3 fps (4.7% less)
> Crysis 2 (before) 47.8 (now) 43.9 Difference = 3.9 fps (8.2% less)
> Diablo III (before)145 (now) 98.2 Difference = 46.8 (32.7% less)
> Dragon Age II (before) 44 (now) 33.5 Difference = 10.5 fps (23.9% less)
> ...


It's a nice catch, you are probably right, well done. The old results would put AMD in a much better position.




el.miguelo said:


> (sorry for my english)


Don't worry about it, (mine is terrible too:B), there is no language barrier as long as we can understand each other, and let's hope that the native English speakers will forgive us.


----------



## W1zzard (Oct 10, 2012)

the latest bench is running 100 mhz slower cpu clock, so less cooling is required, so i can sleep at night
how are nvidia results affected?


----------



## W1zzard (Oct 10, 2012)

HD 7970 GHz Edition, Catalyst 12.8:

```
===== DragonAge2 =====
Frames per second: 62.2 FPS
Total Frames: 5619 

===== DragonAge2 =====
Frames per second: 49.8 FPS
Total Frames: 4499 

===== DragonAge2 =====
Frames per second: 45.4 FPS
Total Frames: 4103 

===== DragonAge2 =====
Frames per second: 35.7 FPS
Total Frames: 3225 
Benchmark completed.
```

Uninstalled 12.8, rebooted, installed 12.6, rebooted:


```
===== DragonAge2 =====
Frames per second: 101.7 FPS
Total Frames: 9188 

===== DragonAge2 =====
Frames per second: 75.5 FPS
Total Frames: 6815 

===== DragonAge2 =====
Frames per second: 65.1 FPS
Total Frames: 5881 

===== DragonAge2 =====
Frames per second: 46.4 FPS
Total Frames: 4189 
Benchmark completed.
```


----------



## Casecutter (Oct 10, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> product worse or better according to price? Nope.


Just when they are in the real light of buyer in the market at that time. Today is today and if you're buying that's the only relevance.  By Black Friday these could go the way of the GTX460 768Mb, but today is today while i think there's hope!



Benetanegia said:


> Not lower than other Fermi cards


 Not true the GTX460 768Mb had it irrelevant even on the day it came out!  



W1zzard said:


> HD 7970 GHz Edition, Catalyst 12.8:


Ok, ouch I stand corrected...


----------



## xorbe (Oct 10, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> That's a huge difference, *after 3 years a 560 Ti would end up costing 250 € more than the 650 Ti*.



Well ... if you game 24/7 that is.  So it's probably more like 25€ at 2.4 hours a day, which is still high probably.  This is really the least of concerns.  I'd mention hot rooms in the summer before electricity.


----------



## Benetanegia (Oct 10, 2012)

xorbe said:


> Well ... if you game 24/7 that is.  So it's probably more like 25€ at 2.4 hours a day, which is still high probably.



The calculations were for MY case, but I've stated several times that it is NOT for 24/7 gaming (I don't know why everyone would think that, and why you don't read the previous posts). It's for a mix that includes 3 hours gaming, 8-10 hours working (3D modeling + testing on some real-time engine), a few hours of iddling and a little bit of "off-line" rendering on some nights. The actual time the GPU is loaded would amount to 6 hours or so, because 3D modeling, etc does not load it as much as games, so that's what I calculated anyway.

Simplifing my calculations a lot, it was something like:

For every 1w as seen in W1zzard's chart:
1w --> ~1.5w after accounting for 80% PSU efficiency and the power factor of the house, etc. Remember we are talking about how much it costs to you in the end so it's important to know exactly how much you'll endup paying for every watt on the GPU. The electricity company is not going to charge for clean DC watts provided by the PSU. Not even for the aparent consumption. They'll charge you for the actual consumption *on their end.*

1.5w * 365 days * 0.00025 €/w*h = 0.137 €/h

Now the only thing left is to calculate the hours of use. In my case the active time (heavy load on GPU) is roughly 6 hours so:

0.137 * 6 = 0.822 € per watt per year

This is when the GPU is fully loaded*, to this we need to add the spending when on idle. Which is less but it probably brings it close to 1€, so roughly 1€. 

For someone who stresses the GPU only 2 hours it would be less. And the lucky pleople in areas where they pay 5 cents it will be a lot less too.

* Loaded as in playing a game, i.e Crysis, not 100% as in Furmark, that is, the chart that W1zz labels as "average consumption".



> I'd mention hot rooms in the summer before electricity.



Spending on air conditioner derived from higher temps was included in the calculation I made 2 years ago. It's more than people would think.


----------



## SonDa5 (Oct 11, 2012)

How did the triple voltage control over clocking go with MSI Afterburner?


----------



## Casecutter (Nov 15, 2012)

Now just a week away from Black Friday and Eggs got it for $135 -AR$15 with F/S much more substancial reduction that I had thought... for 6 weeks.


----------



## Ikaruga (Nov 16, 2012)

Casecutter said:


> Now just a week away from Black Friday and Eggs got it for $135 -AR$15 with F/S much more substancial reduction that I had thought... for 6 weeks.



This card is an overclocking beast when it comes to OC-ing the memory. I was asking around about this card in the last few days, and many who I know managed to get stable (24/7) 1700-1800Mhz-ish memory clocks with this card which is a huge huge speed increase, and it's exactly what you need with the 128bit wide bus to shrink the performance gap towards the 660. 
I wonder why Wizzard got such a "low" memory OC result with his sample.


----------

