Choose one - hd 7970 or hd 6990

**asye288** · 01-12-2012, 07:24 PM

Understand the new Asus HD 7970 has been launched. I was told the the Sapphire HD 6990 still outperforms the new card which has dual gpu. What I need is a gaming card for fb3, 3d games + others. Any suggestions for which one?? Thanks.

**PP Mguire** · 01-13-2012, 08:21 PM

Originally Posted by asye288

Understand the new Asus HD 7970 has been launched. I was told the the Sapphire HD 6990 still outperforms the new card which has dual gpu. What I need is a gaming card for fb3, 3d games + others. Any suggestions for which one?? Thanks.

I would get 2 7970s myself.

**Joshua_Mahr** · 01-15-2012, 05:50 AM

I am a big fan of the HD7970 but if your only planning on getting one card then the HD6990. It is more powerful.

**ET3D** · 01-18-2012, 01:44 PM

While these cards are not something I'd buy (I go for low mid range usually), and therefore my advice can't be perfect, I always lean toward the newer tech. The 7970 is a new architecture, so I'm sure there's more room for optimisation in it. This means that it's likely to narrow the gap with the 6990 as drivers mature. Also, the 7970 is a great overclocker, see for example here, and that's with the stock cooler. A card like the XFX with its custom cooler might do better (or at least be quieter). I think that with overclocking and driver updates the 7970 could be competitive with the 6990. For example in Battlefield 3 Anandtech showed the 6990 as 36% faster than the 7970, while HardOCP showed the overclocked 7970 to be 30% faster than at stock speed. The settings were different at the two sites, but I think it's a decent indication that they can be close in performance. And because the 7970 is a single card, you don't have to wait for Crossfire profiles to get that performance, which can sometimes take a while.