TR Forums

Hi Gerbils, couple of days back my HD 7970 stopped working. After inspection i found that one of the 8 pin connector had loosen up and a quick fix booted the system. But yesterday i started seeing random artifacts while playing Dota 2. Since past 6 months i have been playing this game and I don't think i want lot of GPU power.

My requirement is pretty simple, card performance should be better then HD 7970 (50% ?) and power consumption should be as low as possible. Can you please suggest which card i should go with. I am fine with both camps so any suggestion is welcome.

It is a dark time for gamers. Although powerful GPUs have been released, crazed miners have driven the gaming graphics cards from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.

Graphics card pricing and availability are both headed in the wrong direction as a result of the mining craze. Four months ago, a Radeon RX 480 8GB at $200 or a Radeon RX 580 8GB at $250 would have been a great choice. If you have to buy a new card today, a GeForce GTX1060 6 GB at $270 may be the least-inflated option available for decent gaming performance.

Those midrange cards aren't that much faster than a 7970 Ghz Ed./8970/R9 280X which are fairly comparable to a RX 470 only with double the power consumption. The jump to a Vega56 or GTX1070 would be well worth it if going up to 1440p.

For 1080p though (or Dota 2, it's not demanding), the 7970 is plenty. As artifacting is often memory related, try underclocking the memory, perhaps all the way down to the non-GHz Ed.'s 1375MHz. Or undoing your rather considerable undervolt. If it works again you can soldier along until card prices aren't so insane and you are ready to bump up monitor resolution.

Thank you JAE and BFG for response. Good points about pricing and under-clocking the memory. Currently my card's memory is clocked at 1500 MHZ effective 6000 MHZ. I have access to setting like under-volt and under-clock. I will try to under-clock and get back to you, here's hoping that after under-clocking, card will not show random artifacts and maybe that will help me extend its life till the cards pricing are back to more acceptable level.

Also currently in India, GTX 1060 6GB is available at minor marked up price, so i might pull the trigger incase if the card underclocking doesn't work.

Many thanks once again for your suggestions

You can play DOTA 2 on your Haswell IGP @ 1080p Low-Medium settings.

DPete27 wrote:

You can play DOTA 2 on your Haswell IGP @ 1080p Low-Medium settings.

Thanks Pete, i have tried IGP before but i observe occasional stutters while playing ranked games (May be because of 120HZ LED TV ?). Anyway the problem seems to have been taken cared, i had to underclock the card to 925 MHZ GPU @ 1.0V and memory at 1200 MHZ @ 1.35V. I played DOTA 2 for 3 hours yesterday and there were no artifacts observed. Here's hoping this card lasts till Mining craze subsides.

bfg-9000 wrote:

Those midrange cards aren't that much faster than a 7970 Ghz Ed./8970/R9 280X which are fairly comparable to a RX 470 only with double the power consumption. The jump to a Vega56 or GTX1070 would be well worth it if going up to 1440p.

For 1080p though (or Dota 2, it's not demanding), the 7970 is plenty. As artifacting is often memory related, try underclocking the memory, perhaps all the way down to the non-GHz Ed.'s 1375MHz. Or undoing your rather considerable undervolt. If it works again you can soldier along until card prices aren't so insane and you are ready to bump up monitor resolution.

They're actually much faster http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1722?vs=1771

That is not a 7970 GHz Ed. and I am sure you noticed many of those are nVidia Gameworks titles, which are artificially deoptimized for both older nVidia cards and AMD cards. That's why it takes a freaking GTX 980 or R9 Nano to match that GTX 1060.

My point was both 7970 GHz Ed. and RX 470 are 2048:128:32 cards. If the 470 could hold its 1206MHz boost clock (it can't with the reference cooler) then it could be up to 15% faster than 1050MHz, but that isn't really much of an upgrade for 5 years newer! Not that OP needs an upgrade to play a Source 2 engine game at 1080p, but the lower power consumption would be nice. Hopefully the extreme undervolt and underclock will provide both acceptable thermals and performance for free.

bfg-9000 wrote:

That is not a 7970 GHz Ed.

7970 GHz Ed. is the same exact card as the original 7970, just clocked roughly 10% faster. So let's say it's about 10% faster.

The 1060 is roughly 100% faster than the regular 7970.

You're wrong, sorry.

bfg-9000 wrote:

and I am sure you noticed many of those are nVidia Gameworks titles, which are artificially deoptimized for both older nVidia cards and AMD cards. That's why it takes a freaking GTX 980 or R9 Nano to match that GTX 1060.

So you are relying on extremely tenuous conspiracy theory to explain why a card at ~500 USD from over FIVE years ago can't compete with a ~250 USD card from ONE year ago?

Seriously?

I mean, I don't even know what to say to you, this is completely bizarre.

Erm...the Nano came out in 2015 and the 980 in 2014 - neither of those are 'over' 5 years.

Duncan_H wrote:

Erm...the Nano came out in 2015 and the 980 in 2014 - neither of those are 'over' 5 years.

Erm... Did you read my entire post?

It really isn't that long.

bfg-9000 is claiming that the midrange cards now aren't *that* much faster than the 7970, which is silly because the 1060 is literally twice as fast.

When challenged, he starts saying that the GHz Edition somehow changes the math on this (it doesn't, it's only ~10% faster at best than the 7970) and that, anyway, hey, look over there! nVidia performance conspiracy!

I'm just pointing out the utter absurdity of expecting that a, what, three generations old?, 500 USD card from FIVE years ago would be comparable to a current generation 250 USD card from last year.

EzioAs already demonstrated, conclusively, that bfg-9000 is simply wrong. I'm just pointing out that he's clearly delusional as well.

EDIT: removed further discussion of the misunderstanding, as it is moot. Apologies.

I realised that soon after I re-read it but the forum would not let me re-post or edit my original because I am a new user...

No problem. Welcome!

Glorious wrote:

The 1060 is roughly 100% faster than the regular 7970.

You're wrong, sorry.

Not in DOTA2, which is famously CPU-limited and the only game named in this thread. Show me a benchmark where 1060 is 100% faster than 7970 in DOTA2 @ 1080p and I will eat my words.

Glorious wrote:

So you are relying on extremely tenuous conspiracy theory to explain why a card at ~500 USD from over FIVE years ago can't compete with a ~250 USD card from ONE year ago?

Seriously?

I mean, I don't even know what to say to you, this is completely bizarre.

There is no doubt that Gameworks is the main reason you have to upgrade every couple of years, if you want to play all current AAA titles--how else can you explain the much more powerful 980 barely keeping up with a 1060? It's not a conspiracy if it's true, and while I can't fault them for wanting to make money, I don't have to like it. I objected to EzioAs bringing up those AAA titles because DOTA2 is old so not comparable (for old games the "optimizations" won't help, so a FIVE year old card can indeed be as fast as a ONE year old one), plus the comparison wasn't even to the OP's card so it was completely off-topic.

At some point you have to decide if you are adding any value to a thread. OP is playing DOTA2 on a 1080p TV without variable refresh, and I wanted to help him avoid having to upgrade when he clearly doesn't need one yet and prices are ridiculous. I further knew he had undervolted his card which could have been the cause of the problem, as it had already become unstable before so he had to raise the voltage. And I suggested waiting to upgrade until he really needed more power. In contrast, leaping into a thread to troll a strawman argument (I did not claim what you seem to think I did) seems to be singularly unhelpful and surprising for someone who likes to call others who do the same fanboys, especially as I have seen you be helpful before. Please take it to one of the many nVidia vs. AMD threads, as this isn't one of them.

Update - Guys thank you for your suggestions once again. The card is working fine after i underclocked it, infact i had a marathon of 5 hours playing DOTA 2 with no artifacts whatsoever. I also found out that one of 2 fans in the card had failed hence i think the card was unstable. Currently i have placed a 80mm fan directly on the card, hope that helps the card to work. GPU Temps is not going above 70C so i think the card is fine with one fan. I will keep you posted if anything goes south.

Jigar wrote:

Update - Guys thank you for your suggestions once again. The card is working fine after i underclocked it, infact i had a marathon of 5 hours playing DOTA 2 with no artifacts whatsoever. I also found out that one of 2 fans in the card had failed hence i think the card was unstable. Currently i have placed a 80mm fan directly on the card, hope that helps the card to work. GPU Temps is not going above 70C so i think the card is fine with one fan. I will keep you posted if anything goes south.

Glad you've got it working, though have you considered a physical clean-up? I've found with cards that are getting a bit older can benefit (including my R9 290X earlier this year) from stripping them down, cleaning out the heatsink and fans, removing and replacing the TIM etc. In your case, as 2 of the 3 fans are not working, it sounds like you might benefit from considering replacing the fans themselves too, but it could be a cheap fix.

I know this thread is resolved now, but for any other Dota2 players that stumble across this in the future, the 1050 and RX460/R560 were both specifically launched targeting Dota2 (and other MOBAs) as their selling point, at $99.

Both are going to get you at least 100fps at 1080p ultra settings, and both are low-power, efficient options at around 75W. You can even find variants that don't need PCIe power connectors, so they're often the best upgrade for pre-built PCs with puny power supplies.

An RX 560 or GTX 1050 both trade blows are are very similar in performance when when averaged across a lot of games. Both will perform about as well as a 2010 Radeon HD6970 or GTX 580 if you have an old high-end card, or that same level of performance was available in the midrange HD7870 or GTX 660 at the end of 2012.

Chrispy_ wrote:

For any other Dota2 players that stumble across this in the future, the $120 GeForce GTX1050 2GB and the $120 Radeon RX 460/560 4GB were both specifically launched targeting Dota2 (and other MOBAs) as their selling point.

The $142 GeForce GTX1050Ti 4GB could be a better choice than the GeForce GTX1050 2GB. I wouldn't buy a gaming graphics card with less than 4 GB of memory in 2017. In this case, the topic author specifically asked for a card that was significantly faster than his Radeon HD7970 GHz Edition 3GB. A GeForce GTX1060 6GB or Radeon RX 480/580 8GB would provide good performance at 1080p in most modern games, even those that are much more demanding than DotA2.