AMD 7950 3GB VS R9-270X 2GB which is better?
Long story short, I have been holding off on upgrades for my PC because I wanted to get the best value for my money. I'm trying to get something that will perform well now, and still be a decent card for the next year or two. The only Information I have got so far is along the lines of:
"The 270x is a re-badged 7870 GHZ with only slight improvements, therefore the 7950 is better"
"No, it is a re-badged 7950 with more efficient architecture and optimizations for newer games, so it should be slightly faster than the 7950."
There is also contradictory information regarding whether or not the 7000 series will support the new Mantle API. Some say all GCN cards support it, others say only the R9 series will. Today I saw a His IceQ 7950 3GB for $195 and $180 after rebate which has since been completely sold out and went to over $300 now.
I'm starting to wonder if I should have just bought the 7950 since it seemed like a really great deal.
This site shows a comparison of each GPU's specifications.http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=1898&gid2=1217&compare=radeon-r9-270x-sapphire-toxic-2gb-oc-edition-vs-radeon-hd-7950-iceq-turbo-3gb-edition
The 270x toxic edition has a much higher memory frequency, but the 7950 has a significantly higher memory bandwidth. The 7950 has the higher texture rate, the 270x has the higher pixel rate.
On most every part of the comparison the 7950 is the clear winner.
Benchmarks seem to tell a different story. Here's an example in this BF3 benchmark, the Toxic edition 270x gets a few more frames than the 7950 3GB with boost http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-radeon-r9-270x-sapphire-toxic-r9-270x-review_125979/3
On other games that they tested, the 7950 pulls ahead a little, but when it's only ~2 frames it can just be the "margin of error."
Overall it's becoming a very frustrating experience stressing over which card to buy. I really don't want to spend much more than $200 on a graphics card, although I want to make sure I'm getting the best bang for the buck. I don't want to be stick with the inferior version for the foreseeable future.
Yes I realize the question is quite long, I didn't intend that that but It happened. The second half of the question is more to the point.
And I know about tomshardware and several other message boards, but I don't really like signing up to lots of websites which I probably wont regularly post to.