Graphics card round up March 2013

This review is based on a wide range of cards from the budget sector (HD7770 & GTX650) to the higher end sector (HD7950 & GTX670). We are using the same system for the review today to ensure that no throttling will take place.

Obviously not many people buying a HD7770 would be using an overclocked 3960X Extreme Edition processor, but we need to maintain a stable testing platform so the results are all compatible when plotting performance graphics.

All AMD cards are using the latest 13.3 beta Catalyst driver and the Nvidia cards are using the latest 314.21 Forceware driver.

Test System:
Processor: Core i7 3960 X Extreme Edition @ 4.4ghz
Cooler: Antec 920 H20
Memory: 16GB G.Skill 2,400mhz @ 10-11-10-30
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung
Monitors: Dell U3011

Video Cards:
XFX HD7770 Core Edition (Catalyst 13.3 beta driver)
Sapphire HD7790 OC Edition (Catalyst 13.3 beta driver)
XFX HD7850 Core Edition (Catalyst 13.3 beta driver)
XFX HD7870 Core Edition (Catalyst 13.3 beta driver)
Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X Edition (Catalyst 13.3 beta driver)
Zotac GTX650 (Forceware 314.21 driver)
Gainward GTX660 (Forceware 314.21 driver)
Gainward GTX660 ti (Forceware 314.21 driver)
Zotac GTX670 (Forceware 314.21 driver)

Games:
Alien V Predator
Sleeping Dogs
Total War: Shogun 2
Dirt Showdown
Max Payne 3

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

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