I also don't buy that the 670 is quieter during 95% of the OPs time on the PC.
The Asus Direct CU for $420 is quieter than any HD7970 in idle mode, so it will be quieter in all cases.
ASUS 7970's 3-slot design is too much for me, btw.
If you don't want coil whine noise, the PCS+ has "Platinum Power Kit" with better components sounds like an easy choice among HD7970 cards < $500.
It also has a backplate so it won't sag like the Sapphire OC:
While the Gigabyte Windforce is excellent for the 670 since it consumes far less power, it becomes obnoxiously loud once 7970 is overclocked (since 7970 consumes 100W more power in OCed states):
The downside to the PowerColor card is that it doesn't have memory cooling so
it won't have good memory overclocking.
Noise levels for the
PCS+ are better than GTX680 Phantom edition. But that might be totally different once the card is overclocked to 1200mhz.
A stock GTX670 beats HD7970 in SKYRIM and all Blizzard games, even with 3 monitors:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/05/10/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-2gb-review/7
Even overclocked, it's hardly faster than a GTX670 OCed. Is it worth $80-100 for that 2-3 fps difference?
If you want to keep this card for 3 years, and use high rez texture mods, then sure get the HD7970. I doubt that 7970 will be able to play next gen games that utilize 3GB of VRAM since those games will have much more advanced shader, tessellation effects, etc. --> slideshow most likely. If you plan on upgrading next year, I'd get a $400 Windforce 3x or Asus DCU $420 and pocket the $80-100 difference and upgrade to a much faster HD8000/GTX700 card. You'll notice much more than a 5% performance difference. There are certain cases where spending $100-150 is well worth it like going from HD7850 to GTX670. Spending $100 over GTX670 yields very little performance increase for games.
Further, regarding future proofing -- a single HD7970 is simply not fast enough for 2560x1600 gaming in demanding games today (Metro 2033, Witcher 2, Crysis 2) and for future games there is no way it will be since in 2-3 years we'll be on HD9000/GTX800 series, etc. Thus, it's unlikely that it will fair better against the 670 for say Unreal 4.0 Engine games. GCN 1.0 has worse tessellation and texture performance and thus it stands to run out of GPU power way before 3GB of VRAM becomes a tangible benefit. The future proofing argument is just not solid enough. More likely than not, both cards will be too slow for next gen games, but 670 saves you $80-100 towards that next GPU upgrade where it will actually matter.
Also, if you are comparing GTX670 to HD7970 (Almost $500), it's odd you aren't comparing the 680 to the 7970.
Honestly, if the decision isn't yet clear to you, that in itself shows that 7970 isn't worth its $80-100 price premium. If it was, you wouldn't even have to think about it. The difference in performance between GTX670 OC and HD7970 OC is far less than it was between GTX580 and HD6970. So how is HD7970 suddenly worth $80-100 more for gaming?
You can wait a couple more days until Max Payne 3 benches leak to get another data point. :awe: