670 v. 7970, assume for a moment

[SlowSpyder]

A 1300 core on a 7970 on air.. Good luck with that. If you find a 7970 capable of those clocks then you'd need water to cool it. And that's a big big IF.

I semi agree though. If price doesn't matter he should be looking at the lightning 7970 or gtx 680 asus dcii.

It isn't totally uncommon to get into that range on air. I know it is on the higher end of expectations, but with a non-reference cooler I would say it's not that big of a stretch. I stop at 1200Mhz because of noise, not because my GPU has nothing left to give. The reference cooler on these cards is fine at 925MHz, but starts getting loud in a hurry with voltage. But with a non-reference cooler, I'm sure things are much better.

 

[.Root]

Problem with the 7970 is that its horribly priced. If it was priced at 399.99 it would be the better choice but the 670 will do everything you want and more for less.

That's true, but you can find 7970s for $380 used or less, and once OC'd they destroy the 670, even when the 670 is OC'd as well. They also have monstrous compute power, for those that do a little bitcoin or GPU computing on the side ;x

 

[lopri]

Just an update for those who contributed in this thread: I have made a decision that probably will please no one - I'm going to wait!

The memory thing that interested me turns out a bit more complex than I initially thought. There are now FXAA/MLAA or whatever they call, and (maybe because of that) scaling by resolution and scaling by AA don't exactly seem to co-relate.

However I sincerely appreciate everyone who tried to help me. I just need some more time and research.