I have a similar system; a 7970 paired with a 3570k at 4.3 Ghz powered bya a corsair vx 550W PSU (2 years old). The system runs great whether emulating with dolphin or playing demanding titles like shogun 2. While the 7970 is very power hungry the Intel CPU sort of makes up for it by being very efficient.
(01-31-2013, 04:18 PM)DefenderX Wrote: [ -> ]Yep, there is even 80+ Platinum now 
There has been for awhile
Well I would recommend a graphics card in the nvidia class since I havent dealt with any probelms so far since switching from amd. Since I am rocking a i5 3570k in both my atx and itx case I would only suggest Intel cpu wise also. For $1200 you shouldnt worry about the products alone but the quality and warranty that backs them up.
Hey there I seem to have a similar setup to yours
I have got a 3570 k OC'd to 4.5 Ghz
and have a HD7770
I am running a 64 bit dolphin 3.0 variant with the audio patch for xenoblade.
Now I noticed on my system the best that it can take with an AA of 9x on D3D9 is IR of 2x. However even so in certain part of xenoblade the game slows down drastically especially during most cutscenes. Now I was thinking of getting me an HD7970 like you have, will having a more powerful card allow me to atleast stretch to 2.5x IR with 9X AA?
I don't want to forgo the AA as I have seen anything less than 9x is actually 0 in quality. Any help will be appreciated.
Quote:Now I was thinking of getting me an HD7970 like you have, will having a more powerful card allow me to atleast stretch to 2.5x IR with 9X AA?
Yes , of course
The HD 7970 has much more memory bandwidth than 7770 (3.67 x 72GB/sec)
Though it's impossible to max out 4xIR + 9x SSAA with the fastest card (Nvidia GTX Titan - 1000$) but 2.5xIR or even 3xIR + 9x SSAA should be do-able on 7970 (especially when overclock)
rafpac Wrote:However even so in certain part of xenoblade the game slows down drastically especially during most cutscenes.
This is probably due to your current graphics settings being too high for that card. 2x IR + 9xSSAA is extremely demanding. It's more demanding than 4x IR with no SSAA. GPU load is not consistent. Certain parts of the game will put more load on the GPU than others depending on what the game is doing at that moment in time. Try lowering the IR and see if performance improves during these segments.
(03-13-2013, 07:56 PM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:Now I was thinking of getting me an HD7970 like you have, will having a more powerful card allow me to atleast stretch to 2.5x IR with 9X AA?
Yes , of course
The HD 7970 has much more memory bandwidth than 7770 (3.67 x 72GB/sec)
Though it's impossible to max out 4xIR + 9x SSAA with the fastest card (Nvidia GTX Titan - 1000$) but 2.5xIR or even 3xIR + 9x SSAA should be do-able on 7970 (especially when overclock)
Hey thanks for the reply, I was so unsure about it because they say emulators are cpu based and rarely rely on gpu performance.
(03-14-2013, 06:19 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]rafpac Wrote:However even so in certain part of xenoblade the game slows down drastically especially during most cutscenes.
This is probably due to your current graphics settings being too high for that card. 2x IR + 9xSSAA is extremely demanding. It's more demanding than 4x IR with no SSAA. GPU load is not consistent. Certain parts of the game will put more load on the GPU than others depending on what the game is doing at that moment in time. Try lowering the IR and see if performance improves during these segments.
Thanks for the reply really helped me out.
Awesome I just installed the 7970 oc edition. It is burning through Xenoblade at 3X IR with 9X SSAA. Yeah!