Card swap

So im looking at returning my GPU and getting a Nvidia as i ran into sooo many problems. At the moment i have a XFX HD 7970 Double dissapation. In a way, i kind of want a slight upgrade on my card aswell, i would rather pay a bit more and upgrade than get one lower down in terms of performance. Would this gtx 680 be an upgrade?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-evga-gtx-680-28nm-pcie-30-(x16)-6008mhz-gddr5-gpu-1006mhz-boost-1058mhz-cores-1536-2x-dl-dvi-dp-

Let me know what you think, cheers guys!

What kind of problems? Technical or software? Also, are you going to get a refund for the 7970 or a replacement of some kind?

EDIT: Also, the GTX 680 only performs slighlty better than the GTX 670...we are talking about 3-5 FPS increase with stock speeds. The 670 can be easily overclocked well above the stock speeds of a GTX 680 and I don't see a reason to spend a lot of extra money on a slight increase.

Also to add i have even taken my pc into a computer specialist store and they say it seems the drivers are the issue. I don't want to have a crashing card until eventually good drivers are released.... I really feel it must be the card though, surely!

EDIT: Also if im using the 12.10 drivers, would i install the Catalyst application profiles driver aswell? Becuase i've been installing this aswell as the 12.10 driver. could this cause my crashes? it says on the nvidia site something about supporting crossfire x, and i've only got the one card. Surely having this installed as well as the 12.10 driver wouldnt cause a crash.

no card is better than the 7970 at the moment, so any card you get will be a down grade. However perhaps its not your gpu that is the problem, if it survives all the stress tests. Try stressing the cpu and the ram.

Another queston, with my specs, which chipset drivers do i need i assume AMD but intel ones were found on my machine....weird.... What drivers do i need to make sure i am FULLY up to date?

Okay, just to make sure...run a few stress test apps to check if something else might be the problem: RAM test: http://www.memtest86.com/ CPU test: I don't have a lot of experince with these ones but go for the Prime95...i think GPU test: I personaly use EVGA OC ScannerX but MSI Kombustor is good too. Also, if you want, download a benchmarking tool like 3DMark 11 and run everything on default. If it really is your GPU then you got a lemon...and return it.

EDIT: Have you tried to downclock your card (below stock clocks)? Or raising the voltage to stabilze it? Just throwing it out there.

Also to add i have even taken my pc into a computer specialist store and they say it seems the drivers are the issue. I don't want to have a crashing card until eventually good drivers are released.... I really feel it must be the card though, surely!

EDIT: Also if im using the 12.10 drivers, would i install the Catalyst application profiles driver aswell? Becuase i've been installing this aswell as the 12.10 driver. could this cause my crashes? it says on the nvidia site something about supporting crossfire x, and i've only got the one card. Surely having this installed as well as the 12.10 driver wouldnt cause a crash.

overhead_drums