nVidia GTX670 Review
Conclusion
Published: 21st May 2012 | Source: nVidia | Price: £329 |
Conclusion
Some hardware lives on in the memory long after it has been retired from active duty. Anyone who owned a 3DFX card at launch time will remember the mind-blowing levels of eye-candy. Equally the E8600 has gone down in folklore as a hardcore overclocker. Certain parts just tick all of the boxes to transcend being a merely utilitarian part of the greater whole and enter our hearts as something we can reminisce about in our dotage. The GTX570 was one such item giving us incredible performance at a very good price-point, delighting all who took the plunge to purchase one.
So you can imagine our nervousness at the GTX670 appearing. Would nVidia take the best business decision and cut it down from the glorious performance of the GTX680 to force people to purchase the flagship card? Would they be kind to us enthusiasts and trim it just enough to allow us to nod knowingly at the wise purchasing decision of anyone with one?
The answer is clear. They definitely have trimmed the GTX670 just enough to enable it to be priced more attractively than the GTX680, but still provide incredible levels of gaming performance. Unlike with the 570's PCB which was almost identicle to the 580 to the point where you could fit a 580 block to a 570 the GTX670 is a completely different animal. The PCB is completely different and more noticeably than anything else much smaller. The small PCB is yet another hint that Nvidia did shuffle the naming of the cards about because the PCB is tiny. If rumors are to be believed this would have been the GTX650 and the PCB size would lean towards this idea. Thats why we think they have the cooling fan hanging off the end of the card to make it appear bigger than it really is. The problem with adding the fan off the end of the PCB is the power connectors, they are not at the end of the card where you would expect, this makes neat cabling imposable and just confirms to us that this was very much an after thought to make the card appear bigger because as you've seen its cant of been to add on some amazing cooling.
Don't mistake the size for a card that's fairly asthmatic out of the box and requires a hefty prod in the Megahertz department to unleash it. The stock performance is outstanding, even in this reference guise. Overclocking is a breeze and it's possible to get very close to the scores available from the big Kepler beast that is the GTX680 and the performance comes along with ever extra clock the GPU has to hand.
At just over the £300 mark it's almost rendered the GTX680 pointless for all but the most demanding user with multi-screen setups and the desire to flaunt their rig in their forum signature. For everybody else the GTX670 has all the performance you could require, at a reasonable price, and is capable of mixing it with the flagship cards from either AMD or nVidia themselves.
The cooling leaves a little to be desired as we'd expect from a reference card, so seek out a partner model with a more robust cooling solution. Otherwise we can't recommend the GTX670 highly enough and it's an easy winner of our OC3D Gold Award.
Thanks to nVidia for supplying the GTX670 for review. Discuss in the OC3D forums.
Most Recent Comments
shame about the placing of the power connections though not great for cable management
) and have my eyes on the Asus DCII TOP 670, which has 680 performance out of the box, a 680 PCB with much better temps. Depends on any further price drops and how the "ghz" editions of the 7970s do before I buy one though.But as far as i'm concerned the 670 is the best bang for buck card on the market at the moment.
With this being said would paying £30 more for a 7970 be worth it?
I did really want to get the 670 Windforce, but all of these stuttering issues are pushing me to the £30 more expensive 7970 Windforce.
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Originally Posted by Varashtra
What about all of the stuttering issues being posted online with the 6xx series? With this being said would paying £30 more for a 7970 be worth it? I did really want to get the 670 Windforce, but all of these stuttering issues are pushing me to the £30 more expensive 7970 Windforce. |
Great as always.
If anyone is looking at buying a 300+ card I'd recommend the Asus DC2 GTX 670 TOP, performs just like a 680 but runs much cooler and quieter. Kinda makes the 79XX pointless.
However, I don't buy Tom's opinion of the Nvidia rebranding rumours having perhaps a little more truth behind them. Nvidia have been late to this new GPU generation party with AMD's offerings out months before. That costs them in the pocket. The 690 is based on 2x680's as expected and this level of development requires time and money to change mid flow if the rumours were true. I don't believe the generation speed gain has been insignificant, which is another reason to disbelieve the rumours over the 7970's being underwhelming. Opinions are opinions though
Nvidias 'other' chip was to be 680 card will more than likely go straight into thier professional range of graphics cards, in my opinion, as they always were going to.
I also feel the 7950 has more headroom and ultimate speed, when overclocked, than this 670 in it's current form and a higher performer. With Sapphires cooler on it, much cooler operation too. 7950's have been available for a while now...
No I'm not a fanboy, just have to state facts as they are though.
Still £300 buys decent performance again at last
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Originally Posted by SieB
I'm starting to save some money for a new card now (my 6850 is getting old ) and have my eyes on the Asus DCII TOP 670, which has 680 performance out of the box, a 680 PCB with much better temps. Depends on any further price drops and how the "ghz" editions of the 7970s do before I buy one though.But as far as i'm concerned the 670 is the best bang for buck card on the market at the moment. |
check this link out
http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/2725/23/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-plus-sli-and-3-way-sli-asus-vs-pov-vs-zotac-temperature-noise-and-energy-consumption
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Originally Posted by demonking
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Originally Posted by demonking
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Originally Posted by Varashtra
PetrolHead247. Check this out: http://forums.nvidia...howtopic=226227 http://www.tomshardw...-Fix,15670.html http://forums.nvidia...howtopic=229534 |
All data in this review was obtained after I repaired a major design error of the card. When I received it, the card ran extremely high temperatures, reaching beyond 100°C. This is caused by screws with integrated stop, that resulted in too little mounting pressure between GPU and heatsink. I added four metal washers, by removing the screws, adding the washer and putting the screws back. The cooler was not removed for this procedure, thermal paste was not changed.
http://www.techpower...70_Amp_Edition/
I lovea good conspiracy theory so naturally i'm pretty chuffed here
Also good to see a proper representation of AMD cards against Nvidia instead of the usual review sites who show Nvidia as out performing everything. Shills?
As for the card itself, I'm looking forward to seeing what the water blocks look like on the shorter PCB.
Size isn't everything you know
Any specific reason you didn't take it apart TTL?
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Originally Posted by Mysterae
Any specific reason you didn't take it apart TTL? |
Only with gpus and cpus do people get upset in the question of performance versus what's under the hood.
If Intel released what they called an i2-1170, that was pentium based on 775 fabs and core archi - but was cheaper, faster and oc'd like a monster - I'd buy it. ... I'd not complain about it not being the same fab as a i7-3770 cos I wouldn't care.
Ooo I mean to say, new drivers day today ??
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Originally Posted by Jonnydude
I'm sure he's said before that certain manufacturers dont allow him to do the nerd porn bit |
herd it was supposed to be a lower card in the series that's why the pcb is so small
hate the power connectors on the ref card and seems a stuttering issue at decent fps hope drivers improve cus considering buy one.
cudnt really watercool this and look good in a system??
Reason I ask, and I know business is business blah, blah, blah, but is anyone else slightly riled that we're being charged more than we originaly whould have done for this card?
Wouldn't have been buying one of these anyway, just wondering what people think.
It's more likely the 670 was meant to be the 660 and the 680 was meant to be the 670.
I mean come on, do people actually believe Nvidia are that far ahead? No way the 670 was meant to be the 650, since when has any low end card had two 6pins and been that powerfull... never. Low end cards are low end for a reason.
Nvidia would be putting themselves out if the 670 was meant to be the 650, why would they release a low end card that was more powerfull than their previous high end card? Just doesn't make sense at all because no one would buy any 5xx series card, which means Nvidia would lose more money than making it.
I don't know what it is with Nvidia, but everywhere you go people seem to think the sun shines out their ass and they throw all logical thinking out of the window. The 670 supposing to be the 660 and the 680 supposing to be the 670 makes sense. The 670 supposing to be the 650 and the 680 the 660 doesn't both in terms of the amount of power they use and how much it would put the previous cards out of the market, losing Nvidia more money than making it.
Either way though they are overcharging, but so did AMD when they released the 7xxx series, the 7970 was £500 on release but can be had for £350 now, hopefully the same thing will happen with the 670 and 680
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The sequel to one of our favourite cards is upon us. Does the GTX670 continue the price/performance
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