The sequel to one of our favourite cards is upon us. Does the GTX670 continue the price/performance

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nice review boss

shame about the placing of the power connections though not great for cable management

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.

Awesome review as always. I love the GTX 670, i want one so bad. Got my eye on a non-ref Asus 670, looks absolutely amazing

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.

The 7970 is overall slower than the 670, so no it would not be worth it at all. And i haven't heard anything about these stuttering issues at all

I was wondering when you were going to review this mate.

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.

1st thing, great card for the money!

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

temps aren't all that much better dude

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

PetrolHead247. Check this out:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=226227

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/GeF...Fix,15670.html

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=229534

Hmmm, now i'm interested in the AMP edition, but then again it's louder... it will be a while before I have the money so i'll take the time to read up on all the different cards. They are all essentially the same though, not really much in it.

Don't care about the temps much, it's the fan noise i'm most concerned about and the DCU2 670 is insanely quiet plus it OC's like a dream

At least the issue will be resolved in the next big driver update, bit of an annoying sounding issue but at least it will be solved soon enough. Plus you can always just turn V-Sync off, though you often gets frame tearing which sucks but eh well

Something to be wary about with the Zotac AMP edition, although it's probably be fixed now.

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/

If this is in fact a 650 then Nvidia are taking the piss by up-scaling the card, rebranding it and charging more for it, If the rumours are true that is. Looking at the power connectors though I would suggest that they are true and Nvidia get to hold back there tech for a bit longer. Why is the pcb so small? because it was meant to be a lower entry card perhaps.

I lovea good conspiracy theory so naturally i'm pretty chuffed here

Nice card, good review, although Heaven 2.1? Time to invest in 3.0 Tom?

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?

Would an x50 card have had 2x6pin power? I doubt it very much. Would lean more towards this having been the 660, with the 680 having been the 670, leaving what would have been the 670Ti and 680 to be on the other chip (that I read somewhere has gone into production as a new Quadra card or two).

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

Nice review as always, but with one omission - you didn't take the card apart as you usually do. Then we would have seen the embarressment that is the heatsink and fin array. In a £300+ video card? Then again it does it's job i suppose.

Any specific reason you didn't take it apart TTL?

Top review from a top guy for a top card

Very glad (and slightly surprised) that my OC'd 7950s are more than happy holding their own against this.

I'm sure he's said before that certain manufacturers dont allow him to do the nerd porn bit

But this is a OEM card directly from NV.

Not seen/heard of a 650. 640 and lower should all be fermi cards. Oem cards should be available for 640/620.

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 ??

I guess we have already seen it on other sites. Shame not to get Tom's take on it though, I only imagine what he thinks of it.

Not much to look at

http://i.imgur.com/pxMRrl.jpg

As i've said before, it looks fugly

tiny fugly card

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??

How much stock do we put into the rumers that thi was suppose to 640 or something? Do we think tere true or just fan boy stories, no disrespect ment there?

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.

People wishfull thinking want to believe it was supposed to be the 650.

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

I agree with SieB, the 670 could well have meant to be the 660 or 660TI, but no lower than that. But tbh i believe the 670 is the 670, and the 680 is the 680. I just see the 670 as being sort of a "680 Lite Edition" due to the small PCB and similar-ish power, but it has a LOT of power especially for it's size