The GTX 670 Arrives – is it a game changer?
Conclusion
This has been quite an enjoyable, if far too short, 1-week exploration for us in evaluating our new GTX 670. It did extraordinarily well performance-wise comparing it to the the GTX 580 and GTX 570 where it brings higher performance and better efficiency than the older cards. We are totally impressed with this cool-running “value” enthusiast card which is able to go nearly head to head against the more expensive HD 7970 and the GTX 680.
We see good overclockability with extreme quietness at stock voltage and fan profile even when the GTX 670 is highly overclocked. It uses very little power compared to the HD 7970 and the difference widens as the overclock goes up. For its $399 price, it gives more than 90% of the performance of the GTX 680 which is priced at $500 and the 570 comes right into the $480 HD 7970’s performance territory. For the second time, the reference HD 7970’s $480 price needs to be adjusted downward. In this way, the GTX 570 is a game changer.
Pros
- The GTX 670 provides excellent performance for a $399 card and makes the HD 7970 again overpriced.
- TDP and power draw is superb. Performance per watt is better than its competitor’s flagship 28nm HD 7970 (to say nothing about beating the last generation) and it is quiet in comparison to the older cards.
- Overclockability is excellent – GPU Boost works as advertised.
- The reference design cooling is quiet and efficient; the card and well-ventilated case stay cool even well-overclocked.
- It is possible to use two of these cards for SLI performance without needing a massive PSU
- 3D Vision 2 and PhysX enhance gaming immersion and both are improved using the GTX 670 compared to the last generation.
- Surround and 3D Vision Surround plus an accessory display can now be driven off of a single GTX 670 by requiring a single passive adapter; HD 7970 requires two, and tearing is noticeably better with Surround, compared to Eyefinity
- New AA allows for high performance without jaggies in deferred shading lighting engines
- Adaptive VSync reduces stuttering while retaining the advantages of minimizing tearing.
Cons
- None
The Verdict:
- If you are buying a powerful video card right now and looking for the highest performance as well as bang for buck, the GTX 670 is an easy choice nearly matching the HD 7970 performance for about $80 less. We feel it deserves ABT’s Great Value award.
We do not know what the future will bring, but the GTX 670 brings good value and a great performer to the GeForce family. With great features like PhysX and the second generation of 3D Vision, you can be assured of immersive gaming by picking this card for 1920×1080, 2560×1600 or even higher resolutions, including for 3-panel Surround.
If you currently game on an older generation video card, you will do yourself a big favor by upgrading. The move to a GTX 670 will give you better visuals on the DX11.1 pathway especially over DX10, and you are no doubt thinking of SLI if you want to get nearly the ultimate in gaming performance without breaking the bank with a GTX 690. We expect that many enthusiasts will – like us – upgrade to Intel’s Ivy Bridge – and this is an excellent video card to compliment their fastest processors.
The competition is hot and AMD offers their own set of features including Eyefinity and HD3D. We are interested to see if there will be any further downward adjustments in AMD’s pricing and how they will counter this new GGTX 670 release.
Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT. Next up is an evaluation of the flagship Noctua NH-DH14 CPU cooler which has allowed us to increase our Core i7-3770K to 4.6GHz just for this review – and we find we can even clock it higher to 4.8GHz. And you can expect more great reviews from our Mobile Tech guys to put into our new section; expect a Genius product review also this week! And don’t forget to check our forums! Our tech discussions are becoming among the best to be found anywhere!!
Mark Poppin
ABT Senior Editor
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A job well done
Wow, I’m flabbergasted by this GTX 670!
GTX 680 has 25% more shader and texturing power than GTX 670 (and also 10% more ROP performance due to 10% higher clock), yet GTX 670 comes to within less than 10% of GTX 680’s overall performance. Also, when overclocked, GTX 670 beats stock GTX 680 in every single game tested here!!!
I do not think I have seen such a card being that badly bandwidth-bottlenecked in a long long time (GTX 680).
the gtx670 is very freakn nice. Can only imagine what the bigK is gonna look like. A beast for sure.
More research shows that GTX 670 has only about 3.5% lower core/shader clock than GTX 680 on average (actual clocks across a wide range of games, since the automatic boost usually hovers around 1.05 GHz). This means GTX 680 has 18% more shader/texturing power on average, rather than 25% as stated in the above post.
As usual, Mark, great review. Thank you!