GeForce GTX 670 2 GB Review: Is It Already Time To Forget GTX 680?

[atikkur]

if someone can make this card into 250-300 price range.. i dont hesitate to buy it TWO. i dont care if the card cant be overclocked anymore or dont have a fancy look (as long as the reference performance is there),, just make it cheap. this card meant tobe cheap. helo AIB partner, make this cheap pleaaaaase, instead of trying to be 680.

 

[ojas]

The more tests you use, the more things even out. For example, check out techpowerup's review - the GTX 670 is about equal, maybe 1% slower than, the 7970. The 7970 is about 6% slower than the 680.

The tests that toms uses results in somewhat skewed results for comparing these two cards. Not saying that's their fault - it's not like they picked these tests to show AMD in a bad light. It just is what it is when you use a limited selection of tests - it doesn't paint the whole picture. Doesn't matter too much anyways, you always should read several different reviews before making any purchases.

Hmmm...agreed...and i guess differences between test rigs and settings also make a difference. Didn't mean to say they're doing anything intentionally, it was more like, ok so the 680 beats the 7970. then, oh no, they're tied! and then hey wait, the 670 beats/ties the 7970. And when you read it from the same site, it just gets confusing, and you go like "did i miss something?"...

Please feel free to suggest games you'd like to see added! I've been running this collection of what I consider to be pretty-popular titles, but am always happy to add more, time permitting. Getting this piece finished in time was hard enough after the requests to re-run all of the cards using the latest drivers in the GTX 690 story, but we did what we could to address that one.
As mentioned, though, the German team does use a different suite on the charts with a more spread-out emphasis that includes older titles, too.

No preferences as such, i agree with you, these are some of the more popular titles played today. Was just a bit surprised by the contradiction. At the most i'd suggest using the German suite or a close variation...

But do you think the detail level settings (and/or possibly drivers) had anything to do with this? Because i remember seeing the 560 and 560 Ti tied almost everywhere in that article, which was surprising. They had used "performance" settings, which i guess means that they were putting less emphasis on graphics. You had stuff pretty much maxed out.

For example, from your review:

While they got:

 

[sarinaide]

[citation][nom]_Pez_[/nom]they just finished killing the HD7970 by price and performance. I wonder what's the next move on AMD side ? now being mediocre with Gaming Graphics ?[/citation]

Fanboi much? (something tells me a Intel/Nvidia fanboi by myopism)

Last I saw a lower clocked 7970 beat a GTX 580 across the board, but that was back in November, we are now 7 months forward, and after stalling and stripping the HD7000 they found a way to beat a significantly card....good job son. You do realise that the HD 8000 series is on the horizon, along with the ghz edition updates to the 7970/7950 and 7870, all will yield sizeable improvements. Of cause you didn't.

 

[zooted]

It's funny all of the comments like "LOL AMD GOT PWNED" and such. Considering how much longer the 7xxx series has been out, and the fact that the 8xxx series is right around the corner. Not to mention the limited availability of the 6xx series.

I think the only thing that AMD really needs to focus on is lowering the prices, but as of now they only have any competition in the higher end spectrum. The lower end and mid range is still being won by AMD.

 

[Vatican]

Just ordered the EVGA Superclocked one for 420$, very excited for it to reach here! Best if you guys buy one now before this goes out of stock and i am 110% sure it will definitely be out of stock for a very long time again just like the 680.

Btw AMD cards are a huge mess, i'm fed up with their CRAP ASS drivers. I had to pay the price for a shitty HD7900 series card when it couldnt run TERA among other games because of huge incompatibility and frame rate issues. Go NVIDIA and dont look back.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]RyQril[/nom]awesome card for 100$ less than 680, i think am gonna wait for the GK-110[/citation]

[citation][nom]GK110[/nom]when will the real GTX 680 aka GK110 appear???!!![/citation]

Why do we say GK110? GK110 instead of GK100 means that it's a second generation Big Kepler chip. If there ever even is a Big Kepler in the GTX 600 cards (presumably the 680 TI and/or 685, NOT another "real" 680, the 680 with a GK104 is just as real), then it should have the GK100. I don't understand why we say GK110 when everything else is GK104, GK106, GK107, etc. If the rest is first gen, then so should be the Big Kepler if it's in the GTX 600 series.

 

[Vatican]

BF3 and Skyrim is enough to test, these are 2 of the most popular/demanding titles out at the moment. Witcher 2 may come close though.

 

[blazorthon]

BF3 and Skyrim is enough to test, these are 2 of the most popular/demanding titles out at the moment. Witcher 2 may come close though.

Skyrim is not a demanding title and two games are not a wide enough selection.

 

[Ceromus]

Not sure my comment posted. I was requesting to include at least one unreal 3 engine game in the benchmarks, Batman: Arkham City is acceptable. I mostly want to know how much of an impact it may have on Tera.

 

[Star72]

It's 9:06am EST & 3 of the manufacturer's for the 670 are sold out on Newegg. Here we go again?

 

[blazorthon]

It's 9:06am EST & 3 of the manufacturer's for the 670 are sold out on Newegg. Here we go again?

At least it's taking longer than ten minutes to sell out. It looks like Nvidia had some stock this time. They'll probably all sell out today, but a full day on launch isn't bad.

 

[suddenstop]

cangelini - why no latest news article announcing the release of the 670? Also for those that haven't been following leaks for the last 5 weeks and waiting for NDA's to drop, an explanation that the card was just released and you are off NDA would be nice.

 

[suddenstop]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]At least it's taking longer than ten minutes to sell out. It looks like Nvidia had some stock this time. They'll probably all sell out today, but a full day on launch isn't bad.[/citation]

Yes - next day after launch and anyone can go to newegg and get a reference card or a superclocked evga. I think it's reasonable to assume there is interest and demand for this card. Clearly a much better situation than 680 launch.

 

[jaquith]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]Hmmm...agreed...and i guess differences between test rigs and settings also make a difference. Didn't mean to say they're doing anything intentionally, it was more like, ok so the 680 beats the 7970. then, oh no, they're tied! and then hey wait, the 670 beats/ties the 7970. And when you read it from the same site, it just gets confusing, and you go like "did i miss something?"...No preferences as such, i agree with you, these are some of the more popular titles played today. Was just a bit surprised by the contradiction. At the most i'd suggest using the German suite or a close variation...But do you think the detail level settings (and/or possibly drivers) had anything to do with this? Because i remember seeing the 560 and 560 Ti tied almost everywhere in that article, which was surprising. They had used "performance" settings, which i guess means that they were putting less emphasis on graphics. You had stuff pretty much maxed out.For example, from your review:While they got:[/citation]
It's ALL about the settings and what part of the 'game' is being benched.

Anytime I see the max FPS dip below ~45FPS IMO they're all a FAIL because the min FPS is dropping typically South of 30FPS. Meaning if one GPU is 40FPS & another 42FPS then the gaming experience is becoming 'staggered' or 'stuttered' requiring reduced Details and/or AA or etc. You also need to know minimum and average FPS to make a good buying decision.

If folks are going to compare the GTX 670 vs HD 7970 then for the SAME price compare the OC GTX 670 which does beat the HD 7970 in the majority of benches, and the OC GTX 670 beats the reference GTX 680. Cherry-picking is a two-way street!

My experience, overall, is that nVidia is the best choice of GPU - Gaming is more than any (1) game so nVidia on average performs better per class, nVidia typically scales better so adding additional GPUs provides more bang for the buck. My bitches of nVidia are their over-controlling be it from SLI or their drivers.

 

[ojas]

+1 to the PhysX suggestion, Nvidia vs AMD on that would be an insight.

Also interested in seeing Witcher 2, never played it but heard that it's graphics are good. System requirements were low-ish, so i dunno.

Also interested in seeing whether these cards can play Crysis. Seeing that it's kind of like a tech demo, and that it has an in-built benchmark, should be a good one on 1080p and above. We could look at how antialiasing affects performance there. I know it's old and we've seen it in action, but it still remains an indicator of brute force performance.

 

[blazorthon]

It's ALL about the settings and what part of the 'game' is being benched.

Anytime I see the max FPS dip below ~45FPS IMO they're all a FAIL because the min FPS is dropping typically South of 30FPS. Meaning if one GPU is 40FPS & another 42FPS then the gaming experience is becoming 'staggered' or 'stuttered' requiring reduced Details and/or AA or etc. You also need to know minimum and average FPS to make a good buying decision.

If folks are going to compare the GTX 670 vs HD 7970 then for the SAME price compare the OC GTX 670 which does beat the HD 7970 in the majority of benches, and the OC GTX 670 beats the reference GTX 680. Cherry-picking is a two-way street!

My experience, overall, is that nVidia is the best choice of GPU - Gaming is more than any (1) game so nVidia on average performs better per class, nVidia typically scales better so adding additional GPUs provides more bang for the buck. My bitches of nVidia are their over-controlling be it from SLI or their drivers.

Well, AMD's 6900 cards scale better than any of Nvidia's Fermi cards do for multi-GPU performance in most games (that's how two 6950s can fight with two 570s and the same is true for three 6950s and three 570s) and it looks like the 7970 and 680 trade blows in who scales faster. I wouldn't call Nvidia better, just in a different position this time. Overall, Nvidia has been really undercutting AMD in price with each launch (obviously excluding the 690) and I'll admit that right now, Kepler cards seem to perform more consistently than the GCN cards do. However, The big thing here is just that Nvidia and AMD switched places in who has the more compute oriented architecture and AMD is having a little trouble getting it perfected (Nvidia is having some problems of their own, granted they aren't as major).

The exact opposite was going on last generation where AMD had a pretty good advantage in power efficiency, performance for the money, and in the case of the 6970 versus the 570, a big VRAM advantage that could become much more important in very high resolutions. AMD is obviously not doing as good in these areas anymore because of the switch to compute and Nvidia's switching away from compute.

For example, Nvidia has so little VRAM capacity for their performance and too little VRAM bandwidth (the most likely cause of how close the 670 and 680 are, even if it's not really a problem for most games until you go to 6MP resolutions and higher) that some games don't run as well as they should. Another example, Metro 2033's problem with Kepler is probably just the low memory bandwidth and it's not the only game that eats up memory bandwidth. Going beyond 4MP resolutions in several games means reduced AA for Nvidia or else frame rates can be completely unplayable for the 680 and 670. AMD doesn't have either of these problems with their newer cards.

I've had problems with both companies in the past. I've had both sides have bad drivers or cause artifacts for seemingly no good reason (at least until I troubleshoot the problem) or just not work right in other ways. I wouldn't say that either company is better than the other, they just changed positions in some aspects of the cards. Really, the specific cards being compared seems to matter much more than their brand.

 

[aviral]

Quite impressive results at that price.

 

[cangelini]

Update (5/11/2012): Reader jaquith noticed that EVGA's box art listed four-way SLI as a feature of the GeForce GTX 670. We went back to Nvidia for comment and received word back that the packaging would need to be changed. A short time later, a new message indicated that a future driver will, in fact, add four-way SLI support to the GeForce GTX 670s. Apparently, this is a matter of validation that Nvidia still needs to perform, not a technical issue with the hardware or software.

 

[davemaster84]

[citation][nom]Aviral[/nom]Quite impressive results at that price.[/citation]

You guys talk like if the 680 couldn't be overclocked, it's like buying a gun and think you're the only one who has one.

 

[kyraiki]

Its a very good card! just got mine in today

 

[karthikjusme]

@godfather a card that costs about 80 dollars less than the 7970 it is worth buying

 

[zeratul600]

hey what about an article about the best ivy bridge motherboards for the money that are capable of 4 way crossfire/sli

 

[_Pez_]

there are some noobs that say year 2013 next AMD's 8xxx series are "around the corner" or "in the horizon", but that's no sense crap, because the present is that HD7970 got his perfomance and price kicked by Nvidia second flagship card of GTX 6XX series UNTIL 2013. I am not an Nvidia Fanboy or are you that idiot to not see the perfomance charts ?

 

[bigcyco1]

Great review as always thanks!

 

[codefragger]

Such tests yield no interest for many of us if you don't present sli and crossfire setups within the comparison. We need to see how much % of performace gain we get for the price difference between 2x670 vs a 680 or 690. On another note, I still find the 670 stock price a bit salty...