How long will the GTX 670 last?

[larryboy]

And @16 x 10 the CPU is doing more work than it would do at 19 x 10.

How so? It's a higher resolution :S

 

[larryboy]

even a heavily oc'ed gpu last about 3 or 4 years so imagine how about the stock gpu, i'm pretty sure 670 will be pass approximately 6 or more years.

Ok, nice to know!

 

[Mousemonkey]

How so? It's a higher resolution :S

The higher the resolution the more the workload is placed on the GPU, hence low resolutions are used to show the differences in CPU's when benching a game.

 

[game junky]

I used my 250 for several years, I used my 560 for a several years and with the exception of Battlefield 3 I use Ultra settings on all games at 1080p. I think you'll be able to enjoy gaming with a single 670 for at least the next 3 years before considering SLI'ing with an additional card or upgrading to a new GPU. They're really power efficient and yet still very solid. I am debating between a 670 and 680 for my next upgrade, but I am going to wait for the price to drop a little. My 560 plays BF3 without AA or Motion Blur on Ultra settings, it just doesn't have the FPS I was used to. I would be totally happy if I hadn't seen it running on my buddy's 680 - he used step-up to upgrade his 570 to a 680 for about $110. So nice

 

[larryboy]

I used my 250 for several years, I used my 560 for a several years and with the exception of Battlefield 3 I use Ultra settings on all games at 1080p. I think you'll be able to enjoy gaming with a single 670 for at least the next 3 years before considering SLI'ing with an additional card or upgrading to a new GPU. They're really power efficient and yet still very solid. I am debating between a 670 and 680 for my next upgrade, but I am going to wait for the price to drop a little. My 560 plays BF3 without AA or Motion Blur on Ultra settings, it just doesn't have the FPS I was used to. I would be totally happy if I hadn't seen it running on my buddy's 680 - he used step-up to upgrade his 570 to a 680 for about $110. So nice

Gotta agree, my 670 runs BF3 at 70-100 FPS. Gotta love it.

 

[Gallarian]

Overkill, how so? Some games are already running at ~30 FPS on it (Shogun 2 for example, though Total Wars have been pretty heavy on both the GPU and CPU). ArmA II is also a massive hog, but i guess that's just because of the buggy engine.

Well really for Shogun 2, no system is overkill, it will always find a way of crippling your performance!


But generally, a card like a 670 is only really used for high res gaming.

 

[dechy]

Overkill, how so? Some games are already running at ~30 FPS on it (Shogun 2 for example, though Total Wars have been pretty heavy on both the GPU and CPU). ArmA II is also a massive hog, but i guess that's just because of the buggy engine.

Yeeeaaahhh... http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga/8 Shogun 2 is bugged on Kepler @ Ultra; get off Ultra until it's fixed and use Very High (you probably won't see a difference) and see that number jump over 100FPS.

A 670 @ 1050 is overkill; people need to stop using ultra in all games without tweaking / testing... in nearly all of them the difference between a tweaked very high/high & ultra is barely visible / impossible to see (thanks to the pace of some games) but the difference is 20FPS min to 70FPS min...

Hell, my 4870s still get over 60FPS on a High+ setting vs Ultra in BF3 with a few tweaks and they're nearly 4 years old. A 670 demolishes my setup... aside from Metro, you should be getting huge frames @ 1050, but if you're content with a puny 30FPS from a 400+$ card, that's your right heh

 

[larryboy]

Yeeeaaahhh... http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga/8 Shogun 2 is bugged on Kepler @ Ultra; get off Ultra until it's fixed and use Very High (you probably won't see a difference) and see that number jump over 100FPS.

A 670 @ 1050 is overkill; people need to stop using ultra in all games without tweaking / testing... in nearly all of them the difference between a tweaked very high/high & ultra is barely visible / impossible to see (thanks to the pace of some games) but the difference is 20FPS min to 70FPS min...

Hell, my 4870s still get over 60FPS on a High+ setting vs Ultra in BF3 with a few tweaks and they're nearly 4 years old. A 670 demolishes my setup... aside from Metro, you should be getting huge frames @ 1050, but if you're content with a puny 30FPS from a 400+$ card, that's your right heh

So i should be able to run AC3 & Far Cry 3 on ultra? I'd really like some 60+ FPS on those. I just haven't been able to test the card with the newer titles properly.

 

[larryboy]

Hey y'all, little bit of off-topic: Is the i7 2600k still powerful for gaming in the future, or should i return it and get a mobo /w Ivy Bridge and a 3rd gen i7?

 

[baddad]

I still have and are still being used from 2005 7800gt's, my back up game machine still uses a 8800 GTX from 2006, My main game machine has 2 580's in it from last year, I have in my home a machine with a 560Ti, 450GTS, 9800 GTX, 460 GTX, not to mention a number of machines I have built for my kids and they all have one thing in common since 2005, they all run at 1920x1080.

 

[maxh22]

You can most likely play pretty much any game for the next 5-6 years, but it doesn't mean you can max them out.

 

[maxh22]

Hey y'all, little bit of off-topic: Is the i7 2600k still powerful for gaming in the future, or should i return it and get a mobo /w Ivy Bridge and a 3rd gen i7?

Its good enough, if anything you can just overclock it

 

[roadkill922]

The gtx 670 will max out pretty much any current high end game including BF3 at 1080p. There is not much more you can do at the moment, except sli the 670 with another.

You could upgrade to a 680 or 690 but I would not suggest it, as I don't believe that they are as good of a value overall. Overclock a 670 and it is as good as a 680 for a hundred dollars cheaper. If you had 2 670s it would be the same performance as a 690 for 200 dollars less.

I suggest you stick with what you have and if you run into problems in a few years, throw another 670 in, and you will max out every game once again.

The 2600k is still one of the best CPUs on the market for gaming. in my opinion, if you were to upgrade, you would be wasting your money, especially since you would have to upgrade your board as well.

Like others have said, I would upgrade the monitor to at least 1080p, because your current one is crap compared to the rest of your setup. Get a nice ASUS for 180 bucks and a decent 64 GB SSD. You will be about as future proof as possible without going overboard.

As far as AC3 and Farcry 3 go, there is no way to tell how they will run. For AC3 I would say you could most likely max it out no problem, given that it is a console port. However, if the port is done badly (like GTA 4) this will be entirely untrue. Farcry 3 runs on the Dunia Engine which has not been used by any other games yet. The most you could do, is compare with Crysis 2, as Dunia is based off of Cryengine.

 

[jonnyrb]

Overkill, how so? Some games are already running at ~30 FPS on it (Shogun 2 for example, though Total Wars have been pretty heavy on both the GPU and CPU). ArmA II is also a massive hog, but i guess that's just because of the buggy engine.

these are typically driver usses. It's still a new card.

In your nvidia control panel you'll see a list of games that nvidia states the card has been "optimized" for.

 

[maxh22]

The gtx 670 will max out pretty much any current high end game including BF3 at 1080p. There is not much more you can do at the moment, except sli the 670 with another.

You could upgrade to a 680 or 690 but I would not suggest it, as I don't believe that they are as good of a value overall. Overclock a 670 and it is as good as a 680 for a hundred dollars cheaper. If you had 2 670s it would be the same performance as a 690 for 200 dollars less.

I suggest you stick with what you have and if you run into problems in a few years, throw another 670 in, and you will max out every game once again.

The 2600k is still one of the best CPUs on the market for gaming. in my opinion, if you were to upgrade, you would be wasting your money, especially since you would have to upgrade your board as well.

Like others have said, I would upgrade the monitor to at least 1080p, because your current one is crap compared to the rest of your setup. Get a nice ASUS for 180 bucks and a decent 64 GB SSD. You will be about as future proof as possible without going overboard.

+1

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The answer will vary because the criteria are not fixed.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/18.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/15.html

The Asus GTX 670 gets 36.5 fps in metro 2033 at your resolution. It gets 264.4 in Dirt 3. The 670 will likely have little problem with Dirt 4 but a bit of a problem with the next Metro.

Your upgrade options include:

OC your 670.... despite popular belief, all 670's are not created equal and you can not generally overclock a reference card to the same level as most factory overclocked cards. This is because:

1. In general, factory OC'd cards come with oversized, improved and more efficient coolers. EVGA, Gigabyte, Asus, MSI generally all provide such on their non reference cards.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/33.html

The ASUS DC II cooler is a revelation on the GTX 670, it provides incredibly low noise levels. In both idle and load the card emits almost no noise, it is actually quieter under full load than most other cards on the market are at idle. Not only noise is low but temperatures are great, too. With only 74°C under load the card is cooler than most other GTX 670 cards tested today.

2. Sometimes, not always, manufacturers included beefed up, more accurate voltage control by increasing the number of phase sin the VRM and using improved control voltage control chips. Asus is a good example of of what gets done here with their DCII Cu TOP lines....

ASUS has done away with NVIDIA's cheap voltage regulation circuitry and put a much better CHiL controller on the card, which also supports voltage control and monitoring.

EVGA historically has used reference VRM's on their factory overclocked cards except for their "Classified" line. MSI also does, some reference, some with a minor improvement (i.e Twin Frozr) and Asus comparable or better improvements on their Lightning and Hawk lines.

3. Those that do the voltage control and capacity improvements typically provide modified PCB's with extra beefed up features such is backplates, additional heat sinks and the like.

Obviously, given the above difference, the overclock you can achieve will vary depending on the differences described above.

Buy a 2nd 670 - Scaling on the 670 w/ early drivers was about 68% "on average" with the more demanding titles approaching 100%. This will likely improve so,ewhat w/ better drivers over time.

 

[larryboy]

The gtx 670 will max out pretty much any current high end game including BF3 at 1080p. There is not much more you can do at the moment, except sli the 670 with another.

You could upgrade to a 680 or 690 but I would not suggest it, as I don't believe that they are as good of a value overall. Overclock a 670 and it is as good as a 680 for a hundred dollars cheaper. If you had 2 670s it would be the same performance as a 690 for 200 dollars less.

I suggest you stick with what you have and if you run into problems in a few years, throw another 670 in, and you will max out every game once again.

The 2600k is still one of the best CPUs on the market for gaming. in my opinion, if you were to upgrade, you would be wasting your money, especially since you would have to upgrade your board as well.

Like others have said, I would upgrade the monitor to at least 1080p, because your current one is crap compared to the rest of your setup. Get a nice ASUS for 180 bucks and a decent 64 GB SSD. You will be about as future proof as possible without going overboard.

As far as AC3 and Farcry 3 go, there is no way to tell how they will run. For AC3 I would say you could most likely max it out no problem, given that it is a console port. However, if the port is done badly (like GTA 4) this will be entirely untrue. Farcry 3 runs on the Dunia Engine which has not been used by any other games yet. The most you could do, is compare with Crysis 2, as Dunia is based off of Cryengine.

Thanks for this, very informative! I'll have to look into the monitor thingy and i'll REALLY have to get me a SSD, my HDD is killing me.

 

[larryboy]

The answer will vary because the criteria are not fixed.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/18.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/15.html

The Asus GTX 670 gets 36.5 fps in metro 2033 at your resolution. It gets 264.4 in Dirt 3. The 670 will likely have little problem with Dirt 4 but a bit of a problem with the next Metro

I haven't played either Metro 2033 or DiRT 3. Might have to check 'em out.

 

[larryboy]

these are typically driver usses. It's still a new card.

In your nvidia control panel you'll see a list of games that nvidia states the card has been "optimized" for.

I thought it's just for 3DVision, and since i don't use it, the info is of no use to me, but perhaps i'm incorrect.

 

[xtreme5]

all right, GTX 670 is a very decent choice for all gamers, who plan or intend to play all the games on " max setting" so you're already is on the right path a friend of mine running 670 with 2500k he got very excellent result from all the games that he ran on 1080p everything MAX.

The 670 coul destroy both the brothers HD 7950 and HD 7970. In only crysis game both of those cards perform better than 670 and the rest of others games owned by 670 as you can see in this this site,

www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/550?vs=598

 

[larryboy]

Thanks alot guys, got a HUGE amount of interesting information from you, appreciate it! If you have something to add, go ahead

 

[Razordraac]

agree with Gallarian. Why buy a 670 if you ONLY play at 1680 x 1050? Tell me you have seen better resolutions? FPS improvement is great but screen resolution improvement is the Awe Factor. Look at Apple, they always keep screen resolutions ahead of the game. Why? Cuz it makes people drool. Also, at 1050 you can't even watch 1080p movies. Wow dude, you're missing out.

I assume most people upgrade video cards every 2-3 years, that is if you want to play Graphic Intensive games such as BF3. Take me for example, I would be willing to sell my new GPU after a year of use, cuz I think the decrease in value was worth it and in the end I get a new GPU. Plus, games improve and new GPUs are needed to keep high quality and fps.

I really don't see the problem with 1680x1050. In fact, I somewhat prefer the 16:10 ratio, you have more space on your screen. The 670 will probably last him longer with that res than a 1080p screen, and imo prformance is more important than resolution. Also, does 40p make all that much difference. No, so stop being an elitist and let him do what he wants...

 

[rolandzhang3]

^+1