NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Review Feat. EVGA: Bringing GK104 Down To $400
by Ryan Smith on May 10, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMeet The GeForce GTX 670
Because of the relatively low power consumption of GK104 relative to past high-end NVIDIA GPUs, NVIDIA has developed a penchant for small cards. While the GTX 680 was a rather standard 10” long, NVIDIA also managed to cram the GTX 690 into the same amount of space. Meanwhile the GTX 670 takes this to a whole new level.
We’ll start at the back as this is really where NVIDIA’s fascination with small size makes itself apparent. The complete card is 9.5” long, however the actual PCB is far shorter at only 6.75” long, 3.25” shorter than the GTX 680’s PCB. In fact it would be fair to say that rather than strapping a cooler onto a card, NVIDIA strapped a card onto a cooler. NVIDIA has certainly done short PCBs before – such as with one of the latest GTX 560 Ti designs – but never on a GTX x70 part before. But given the similarities between GK104 and GF114, this isn’t wholly surprising, if not to be expected.
In any case this odd pairing of a small PCB with a large cooler is no accident. With a TDP of only 170W NVIDIA doesn’t necessarily need a huge PCB, but because they wanted a blower for a cooler they needed a large cooler. The positioning of the GPU and various electronic components meant that the only place to put a blower fan was off of the PCB entirely, as the GK104 GPU is already fairly close to the rear of the card. Meanwhile the choice of a blower seems largely driven by the fact that this is an x70 card – NVIDIA did an excellent job with the GTX 560 Ti’s open air cooler, which was designed for the same 170W TDP, so the choice is effectively arbitrary from a technical standpoint (there’s no reason to believe $400 customers are any less likely to have a well-ventilated case than $250 buyers). Accordingly, it will be NVIDIA’s partners that will be stepping in with open air coolers of their own designs.
Starting as always at the top, as we previously mentioned the reference GTX 670 is outfitted with a 9.5” long fully shrouded blower. NVIDIA tells us that the GTX 670 uses the same fan as the GTX 680, and while they’re nearly identical in design, based on our noise tests they’re likely not identical. On that note unlike the GTX 680 the fan is no longer placed high to line up with the exhaust vent, so the GTX 670 is a bit more symmetrical in design than the GTX 680 was.
Note: We dissaembled the virtually identical EVGA card here instead
Lifting the cooler we can see that NVIDIA has gone with a fairly simple design here. The fan vents into a block-style aluminum heatsink with a copper baseplate, providing cooling for the GPU. Elsewhere we’ll see a moderately sized aluminum heatsink clamped down on top of the VRMs towards the front of the card. There is no cooling provided for the GDDR5 RAM.
Note: We dissaembled the virtually identical EVGA card here instead
As for the PCB, as we mentioned previously due to the lower TDP of the GTX 670 NVIDIA has been able to save some space. The VRM circuitry has been moved to the front of the card, leaving the GPU and the RAM towards the rear and allowing NVIDIA to simply omit a fair bit of PCB space. Of course with such small VRM circuitry the reference GTX 670 isn’t built for heavy overclocking – like the other GTX 600 cards NVIDIA isn’t even allowing overvolting on reference GTX 670 PCBs – so it will be up to partners with custom PCBs to enable that kind of functionality. Curiously only 4 of the 8 Hynix R0C GDDR5 RAM chips are on the front side of the PCB; the other 4 are on the rear. We typically only see rear-mounted RAM in cards with 16/24 chips, as 8/12 will easily fit on the same side.
Elsewhere at the top of the card we’ll find the PCIe power sockets and SLI connectors. Since NVIDIA isn’t scrambling to save space like they were with the GTX 680, the GTX 670’s PCIe power sockets are laid out in a traditional side-by-side manner. As for the SLI connectors, since this is a high-end GeForce card NVIDIA provides 2 connectors, allowing for the card to be used in 3-way SLI.
Finally at the front of the card NVIDIA is using the same I/O port configuration and bracket that we first saw with the GTX 680. This means 1 DL-DVI-D port, 1 DL-DVI-I port, 1 full size HDMI 1.4 port, and 1 full size DisplayPort 1.2. This also means the GTX 670 follows the same rules as the GTX 680 when it comes to being able to idle with multiple monitors.
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CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
The talking point amd fanboys have a real problem. On their suddenly favorite gaming benchmark, Crysis warhead, the entire brand new line of cards is DEAD above 1920 in this very review.They are all toast at 1920X1200 - nothing above will do, all that fancy 3G ram is absolutely zero @ 2560 in their mostest favorite 4 year old benchmark - and has full on competition at the only playable framerate in their one of two current wins, the second win - Metro2003 barely hanging on by a thread and on some reviews the 7970 loses it due to different eye candy settings- and let me not be so irresponsible as they and the reviewer are, and point out, the Metro2033 bench results in this very article leave the only playable resolution presented - yep you guessed it - 1920X1200, the lowest resolution presented.
Above that even the purported 7970 winner is absolute unplayable crap at 2560 - memory and all.
Now, that's the end of another important lesson, the core puke of the 7970 on both of the amd fanboys now instantly favorite games at the lowest of 3 resolutions presented, 3G ram worth absolutely nothing, less than nothing.
The immense blindness of the amd fanboys reaches the outer limits of the twilight zone.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
680 is faster at 5760X1080 than 7970, when both are overlcocked." We wanted to be able to run at the native resolution of 5760x1200 and compare the performance to the Radeon HD 7970. We figured if any resolution is going to show the advantages of AMD's memory capacity and memory bandwidth edge it would be 5760x1200. We were absolutely surprised that the GeForce GTX 680 had no trouble keeping pace with the Radeon HD 7970 at 5760x1200. We thought this is the resolution we might see the GTX 680 bottleneck, but to our surprise no bottlenecks were experienced. "
Sorry @ 5670X1080 even overclocked the 7970 loses, and often loses by a lot.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_...
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_k...
LOL - nighty nite 7970.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_k...
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_k...
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
" We brought you performance numbers on a 5760x1080 2D panel setup and showed you that that the NVIDIA GeForceGTX 680 had no problems hanging with the fastest factory overclocked AMD Radeon HD 7970 that money can buy
(The MSI R7970 Lightning is $100 more!). If you are looking for a graphics card for a triple-monitor setup today, we have no reservations recommending the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680! "
LOL - uh huh. 680 stock vs the highest OC 7970 - 680 wins.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1887/11/
Pantsu - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
I applaud your fervor for defending the green team, but I tend to look things a bit less biased.http://techreport.com/articles.x/22922
While the difference between 680 and 7970 stock isn't all that big even on 5760x1080, 7970 does OC and scale in games further than 680, and provides better min fps in situations where 680 memory bandwidth isn't up to snuff. But that's fairly irrelevant, since I can buy a 7970 for ~400€ while 680 is currently unavailable at ~500€.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Not even in at page with your link, but I guess Tech Report is the only one you can't even quote, and we'll just rely on your stupid talking point with zero proof, heck your words do it - your words. ROFL.No need to admire someone who is surrounded by so many liars. No need to defend nVidia, how about having one oyu lousy liars actually have even a shred of evidence ?
So far, none of you have it. Not that it matters, you're all amd fanboys anyway so facts don't matter.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
LOL - from your link " The 670 trails its big brother, the GeForce GTX 680, by only an eyelash in most of our performance results, closely enough that you'd have a very hard time telling the difference between them in everyday use. Not only that, but it delivers lower 99th percentile frame times than both the Radeon HD 7950 and the 7970 in three of our four game tests. Meanwhile, the 670's power consumption is quite tame.If I were buying a video card right now for myself, I'd order up a GeForce GTX 670. You really can drive three two-megapixel displays with it and play games at reasonable frame rates, even though you'd want to go easier on the image quality options than we did. For those folks with a four-megapixel display or less, the 670 should deliver a nice dose of gaming nirvana. Now that the 670 is here, I fail to see the point of spending more on a GeForce GTX 680 or a Radeon HD 7970"
Why do you amd fans lie so much ?
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Let's talk about your type of rampant fanboyism - not a songel OC 7970 at yuor link for Tech Report - but you know what - here's a dual OC link 680 and 7970 OC, and in the chart they have a TIE 3/3 wins each, but we look further and in Batman, they excuse the amd since it can do PhysX, that makes it 4 to 3, and in TWS2, they have the amd card winning, because of the Gaming Evolved game patch that broke nVidia temporarily.That makes it 5 to2 in nVidia's favor.
You get F1 2011, a game even I'd say amd wins in. You get SWTOR, and that's it.
nVidia takes Skyrim, Wow, and Mass Effect 3, adding a +2 to their wins here in other games.
I a sorry, but you amd fanboys actually need to prove your endlessly spewed talking points, and none of you have, in fact you've been proven wrong time and again.
Worse yet, you have big time driver problems, and bigger time lack of features, old, and now many new.
You go buy a 7970, go ahead, but don't feed me your BS or your fake links and expect me to just cave into your lies.
\
FURTHER - here is the GTX680 where you are for 399.99, you even lied about that
http://www.idealo.co.uk/compare/3243808/pny-geforc...
ROFL - so sorry, so many of you, so little honor
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Here's the link I promisedhttp://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1455/pg21/as...
Pantsu - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/866-20/recapitulat...There's another link for you where 7970 actually beats 680 at 1920x1080.
Your UK price is in pounds sterling you know, how stupid can you be? Seriously, what on earth is your problem?
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
That's a game result, in a foreign language, apparently stupidity is contagious...Let's take the translated conclusion, and see if you're full of it.
" Note that the trend was reversed between the GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970, in favor of the latter, mainly for two reasons:
- AMD finally fixed (after 5 months!) A performance problem in Batman AC with MSAA.
- Nvidia suffers from a performance problem in the latest version of Shogun Total War 2."
ROFL - 5 months of failure, and a GAMING EVOLVED amd gaming update hack that disables nVidia cards.... how shameful for the evil amd to do in their gaming evolved sponsored game.
So, no news there, one's a cheat, the others a 5 month lose with a driver fix finally delivered by amd - the other 80% of games go to the nVidia cards, at higher rated percentages of win.
Not certain why you people are so stupid, actually. It certainly isn't what you initially claimed, no overclocked 7970 winning, you've still got nothing.
Goofy amd boys.