NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Review Feat. EVGA: Bringing GK104 Down To $400
by Ryan Smith on May 10, 2012 9:00 AM ESTTotal War: Shogun 2
Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite (on higher end hardware at least).
Unfortunately for NVIDIA the Kepler performance bug persists with Shogun 2, which makes things particularly wretched for NVIDIA at Ultra settings. At 2560 the GTX 670 can’t beat a Radeon HD 6970 let alone a 7950. The fact that the GTX 670 does so well at 1920 where this issue doesn’t come up does give the GTX 670 a great deal of hope however, as at this point it’s fast enough to climb past both the 7950 and 7970. It will be interesting to see just where the GTX 670 fits in once this bug is fixed, though we’re expecting it to be on the low side of the performance curve relative to the GTX 680.
On that note this is one of a couple of games that really drives a wedge between the GTX 670 and the GTX 570, even with the Kepler issues. The GTX 570 and it’s increasingly puny 1.25GB of RAM can’t even run this game with our 2560 benchmark settings, meanwhile at 1920 it has enough RAM but the GTX 670 still beats it by 68%.
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eachus - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
"I would like to see a 7970OC comparison? I was trying to find a 680 but gave up and got an 7970oc for $499 it's running at 1025Mhz and should be faster than a 680."No need really--unless you want to use the latest and greatest benchmarks in an on-line pissing contest. Let's face it. ANY high-end card, including now what AMD calls mid-range (the 7800 series) will run a 1920x1200 display with no trouble. Upgrade to three displays (5760x1200) or one 2560x1600 display, and now the high-end cards make sense. But keep track of the evolving drivers...the original 7970 benchmarks are now dead letters given the 12.4 drivers. Fixing lots of little gotchas in the drivers means that now you don't need two cards to drive a three screen display. This is true of both nVidia and AMD. (Compare the benchmarks here with the launch benchmarks for the 680. The 7970 wins several benchmarks now, which will last until nVidia has some non-launch drivers. Since you are getting more performance than you originally paid for, just sit back and enjoy it.)
Oh, and one other point which is starting to become an issue: 3d graphics. When I find a 3d display that doesn't give me headaches with a few hours use, I'll buy one. Right now though, it is already clear that 120 fps displays will be needed for that, and AMD has been considering 90+ fps out of the ROPs as sufficient--at least with 2560x1600, non-Crossfire. :-(
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Well eachus amd fanboy friend, instead of calling him and idiot owner of the 7970 in a useless pissing contest, why don't you just tell him the truth ?The 7970 LOSES @ 1,025 core clock to the stock 680.
+
And yes, amd sucks when it comes to 3d gaming, while nVidia is the king and has the market absolutely cornered.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Here's a comparison dunce.http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/37209-gefor...
The amd card loses with just it overclocked.
Enjoy that amd fail.
Chris Simmo - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Excellent review. Excellent card! One thing I didn't see was image quality. Both in game and video/HT capability. I know its not a common thing amoungst gamers and self builders, but we do complete systems and always found that AMD does a better job with video than NVIDIA. Most noticable are old TV show rips or youtube videos. Do you have any opinion? Just want to know if its a good allrounder or only good at games.CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Well, you must have enjoyed the years long amd youtube issues with constantly crashing adobe flash, having to turn off the HW acell, etc.I sure hope your customers didn't mind.
Chris Simmo - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Actually we have had few reports, and they have been pretty even on both sides, but the only time I have had to turn off hardware acceleration is with TMT5 SIMHD engine with any HD7000 card, and I have seen the flash problems you are talking about, but strangly only on notebooks, not desktops. I do believe a fix is in the works for TMT though. I really hope so. Anyway, I am not looking at it from a fanboy point of view. I will give my customers what they want, but will push the most capable product for their application and for a long while now this has generally been AMD graphics with Intel CPU's. This has come up well as we have had an incredibly low failure rate.Support is important and in the last 6 months I have worked with both ASUS and AMD support to correct issues in motherboards and driver bugs, and as long as they get fixed I am happy, providing it’s not a really big issue to start with.
I’m sure you have worked with 1200 graphics cards in the last 4 years and know exactly what you are talking about, and offer support to match the warranty, which in our case is 2 years.
I am excited about the 600 series though, and will look to stock the GTX670 when the prices settle.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
Hundreds of graphics cards but not 1200 graphics cards, so yes I do know what I'm talking about, and I'm not stuck in a corporate environment where information and standard responses are a required line to be towed, so it's likely my experience this past year is actually far wider than yours.In any case, you allude to "pretty even on both sides" with flash player problems, but before you claimed youtube was great with amd, or at least claimed some sort of superior image quality - and mentioned old movie clips, but by your own comparison you must be servicing nVidia cards as well, or perhaps you are not, and the choice was made and now...
So to me that appears to be your corporate environment talking as you'll go with whatever your masters say is happening, and it is said to be better then, by default necessity - as whomever decides in the power structure will in effect be demanding employees tow that line, it is after all, foolish to do otherwise, especially in a forum where you could be easily discovered doing so.
I frankly find your surprise lack of knowledge with flash player issues disturbing, but attribute it to the call center corporate support model.
Anyway go ahead with your issue, and find the answer you need. I think you should do well with whatever it is you need for answer, and think no doubt that has already been determined.
Chris Simmo - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
You assume a lot. There isn't much of your argument there that actually holds any truth, and you are the foolish one to assume otherwise. To me it appears you are just looking for a fight. No better than a common troll. And as a result I won't bother with a rebuttal or correcting any of your assumptions.Ryan Smith - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Hi Chris;Since image quality is almost entirely a function of architectural improvements as opposed to the individual SKUs, we don't do a major IQ writeup for every card. For Kepler in game image quality hasn't changed (NVIDIA hasn't changed any of the fundamental algorithms). As for HT/video, we're hoping to have something up soon once we can secure a more HTPC-suitable GK107 card.
-Thanks
Ryan Smith
Chris Simmo - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Thanks Ryan. Yeah, I knew its an architectural thing. I build some very high powered HTPC as gaming systems and since this card will no doubt end up shipping with smaller coolers, it seems like a great card to put in a gaming HTPC. Looking forward to the HTPC review though.