NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Review Feat. EVGA: Bringing GK104 Down To $400
by Ryan Smith on May 10, 2012 9:00 AM ESTSynthetics
We’ll also take a quick look at synthetic performance to see if NVIDIA’s choice of clockspeeds and disabling a SMX had any kind of other impact we haven’t anticipated. We’ll start with 3DMark Vantage’s Pixel Fill test.
Pixel Fill is said to be memory bandwidth limited, and for good reason. Even with the lower clockspeed of the GTX 670, the fact that it has memory bandwidth equal to the GTX 680 means that it achieves equal performance in this test, confirming that GTX 670 can utilize its memory bandwidth just as well as GTX 680 can.
Our second test is 3DMark’s Texel Fill test, which as expected shows a moderate gap between the GTX 670 and GTX 680. Thanks to the loss of an SMX and the lower clocksped the GTX 670 only achieves 85% of the performance of the GTX 680, which thanks to the GTX 670’s more aggressive boost clock is a bit better than what we’d expect from the specifications.
Our third theoretical test is the set of settings we use with Microsoft’s Detail Tessellation sample program out of the DX11 SDK
As expected GTX 670 falls behind GTX 680, but again not by nearly as much as we’d expect. The loss of the SMX means GTX 670 lost a Polymorph Engine, but with only a 4% gap with maximum tessellation you’d never be able to tell.
Our final theoretical test is Unigine Heaven 2.5, a benchmark that straddles the line between a synthetic benchmark and a real-world benchmark as the engine is licensed but no notable DX11 games have been produced using it yet.
With Heaven the gap between the GTX 680 and GTX 670 once again opens up similarly to what we saw in our compute benchmarks with SmallLuxGPU. This means the GTX 670 falls behind by about 10%, reflecting the shader-heavy nature of this benchmark.
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CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
28 isn't playable and yes, the nVidia card really wins that game, as we see in the 680 test, which I had to point out as you, the amd fanboy despite your claim to own a 680, never noticed like all the rest, including the author to a large degree, in the 680 release review here.So take your temporary Gaming Evolved amd game driver hack that disabled nVidia's winning sweep across all resolutions and celebrate, a fool of course needs to do so, you're welcome for pointing it out.
(roll eyes at the immense ignorance, again)
Now enjoy the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0eZEdpsgjk
I know amd told us many, many times, as did so many little named posters here for so many years, that nVidia was evil for TWIMTBP work and what they did to the amd cards performance in those efforts.
Maybe they should note this little problem that developed ?
ROFL
Galidou - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
''(roll eyes at the immense ignorance, again)''Such a troll again, such a lack of respect, indirect attacks, most useless comment on earth... immense ignorance, comon we're speaking about video cards, someone not knowing that you can change a buck for 4 quarters might be an ignorant... unless he's a tribal that lived in africa all his life... and then the ''again'' omg the inflammatory stuff you're able to say in 7 words sentence... I'm unsure you realize what you do... you're being really mean...
All that and I could only say you're mean... I guess respect ain't give to everyone, sad it can't be bought, because it must be the most important value, ALL AROUND, a man can have. Everything starts with respect, real wisdom is acquired through respect.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
All you do is attack, this is the last response you get from me unless you're on topic with a point, and as respectful as you demand others be, which you are not, you're the worst so far, a pure troll with no points at all.The other posters are trying to make points, not you. Attention for you is over.
Galidou - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
He mentions the puny 1,25gb because the card CAN'T run it and is usually a good performer against the competition at that resolution. You say it beats the 7870 in the next page, by 1-2 fps, I don't even call that a beating. Plus in a game that favors Nvidia.''This is the kind of crap we have to put up with here, at least we who have a brain and can see what's going on.''
I think you meant ''we who are Nvidia's fanboys''
It may not be the most neutral of comments but it's not the worst, you're just looking to find things against Nvidia and enumerate them because that's what Nvidia's fanboys do. What do they do, get mad as soon as there's a little reason to.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
No other card can run it with gaming frame rates in his test.Since he didn't point that out, I DID.
I guess he'll have to work harder to find a valid reason to dis the card since he has claimed nVidia is keeping it on, and the egg sure looks like that is correct - a lot of stock present.
Now, you validated my point, but want to call it petty, but a similar thing happens on nearly every gaming page.
At least what I point out is some pathetic grammar nazi problem, huh, which all of the rest of you seem to love to do so much, in every review posting it appears to be a contest for that, and I agree with the reviewer that PM'ing him to offer a correction is actually adult like and responsible.
That of course is different than what bothers me, and we shall see, a valid complaint is usually responded to in a good way, so there may be some thought ahead, I certainly expect positive results for my efforts.
As is so often claimed here by those in charge they respond to readers and what they want, so this fits that case fine.
On that note along those lines I already advocated a single gaming chart with the collated data of the various cards in their overclocked performance states, as it seems to me that would be a nice added feature to reviews and would settle some of the rancor on the reviewed cards sometimes having OC'ed versions added in their release.
SamsungAppleFan - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
first of all, thanks for the article, but you guys (anandtech) take wayyyyyy too long between new articles. get on it guys, seriously. and i'm still waiting on my gs3 full review lol.GlItCh017 - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
This card can really shine if it likes what you like. I'm a huge FPS fan, so in scenario's such as BF3 the GTX 670 vs. Radeon HD 6970 is a no brainer.Morg. - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Sure, like most FPS's won't be on Unreal4 instead of frostbite ;)That engine, for some reason, favors nVidia and I don't think it's a good GPU performance metric, although if you're going to play frostbite content, it's clearly important.
Morg. - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Nevermind, I knew why but I hadn't seen it mentioned yet.http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/johan-an...
So .. buying a graphics board because it is favored by a botched graphical engine which is temporary - meh. If you plan on keeping your pc 2 or 3 years, fck the marketing, get raw power instead ;)
antef - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Are you saying AMD has the better GPU for most FPS titles outside ones running Frostbite?