NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Review Feat. EVGA: Bringing GK104 Down To $400
by Ryan Smith on May 10, 2012 9:00 AM ESTDiRT 3
For racing games our racer of choice continues to be DiRT, which is now in its 3rd iteration. Codemasters uses the same EGO engine between its DiRT, F1, and GRID series, so the performance of EGO has been relevant for a number of racing games over the years.
As was the case with the GTX 680, NVIDIA’s prospects improve significantly with DiRT 3. At 2560 the GTX 670 has now launched ahead of the 7950 by a comfortable margin and is within a few FPS of the 7970, still leaving it short but giving us our first sign that the GTX 670 can compete with AMD’s top card. What’s interesting to note here is that we seem to be particularly shader limited here even though DiRT 3 isn’t a highly intensive game, as the GTX 670 falls a bit further behind the GTX 680, leaving a 10% gap. Unfortunately EVGA’s factory overclock isn’t doing a ton here, once again improving performance by just 3% over our reference card.
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Morg. - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
No.I am saying that tahiti XT paired with 384 bits RAM AND clocked at the same speed as a gtx 680 paired with 256 bits RAM, has clearly more raw power.
The thing is, two years from now, nVidia will be boosting other new games for the NEW nVidia hardware and you will not benefit from it on the old H/W.
However, raw power will remain, 3GB of RAM will still be 3GB of RAM and you will thank god for the added graphics you get out of that last 1 GB that cost you nothing more.
The two games that have for years been GPU benchmarks and haven't been sponsored by either nVidia or AMD are Crysis warhead and metro 2033.
If you wanna trash those results because BF3 is everything to you, you should totally do it though.
scook9 - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Crysis: Warhead is a "The way it is meant to be played" title.....You see that every time you start it up as well as on the box.
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/3...
eddman - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Two years from now 7970 won't be powerful enough anyway.As scook9 mentioned, warhead is an TWIMTBP and yet runs better on 7970.
It'd be better if you removed that tin foil hat. TWIMTBP and Gaming Evolved are programs to help developers code their games better.
There are countless TWIMTBP games that run better on radeons.
Crysis and warhead use an old engine that isn't going to be used anymore. Nowadays they are just obsolete benchmarks.
Metro 2033 is a very nice game and I really liked it, but it's not that popular and has a proprietary engine. Most gamers don't care about such engine.
Frostbite, OTOH, matters because it belongs to a major publisher/developer which means we'll see many games based on it in the future.
SlyNine - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
I'm pretty sure a 4870 (basically a 6770) is powerful enough today, why wouldn't a 7970 be powerful enough by than.Just because an engine is going to be used anymore doesn't mean it isn't useful to gauge certain aspects of a videocard. Many engines that will be used are not even developed yet, some may push a card more like the Crytech engine did.
Crytech 2 is going to be used for MechWarrior online baby. (Im glad it used a good engine, and it looks like they are using it to good effect).
eddman - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Because 3GB memory is for high-resolutions and high AA settings, and 2 years from now 7970 won't have enough power to run those games at those settings at good frame rates.That doesn't make sense. Card A might run max payne 1 twice as fast as card B, but what'd be the point.
No, mechwarrior online uses cryengine 3, not 2. Cryengine 2, that was used in crysis and warhead, is dead.
SlyNine - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
I meant CryEngine 3. not sure why I said 2.There is no proof that 3gigs wont be enough for high res by then. Yea maybe not (or maybe) with AA.
Besides you didn't say anything about running maxed out everything, you made a blanket statement that the 7970 wont powerful enough period.
That means that card A does something that card B cannot, depending on what that is it have an effect on engines that focus on certain things.
eddman - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
I meant 7970 won't have enough shader power 2 years from now, so 3GB won't help then either.Yes, everything maxed out with high AA. After all that's what large memories are for.
Obsolete engine is obsolete. Deal with it. Cryengine 2 won't be used in any other AAA game. It's gone.
SlyNine - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
A realtime engine will always tell you something about the card. Obsolete or not.If 3GB gives it some sort of advantage then it was worth it. In many games it's already showing an advantage at ultra high res.
Only you are saying the only use of large video cache is AA at ultra settings. But this is simply a questionable premise.
I really don't care if Cryengine 2 is used for a AAA game, or ever again. I still play Crysis. Furthermore I don't give a dam about AAA games, most of them are dumbed down for mass appeal.
CeriseCogburn - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
At 7000X what rez is 3GB showing an advantage ?ROFL - desperation
theprodigalrebel - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
BF3 has sold 1.9 million copies worldwide.Metro 2033 has sold 0.16m copies worldwide
Crysis is an old game that I don't see (m)any people playing.
BF3 is also scheduled for three DLC releases (two this year, third next year).
I see a perfectly good reason why BF3 performance matters. You are speculating that the 7900-series will have great Unreal 4 performance. That's just silly since nobody knows anything about Unreal 4 performance yet.
The only thing I could find was Hexus.net reporting that nVidia chose the Kepler to demonstrate the Unreal 4 engine at the GDC.