NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Review Feat. EVGA: Bringing GK104 Down To $400
by Ryan Smith on May 10, 2012 9:00 AM ESTCompute
Shifting gears, as always our final set of benchmarks is a look at compute performance. As we have seen with GTX 680, GK104 appears to be significantly less balanced between rendering and compute performance than GF110 or GF114 were, and as a result compute performance suffers. Cache and register file pressure in particular seem to give GK104 grief, which means that GK104 can still do well in certain scenarios, but falls well short in others.
Our first compute benchmark comes from Civilization V, which uses DirectCompute to decompress textures on the fly. Civ V includes a sub-benchmark that exclusively tests the speed of their texture decompression algorithm by repeatedly decompressing the textures required for one of the game’s leader scenes. Note that this is a DX11 DirectCompute benchmark.
It’s quite shocking to see the GTX 670 do so well here. For sure it’s struggling relative to the Radeon HD 7900 series and the GTX 500 series, but compared to the GTX 680 it’s only trailing by 4%. This is a test that should cause the gap between the two cards to open up due to the lack of shader performance, but clearly that this not the case. Perhaps we’ve been underestimating the memory bandwidth needs of this test? If that’s the case, given AMD’s significant memory bandwidth advantage it certainly helps to cement the 7970’s lead.
Our next benchmark is SmallLuxGPU, the GPU ray tracing branch of the open source LuxRender renderer. We’re now using a development build from the version 2.0 branch, and we’ve moved on to a more complex scene that hopefully will provide a greater challenge to our GPUs.
SmallLuxGPU on the other hand finally shows us that larger gap we’ve been expecting between the GTX 670 and GTX 680. The GTX 680’s larger number of SMXes and higher clockspeed cause the GTX 670 to fall behind by 10%, performing worse than the GTX 570 or even the GTX 470. More so than any other test, this is the test that drives home the point that GK104 isn’t a strong compute GPU while AMD offers nothing short of incredible compute performance.
For our next benchmark we’re looking at AESEncryptDecrypt, an OpenCL AES encryption routine that AES encrypts/decrypts an 8K x 8K pixel square image file. The results of this benchmark are the average time to encrypt the image over a number of iterations of the AES cypher.
Once again the GTX 670 has a weak showing here, although not as bad as with SmallLuxGPU. Still, it’s enough to fall behind the GTX 570; but at least it’s enough to beat the 7950. Clockspeeds help as showcased by the EVGA GTX 670SC but nothing really makes up for the missing SMX.
Our foruth benchmark is once again looking at compute shader performance, this time through the Fluid simulation sample in the DirectX SDK. This program simulates the motion and interactions of a 16k particle fluid using a compute shader, with a choice of several different algorithms. In this case we’re using an (O)n^2 nearest neighbor method that is optimized by using shared memory to cache data.
For reasons we’ve yet to determine, this benchmark strongly dislikes GTX 670 in particular. There doesn’t seem to be a performance regression in NVIDIA’s drivers, and there’s not an incredible gap due to TDP, it just struggles on the GTX 670. As a result performance of the GTC 670 only hits 42% of the GTX 680, which is well below what the GTX 670 should theoretically be getting. Barring some kind of esoteric reaction between this program and the unbalanced GPC a driver issue is still the most likely culprit, but it looks to only affect the GTX 670.
Finally, we’re adding one last benchmark to our compute run. NVIDIA and the Folding@Home group have sent over a benchmarkable version of the client with preliminary optimizations for GK104. Folding@Home and similar initiatives are still one of the most popular consumer compute workloads, so it’s something NVIDIA wants their GPUs to do well at.
Whenever NVIDIA sends over a benchmark you can expect they have good reason to, and this is certainly the case for Folding@Home. GK104 is still a slouch given its resources compared to GF110, but at least it can surpass the GTX 580. At 970 nanoseconds per day the GTX 670 can tie the GTX 580, while the GTX 680 can pull ahead by 6%. Interestingly this benchmark appears to be far more constrained by clockspeed than the number of shaders, as the EVGA GTX 670SC outperforms the GTX 680 thanks to its 1188MHz boost clock, which it manages to stick to the entire time.
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SlyNine - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
lol twist the words any way you want. They will never mean what you want them to mean.The 7970 came out at 570$ and I didn't think it was a bad value. But at the same time its no 2900XT or 5800ultra.
Right now I do feel Nvidia offers a better value. But their are situations, in very high resolutions and on certain games that AMD performs better. Why you cannot see that Nvidia isn't total domination is beyond me.
SlyNine - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
lol twist the words any way you want. They will never mean what you want them to mean.The 7970 came out at 570$ and I didn't think it was a *good* value. But at the same time its no 2900XT or 5800ultra.
Right now I do feel Nvidia offers a better value. But their are situations, in very high resolutions and on certain games that AMD performs better. Why you cannot see that Nvidia isn't total domination is beyond me.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
You are correct I did twist them, on purpose.Thanks for actually noticing. Note also I didn't twist like that in my other posts.
ROFL - your welcome.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
PS- even though twisted, my point is still 100% valid, and negates the whole pile from chizow, so it means exactly what I said it meant, but putting two and two together is not your strong suit.You went from 5870, skipped the crappy 6970 generation, die shrink, core jump, because it sucked.
You also passed over the overpriced amd 7970.
chizow whines a lot, but you proved him wrong, and used the method I outlined and said most would do and most owning cards have done, not his stupid retentive one upgrade path only dumb as heck complaint.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Dude, just sell the 560 and get the 670 - you can stop the cheetos binging and 2x2liter nighttime soda guzzling to make up the difference. Ebay is your friend.eddman - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
And what's that supposed to prove? There are many games that use HBAO and FXAA, does it mean they are all botched?Disable them both and run the benchmarks. The difference would be none.
Take unreal 3 for example. Let's say it favors nvidia. If so, then how come bulletstorm runs better on 7970?
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
With nVidia card you can just use the upcoming automatic game settings - another gigantic nVidia driver advantage over amd's crap.It's getting far too embarrassing to support amd's crap anymore - there are now numerous absolute fails on amd's part.
It was bad enough when amd didn't pay for PhysX, failed to have openCL in the drivers, had 3 features unchecked in gpu-z that nvidia had covered, failed in DX11 tessellation, was still plagued by the all in wonder corner mouse cursor bug from win98, had no ambient occlusion, cannot support cards going back to the equivalent of nVidia 8 series - but now they're so hammered by so many nVidia advantages beyond all those issues it is embarrassing to the point of humiliating.
No adaptive v-sync now enabled all the way back for nVidia 8 series
No frame rate target
No on the fly power saving adaptive OC.
No 4th monitor for surfing next to the surround eyefinity triples
No driver present taskbar centering for triple monitor (addon amd)
No sneak peek bezel driver support
---
I'll stop because the list is so enormous now - and amd cannot even get working CF drivers going yet for half the games, while nVidia releases with SLI mastery.
NVidia is in a superior position across the board - price, performance, power, drivers, added features, extra features, game day driver releases, and soon a driver optimizer (June ) that they make with their GPU server farms - actually pumping out the work for the gamer - something the embarrassed amd I guess is entirely absent on - while they fire more and more employees - making any sane person clearly see why the drivers that were already suffering are now even worse.
AMD needs to be about half the price of nVidia hardware.
anubis44 - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
...except that nvidia can't seem to make more than a few dozen at a time.It's pathetic that they're pricing the only two GTX600-series cards to undercut AMD, yet they can't seem to build them. Pretty clever marketing gimmick. You price cards so they undercut the competition, and everybody salivates at the prospect of buying one and decides not to buy the AMD card... except they're not really available. Pretty cheap ploy from one of the most hated companies in the business.
I'd be surprised if half of nvidia's board partners didn't go out of business or jump ship to AMD after this supply fiasco.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
This is the 3rd gtx600 series cards, but expecting you to be correct is worse than betting on the broken watch.GTX680 at newegg has outsold the entire amd 7870 and 7850 line up.
Maybe your bean counting should be directed to the corporate pig loser amd ?
At least with nVidia the partners can unload a million backorders when the supply irons out, and 2.5 months after release amd's finally ironed out... it was pathetic until then, so the very thing you spew about partners bailing already happened to amd right ? I mean let's keep your insane spewing consistent across the competition, why not that would be fair..
Congratulations on being so incapable of making a point.
nVidia's partners are counting the backorders and cannot count that high, now they have the even more impressive and winning GTX670 to unload - destroying amd's entire top line.
What were you saying about nVidia partners ? Did your "unconscious" amd inner fanboy totally go bonkers and into insane projection mode ?
It's amd partners that are in trouble now.
LOL
medi01 - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Do you get payed for nVidia for posting crap like that or do you work at nVidia?So much idiotic hate towards a company that wasn't cought doing half of the shit, that nVidia did.