NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Review Feat. EVGA: Bringing GK104 Down To $400
by Ryan Smith on May 10, 2012 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Looking at this data I’m reminded a great deal of the Radeon HD 6900 series launch. AMD launched the 6900 series after the GTX 500 series, but launch order aside the end result was very similar. NVIDIA’s second tier GTX 570 and AMD’s first tier Radeon HD 6970 were tied on average but were anything but equals. This is almost exactly what we’re seeing with the GTX 670 and the Radeon HD 7970.
Depending on the game and resolution we’re looking at the GTX 670 reaches anywhere between 80% and 120% of the 7970’s performance. AMD sails by the GTX 670 in Crysis and to a lesser extent Metro, only for the GTX 670 to shoot ahead in BF3 and Portal 2 (w/SSAA). Officially NVIDIA’s positioning on the GTX 670 is that it’s to go against the 7950 and not the 7970, and that’s a wise move on NVIDIA’s behalf; but the GTX 670 is surely nipping at the 7970’s heels.
With that said, there are a couple of differences from the 6900 series launch which are equally important. The first is that unlike last time the GTX 670 and Radeon HD 7970 are not equally priced. At MSRP the GTX 670 is $80 cheaper, while at cheapest retail it’s closer to $60. The second difference is that this time the competing cards are not nearly as close in power consumption or noise, and thanks to GK104 NVIDIA has a notable advantage there.
Much like the GTX 570 and the Radeon HD 6970, if you’re in the market for cards at these performance levels you need to take a look at both cards and see what kind of performance each card gets on the games you want to play. From our results the GTX 670 is doing better at contemporary games and is cheaper to boot, but the Radeon HD 7970 can hold its own here at multi-monitor resolutions and games like Crysis or Metro. Or for that matter it can still run circles around the GTX 670 in GK104's real weakness: compute tasks
On the other hand if you’re buying a gaming card on price then this isn’t a contest. For the Radeon HD 7950 this is the GTX 680 all over again. NVIDIA can’t quite beat the 7950 in every game (e.g. Crysis), but when it loses it’s close, and when it wins it’s 15%, 25%, even 50% faster. At the same time gaming power consumption is also lower as is noise. As it stands the worst case scenario for the GTX 670 is that it performs like a 7950 while the best case scenario is that it performs like a 7970. And it does this priced like a 7950, which means that something is going to have to give the moment NVIDIA’s product supply is no longer in question.
Outside of the obligatory AMD matchup, interestingly enough NVIDIA has put themselves in harm’s way here in the process. At 2560x1600 the GTX 680 only beats the GTX 670 by 7% on average. NVIDIA has always charged a premium for their top card but the performance gap has also been greater. In games that aren’t shader bound the GTX 670 does very well for itself thanks to the fact that it has equal memory bandwidth and only a slight ROP performance deficit, which means the GTX 680 is only particularly strong in Metro, Portal 2, and DiRT 3. The 7% performance lead certainly doesn’t justify the 25% price difference, and if you will give up that performance NVIDIA will shave $100 off of the price of a card, but if you do want that top performance NVIDIA intends to make you pay for it. Of course this is also why the GTX 670 is only priced $100 cheaper rather than $150. Potential buyers looking for a $350 GK104 card are going to be left out in the cold for now, particularly buyers looking for a meaningful GTX 570 upgrade.
Finally, the nature of NVIDIA’s power target technology has put partners like EVGA in an odd place. Even with a moderate 6%+ factory overclock the GTX 670 Superclocked just isn’t all that much faster than the reference GTX 670, averaging only a 3% gain at 2560. Since the GTX 670 virtually always operates above its base clock the culprit is NVIDIA’s power target, which keeps the GTX 670SC from boosting much higher than our reference GTX 670. Once you increase the power target the GTX 670SC can easily make an interesting niche for itself, but while this isn’t true overclocking it isn’t stock performance either. In any case it’s clear that for factory overclocked cards to really push the limit they’re going to need to go fully custom, which is what a number of partners are going to do in the coming months.
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chizow - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Except in this case, the "underdog" AMD initiated this pricing debacle with the terribly overpriced 7970 and the "leader" Nvidia was content to follow, selling their mid-range ASIC GK104 as a high-end SKU.While Nvidia did improve the situation with their GK104 pricing, its still by far, the worst increase we've seen from a price:performance perspective in the last decade of GPUs.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
You're in the GTX670 review, it's $399, it has come out fast, and it's awesome and beats the more epxensive flagship 7970, and destroys and historical price/perf you've got handy.Utter decimates it.
Best in years, best in a decade is now the line you should be using for the GTX670.
Crazyeyeskillah - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
don't buy it if you can't afford it, other people will gladly take your place in line. I'm just glad we have some next gen products from both companies to choose from. If anything we are very fortunate to have so many products available that can max out all our games at present.chizow - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Its not a matter of being able to afford it, its about standards and expectations, which I'm not willing to lower for substandard offerings for products that are neither essential for survival nor expire on their own due to wear.They're high-priced toys and nothing more and there's *PLENTY* of other distractions in that endless category of entertainment to compete with, especially when these new offerings don't offer compelling reasons to upgrade over my last-gen $500 GPUs.
The other consideration is buying these parts at high premiums sets a bad precedence, where the consumer gets *LESS* for their money and similarly gives Nvidia free reign to set a new bar for premium price and performance in the future.
We've already gotten a taste of this with the GTX 690 for $1000!!! What do you think is next with GK110? Why don't you look historically at the reaction to the 8800 Ultra at $830? Nvidia is *STILL* trying to downplay that part and justify their pricing decisions, but with a mid-range ASIC like GK104 selling for $500 premium flagship prices, Nvidia is once again positioned to sell an "Ultra" part at ultra-premium pricing. For what? A part that performs as you would've expected from a $500 flagship to begin with, roughly +50% more than the last-gen flagship.....
Crazyeyeskillah - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
i don't buy any of that wahhhCeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Charlie D from semi-accurate buys it 100%, why no U ?chizow - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Yeah I know, you're too busy blithely buying overpriced GPUs to understand what I'm talking about.CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Maybe if you provided a percentage with a simple texted chart, heck you don't need to do ten years, the doubter could gauge the level of your sourness properly - after all .01% less of a jump in performance below the worst jump in the last ten years fits all of your descriptions 100%.So why are you moaning about .01% ?
SlyNine - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Well when the 7970 came out that was by far the worst. Its alot better now, but I agree this jump hasn't been one for value at all. People don't remember the great videocards I guess. The 5870 was the last one in my eyes.CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
5870 jumped from the 4890. Now please, let's see this enormous perf increase somewhere... as compared to the current.No less than that, the 5870 was replaced by the 6870, also not so great a leap.
We keep hearing about these ephemeral perf increases, but so far NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE has provided even a simple percent increase chart - and you know why ?
Because you people love to quaff out moaning fantasies like "double performance" and says things like "the great GTX880 !" (after of course bitching for a four years it was extremely overpriced and not ever worth it).
So let's see it my friends, where pray tell is this great alluded to but never actually defined gigantic performance increase now not seen ?
4890-5870-6970 ????
Come on now, let's have one of you true believers gum up the work and give us a good percentage comparison we don't have to rip apart for immense biased game picking.
Should take one of you all but 10 minutes. Charts are everywhere.
Use the anand bench for cripes sakes, I'm sick of hearing the moanings and fantasies with no simple effort of a comonly available percentage - and you know why - because I'm calling BS !
Now - let's see it !