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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snakefist - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
"...that the 365mm die is over 43% larger than the 300mm die."die size is in mm2 and NOT in diameter (mm). do your math again... and gtx680 die is 294mm2... to your pleasure, it increases the size difference... the real one, not the 43% you came out with - somehow
now, these were two of the things you learned from me :)
reading more, instead writing would help you, as well anger-management i suggested earlier :)
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
Why then I await your math calculation.I'll let you know now I'll be back after 3 seasons pass to give you time to prepare your answer.
It doesn't surprise me one iota the stupid amd fanboy even increased the nVidia core size for that always needed amd liar cheat, nor that praise for his sanity followed on unopposed except by yours truly. Sometimes letting a liar even have part of his lie and still proving him wrong is good enough.
No need however to correct my shorthand text concerning circular vs rectangular area, but as I imagine the stupidity you are surrounded with inside your own head you thought it a possibility, and it clearly indicates you didn't read the part of the thread discussed as well.
snakefist - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
you do realize that 300mm is about a length of an A4 page, don't you?i don't need to calculate anything, it's clearly that nvidia die is ~20% smaller than amd one...
on the other hand, unlike you, i know how to calculate, maybe that explains why your mistake was so obvious to me...
"stupidity you are surrounded with" - sadly, true - but i'm only surrounded by you... but than again, it's the only reason i even talk to you - it's kinda fun because i don't get angry at all (quite the opposite), and you're spilling poison - seriously, how long you spent on writing that 1,000,000 comments about nvidia being better?
i've spent about half an hour talking to you in total, and for own amusement purposes
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
That's over 22%snakefist - Friday, May 18, 2012 - link
i did right to come back here, more laughter!YOU are correcting ME?
what now, i should calculate 22% decimals, and correct you?
man, i KNOW math, you DON'T. otherwise, it would strike you immediately for 2x mistake you made in post (lets assume square was a type, thought i'm not quite sure).
now ~20% means ABOUT and it is that way because it applies in similar fashion to both bigger-than and less-than scenarios, things you wouldn't of course know anything about
but then again, i proclaim FULL VICTORY for you on math issue, you were right all along, even when you wrote 43, 46 or whatever you did in the first place (without "~" which means "approximate" for you, and you didn't used it, meaning it was exactly 43 (or 46, whatever))
you're mathematical genius and i envy you a great deal on vast amount of hardware knowledge you have. happy?
snakefist - Friday, May 18, 2012 - link
oh, "typo", not "type"CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Here we get it again, since nVidia's 670, the card under review did better than expected, something is wrong..." For reasons that aren’t entirely clear Batman isn’t as shader performance bottlenecked as we would have expected, leading to it doing so well compared to the GTX 680 here. "
Something is wrong, Batman is not so shader bottlenecked, and since it's so easy, the "harvested"(defective according to the reviewer) 670 core can do well.
What happened to the 570 attack this time ? Nothing, since.the 570 beats the 7870 at 2560 here, but since we can't cut the 570 down, we won't mention it.
Instead of mentioning the 670OC beats the amd flagship at the highest resolution 5760x1200, the reviewer has to play that down, so only mentions the 670OC "coming to parity" with the 6970 at middle resolution, 2560, after the STOCK 670 beats the amd 7970 at the low 1920 resolution !
ROFL - once again the analysis favors and coddles amd.
" EVGA’s overclock, even if it’s once again only around 3%, is just enough to close that gap and to bring the GTX 670 to parity with the GTX 680 and the 7970. "
No, the OC shows the 670 beating the 7970 at the highest triple screen 5760 resolution, and the STOCK 670 BEATS THE 7970 at the lowest resolution, 1920... so somehow "that's parity".
How the heck does that work ?
Do we hear once in all this game page commentary what the 7950 at the very same $399 as the 670 price is doing ?
I don't think we do.
Where is that ?
Instead of attacking the 7950 that is currently the same price as the 670, we get the reviewer over and over again attacking the GTX570 that he notes nVidia mentioned to him, making him think the GTX570 will be part of nVidia's line up for some time he states. Not once did he point out how well the GTX570 did against the amd competition.
Not once do swe hear how the 7950 costs the same but loses, loses loses. Nothing specific.
Instead we hear 670 vs 680 or attack the 570, or make excuses for the 7970 or call it inexplicable..
medi01 - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Can someone ban this zealot please?sausagefingers - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
+1CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
You can blame silverblue who begged for proof about the bias in these articles. Go call your buddy so you can both smack talk about me, or heck post it here openly like you do, why not you're innocent no matter what you do as an amd fanboy, right ?