Manufacturer: Gainward Price: $ 399 US Author: Steve Date: 05/09/2012

[ Introduction ]

Today marks the release of the GeForce GTX 670 GPU from Nvidia and we will be checking out a particularly interesting version from Gainward which is part of their elite Phantom series. Read on as we put the new GTX 670 to the test in more than a dozen video games... Nvidia recently unleashed their Kepler architecture with the GeForce GTX 680 made its debut on the 22th of March. With the aim to deliver the worst fastest GPU for gaming Nvidia succeeded, beating the Radeon HD 7970 by a 7% margin according to our tests. This forced AMD to reduce the MSRP of 7970 from $549 to just $479 making it 4% cheaper than the GeForce GTX 680. Reducing the price of their flagship GPU caused a snowball effect for AMD and we saw price cuts filter all the way down to the 7770. The Radeon HD 7950 dropped from $459 to just $399 making it one of the most tempting 7000 series graphics cards, largely because it had no equal. However that is all about to change as Nvidia is today releasing the new GeForce GTX 670 with an MSRP of $399. The GeForce GTX 670 is built from the DNA of the GTX 680 meaning that it utilizes the same GK104 GPU. There are many other similarities as well, for example it uses 2GB of GDDR5 memory which is again clocked at 6GHz while the new SMX units and GPU Boost technology is also being used. On paper the GeForce GTX 670 doesn’t look as though it is going to be a great deal slower than the GTX 680 and that could spell disaster for AMD. Nvidia says that although they are targeting the Radeon HD 7950 with their pricing they are actually going after the 7970 in terms of performance. The GeForce GTX 670 ships with 1344 CUDA cores and 7 SMX units which is 192 less CUDA cores than the GTX 680 as there is 1 less SMX unit. There are also slightly less TAU’s, 112 down from 128 while the ROPs remain at 32. The memory subsystem of the GeForce GTX 670 is identical to the GTX 680, consisting of four 64-bit memory controllers (256-bit) with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz (DDR). This means that the memory bandwidth remains at 192.2GB/s. The Nvidia specification for the base clock frequency is 915MHz while the typical Boost Clock speed is 980MHz. Gainward has turned up the base clock frequency to 1006MHz while the GDDR5 memory now operates at 6108MHz boosting the memory bandwidth to 195.5GB/s though for the purpose of this review we will be testing this card according to the Nvidia spec for core and memory frequencies.

Table of Contents >>> Introduction <<< Test System Specs & 3Dmark 11 Benchmarks: Aliens vs. Predator, Metro 2033 Benchmarks: Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 Benchmarks: Crysis 2, Dragon Age II Benchmarks: Deus Ex, Hard Reset Benchmarks: DiRT 3, Just Cause 2 Benchmarks: The Witcher 2, The Elder Scrolls V Benchmarks: Alan Wake, King Arthur II Power Consumption & Temperatures Overclocking Performance Conclusion Next Page ->

ProX	Posted on: 05/10/2012 10:52 PM Awesome performance! I want one, no wait two

moot	Posted on: 05/10/2012 11:42 PM Finally it is time to upgrade my 570. Thanks for the review.

railer

Posted on: 05/11/2012 01:53 AM There seems to be a fair bit of stock at the moment. I just ordered two so I can't wait.

billy

Posted on: 05/11/2012 09:42 AM Great review thank you. I cannot find the GTX 670 Phantom which is a shame. This is the card I really want so I will give it another week and then I might get the Asus version.

slider

Posted on: 05/11/2012 10:06 AM WOW Nvidia has dominated AMD with these new cards. At least in the benchmarks anyway, not sure about sales.