GTX 670 launch day!

[lordkosc]

I've been waiting for this day for a good month. I got online around 11am and life was good...

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8950/400x218pxll772fac172004.jpgxll772fac172004.jpg/http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8950/400x218pxll772fac172004.jpg

A good 15+ reviews (http://www.ninjalane.com/newspost5741.aspx)so far, screenshots, graphs, forums a blaze with posts. How I love the smell of fresh PC hardware in the morning!

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_363015122_3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000797571&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=top-1&pf_rd_r=7714BB57AD444441A0B1&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_p=1367981182&pf_rd_i=gtx%20670)is pretty much sold out, Newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600030348%20600315498%20600311820&IsNodeId=1&name=GeForce%20GTX%20670&Order=PRICE&Pagesize=20)is starting to sell out.

I got myself a Gigabyte GTX670, to replace my aging Evga GTX460.

Anyone else get a card today?

[LMN8R]

Wow. Even the non-overclocked version is only a few FPS behind the 680 in most cases.

[stusser]

Still too expensive. Where's the $300 card?

[Crater]

I love buying new hardware - my wallet, not so much. The new 670 looks nice, but I don't think I can justify upgrading from my 570 at this time. At least, not for $399.

[Jason Becker]

Looks like another round of price cuts coming from AMD.

[lordkosc]

Still too expensive. Where's the $300 card?

A few forums mention the GTX660 will be 4-5 months away. And nvidia has been silent on any news regarding it. So who knows...

[Paul_cze]

AMD better lower their prices.
And nVidia too, afterwards.

[Alistair]

Seems to be on the noisy side?

[Starlight]

Still too expensive. Where's the $300 card?

*pokes ATI*

(They dropped the 7900's and the 7700's but not the 7800's too. WTF?)

[Farscry]

I snagged an EVGA superclocked model. I lurves me some EVGA 3-year warranty. ;) I've been waiting for a 670 to launch too.

[lordkosc]

I figured all cards had a 3 year warranty? D:

I gotta go check Gigabyte's site now, lol.

[Farscry]

I'm not sure. I've just always had good experiences with EVGA cards, so I tend to stick with them.

[serling]

I've been considering a new graphics card for a long time. I have a GTX 285, which has been serviceable but not ideal for my use.

Is this the time to act?

[lordkosc]

Depends on your CPU type and speed really, else the video card will be held back.

[Vesper]

My 680 step-up through EVGA still hadn't come through, so I changed mine over to a 670 today. $60 upgrade from my 570 and I'm #11 in the wait list. Can't beat it!

[lordkosc]

Nice! Amazon is shipping my card on the 16th , the day AFTER Diablo 3 comes out...

:p

[John Reynolds]

I just ordered a slightly o/c 670 by MSI on Newegg. A friend is buying my 570 for $150, and reading Anand's review here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga/1 convinced me of the huge upgrade it is over my 570 at 2560x1600. Newegg had free shipping too, couldn't resist.

[Tim James]

Wow. Even the non-overclocked version is only a few FPS behind the 680 in most cases.Huh, you weren't kidding. At 1920x1200, maybe I'll just grab the 670 and feel a little less guilty.

It's hard to get excited about buying a new videocard in the summer though. There's nothing coming out for a while, unlike last year with The Witcher 2. I'd love to dial up the graphics in Rise of Flight right now. But 12 months between videocards is a little short for me.

[Equisilus]

I got myself a Gigabyte GTX670, to replace my aging Evga GTX460.

I was pondering doing the same, but I'm unsure what the effect of having a PCI Express 2.0 mobo will have on all the benchmarks for the 670. If that hobbles it so much as to make it less worthwhile, I would wait until I build a new system (which is coming due in the next 8-12 months anyway).

[HighPlainsDrifter]

I haven't heard if the 670 is different, but so far there has been little to no difference between PCIE 2 and 3 for a large majority of tasks especially for a single vidcard environment. iirc there can be differences for gpgpu workloads but effect on games is minimal.

[lordkosc]

Yeah there is no difference on games from what I've read on other forums, the pci-e 2.0 bandwidth is still fine for this card.

It is a 16x slot after all. So.... v2.x: 8 GB/s (80 GT/s) capacity each direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

[Farscry]

Woo! It's waiting for me at home! ;) Just gotta run errands quick after work, then its sexy silicon time!

[Farscry]

Wow. I knew it would be a step up from my 560ti (yes, I am a consumer whore), but wow! It's a BIG step up!

[Equisilus]

Yeah there is no difference on games from what I've read on other forums, the pci-e 2.0 bandwidth is still fine for this card.

It is a 16x slot after all. So.... v2.x: 8 GB/s (80 GT/s) capacity each direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

Ah, thanks. That takes care of that minor concern. Might have to upgrade sooner rather than later.

[Farscry]

Hey, if you got an EVGA 670 (like I did), be sure to push it hard for the first couple weeks or so. There was at least one bad batch that they've acknowledged, and you want to find out quickly if your card was one of them so you can get a replacement via the warranty.

[Blips]

Building a new comp in August. It's been long overdue, and I cannot wait to slide one of these in :D

[gmonkey]

Hey, if you got an EVGA 670 (like I did), be sure to push it hard for the first couple weeks or so. There was at least one bad batch that they've acknowledged, and you want to find out quickly if your card was one of them so you can get a replacement via the warranty.

That just happened with some cards of the first batch of the Superclocked variety.

If you have a reference card or a FTW, there's nothing to worry about.

[Ender]

Building a new comp in August. It's been long overdue, and I cannot wait to slide one of these in :D

Built on the backs of Pandemic 2.5 sales.

[Farscry]

That just happened with some cards of the first batch of the Superclocked variety.

If you have a reference card or a FTW, there's nothing to worry about.

I got one of the Superclocked because they tend to bin the better chips for the SC boards over the reference boards, and if I'm going to splurge that crazily on a graphics card, I'll throw another $20 for a better-binned GPU.

I'm not particularly upset; EVGA has done right by me in the past, so if I run into problems I suspect it will work out reasonably well.

[Blips]

Built on the backs of Pandemic 2.5 sales.
Ha! Perhaps...

[gmonkey]

I got one of the Superclocked because they tend to bin the better chips for the SC boards over the reference boards, and if I'm going to splurge that crazily on a graphics card, I'll throw another $20 for a better-binned GPU.

I'm not particularly upset; EVGA has done right by me in the past, so if I run into problems I suspect it will work out reasonably well.

If your SC has a problem you'll get an FTW as a replacement, apparently.

[Tim James]

I think I might grab this today. We don't expect ATI or Nvidia to release any other single-card gaming GPUs until at least the next calendar year, right?

If ATI releases another series early next year I imagine they will leapfrog again. But I really want to try Nvidia this time around.

Can any 60 fps whores comment on performance? I'm not interested in timedemo numbers as much as a list of games that can be maxed out without ever dipping below 60.

[Farscry]

Everything I've thrown at this card with settings maxxed out has pretty much kept up at 60fps with vsync on. Diablo 3 has occasionally dropped below 60, but with adaptive vsync on I never notice the difference unless I glance at the fps meter. (adaptive vsync wasn't on by default, just regular vsync, so it was very obvious whenever the fps would dip under 60)

Now granted, I haven't tried out Crysis or Metro 2033 yet, but I've run Ultra-setting Battlefield 3 at 1920*1080 (my native resolution) and it's staying nicely in that 60fps range much of the time.

If you want that little extra "oomph" to avoid those sub-60 moments, it might be worth jumping up to a full GTX680.

[LMN8R]

I love Adaptive vsync, but I wonder how much of it is a "hack" of sorts rather than an on-hardware solution. In Diablo 3 I had to disable it since it caused hitching every couple seconds, even if the in-game vsync option was disabled. So for D3 I just used the in-game option.

[Tim James]

I'm surprised it can't hold 60 fps in Diablo 3! I didn't realize that game had enough options to push it that far.

The minimum framerates didn't look that much better with the 680. I certainly don't mind an occasional dip below 60 since I'm enjoying a lot of games now with worse performance than that. Just wondering.


I love Adaptive vsync.... In Diablo 3 I had to disable it since it caused hitching every couple secondsSo does it work better on some games than others? I'm really eager to try it and see if it helps my personal (and relatively new) sensitivity to microstutter and low framerates.

[Alistair]

There's that site which measures 99th percentile frametimes which you might like. Techreport I think? So they're looking for micro-hitches.

[lordkosc]

I moved my Gigabyte 670 from my old Antec P180 to my new Antec P280 case that arrived from Amazon today, oh how I love the cable management system.

Pic of case (http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/361/casegtx670.jpg)

Old card / new card (http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/8681/img1102re.jpg)

The windforce tri-fan cooler is so freaking quiet. :D

[Farscry]

I'm surprised it can't hold 60 fps in Diablo 3! I didn't realize that game had enough options to push it that far.

I'm not entirely sure what pushes the card hard enough, but it's only in a few very specific locations in the game, so I suspect it's something just not optimized properly in those spots. In most places I'm hitting 90-120 fps quite commonly when I unlock the vsync.

[Tim James]

There's that site which measures 99th percentile frametimes which you might like. Techreport I think? So they're looking for micro-hitches.Ah yes, I almost forgot about them. Their 670 review is useless because it's all at 5760x1600. I tried to guesstimate based on the 680 review instead. If you look at frame times instead of average framerates, the 670 is a lot closer to my 6970 than I was hoping.

Also, those graphs point out how Arkham City is problematic in general. All cards had frequent frame time spikes. I hoped to play that one with DX11 features. I wish they could run The Witcher 2 as well. I have my suspicions about that engine.

So the article mostly makes me wish for the day when we have standard benchmarking tools and giant databases full of individual results at a variety of settings.

[Blips]

Wow, I just checked out the Techreport benchmarks. I was worried that the 670 would not be able to handle games at 2560 x 1440, but the frame rates look pretty decent at that absurd 5760 x 1200.

[Alistair]

I think I'll wait and see what Metro Last Light and ArmA III require.

A few reviews have mentioned fan noise, but this one (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/) is very positive about the custom cooler...

http://i.imgur.com/1ohBtl.gif

[mono]

I moved my Gigabyte 670 from my old Antec P180 to my new Antec P280 case that arrived from Amazon today, oh how I love the cable management system.

Pic of case (http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/361/casegtx670.jpg)

Old card / new card (http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/8681/img1102re.jpg)

The windforce tri-fan cooler is so freaking quiet. :D

Nice clean case. You have a lot of hard drives.

[Alistair]

Cables really lower the tone inside a PC. There should be some solid state solution.

[Tim James]

A few reviews have mentioned fan noise, but this one (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/) is very positive about the custom cooler...Now where can I get one? That review definitely makes me want to wait a few weeks for a card with factory overclock and aftermarket cooling. I've never purchased one before. It's something I no longer feel like doing myself.

[lordkosc]

get the Gigabyte 670 , custom 3 fan cooler, custom PCB, factory overclock , and its at list price $399.99 , I love mine. :)


Asus custom heatsink pics here. (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/4.html)

Gigabyte custom heatsink pics here. (http://www.hitechlegion.com/reviews/video-cards/17774)

[Tim James]

I've seen some people mention vsync stutter, which are the two most alarming words you could possibly say to me about a videocard. They blame it on drivers, and expect Nvidia to fix it in June. Anyone know more about this? Maybe I should wait.

I knew Nvidia wasn't perfect either, but this is disappointing. ATI hasn't screwed anything up since RAGE at least.

[Armando Penblade]

I've seen some people mention vsync stutter, which are the two most alarming words you could possibly say to me about a videocard. They blame it on drivers, and expect Nvidia to fix it in June. Anyone know more about this? Maybe I should wait.

I knew Nvidia wasn't perfect either, but this is disappointing. ATI hasn't screwed anything up since RAGE at least.

I assume that you're referring to the game and not the chipset, because if you say ATI hasn't made a blunder since 1995, I will actually die. Which would be bad.

;)

[Alistair]

That would be a more useful review than the endless identical GPU benchmark runs. Fifty titles, assessed for AMD/NVidia driver issues.

[LMN8R]

normal vsync is perfectly smooth. I was talking about adaptive vsync in just one game which has minor stuttering (Diablo 3)

[Tim James]

I forgot you had mentioned it. I was just going by random Internet reports.

I doubt there will be a price drop in the next month. Maybe if I see a good card I will buy it and try it. I can always reinstall the 6970! I was going to sell it on eBay at some point.

[Alistair]

Now where can I get one? That review definitely makes me want to wait a few weeks for a card with factory overclock and aftermarket cooling. I've never purchased one before. It's something I no longer feel like doing myself.

Here you go (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121637) :)

In stock right now...

[Farscry]

You know, the last time I was this impressed and happy with a video card was with an overclocked ti4200. That card was freakin' AWESOME. The 670 is definitely an amazing deal for spending 80% what you would for a 680.

[Tim James]

Here you go (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121637) :)

In stock right now...But I could get the Gigabyte with a faster overclock and less money! Now what...

[lordkosc]

Well the Gigabyte is OOS...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125423

Egg usually refills stock every 2-3 days though.

[Blips]

Try and get this model, extra 2 gigs of memory: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=71247&vpn=04G-P4-2671-KR&manufacture=eVGA&promoid=1067 (that price is Canadian)

[Tim James]

I was casually checking for new stock this afternoon and noticed the EVGA FTW edition at Amazon and ASUS TOP edition at Newegg. The EVGA was $420 shipped and looked good with the 680 reference board and cooler. But I decided to spend the extra $17 (including shipping, dammit!) on the ASUS just to make sure it's extra cool and quiet. I don't have a good handle on videocard noise tests -- sometimes they end up noisier than what the numbers indicate. So I wanted to make sure.

The ASUS is also clocked slightly faster. That way I won't be tempted to overclock further, which I'd prefer not to do for videocards right now.

[Vesper]

Got my 670 the other day. It's a reference card from EVGA. Without messing around much, I've overclocked the core to +130 MHz, and the memory to +300 MHz. Compeltely stable and my machine now gets over 10k on 3Dmark 11. Also, I can't hear the fan on this thing unless I manually crank it to 80% or higher.

[Tim James]

I got mine a day early. When I first brought my PC up I thought monitor seemed a little brighter than I like. Maybe it's my imagination.

Here's a quick report of what settings I can hold 60 fps. By that I mean 60 fps except every now and then if I turn really quickly it might drop a few fps as it loads assets. That doesn't bother me.

Batman: AC - still has that terrible caching hitch as you fly around the city. It will do it even if I disable PhysX, AA and DX11. Sometimes it's perfectly smooth at 60 fps down at ground level, but it drops framerate a little more with those settings enabled. It looks fantastic so this is a real shame. The engine is just broken. They made some improvements to DX11 in a patch last December but it wasn't enough. I'll see what I can do here to play through it on NG+.

Crysis 2: sits at about 50 fps in the first open area on Ultra. I had to enable triple buffering because the CryEngine tends to lock itself at 30 fps in certain scenes with Vsync enabled. Despite that framerate I may just play it maxed out to enjoy the eye candy. We'll see.

Rise of Flight: maxed out except for forest view distance. I also need to figure out what to set AA to. It slows way down with 10 planes on screen. Maybe I need to overclock my CPU. I still get TrackIR stutter as expected. It's a known issue with my MS FFB2 joystick. :(

Witcher 2: maxed out other than ubersampling and some features I disabled by preference. No more stutter like I had on the 6970! Yay!

DXHR: no more stutter with soft shadows enabled like I had on the 6970! Yay!

Napoleon: no more stutter on the campaign screen and with particles set higher than medium. Yay! Still down at 40 fps in battle maxed out. I'll have to play with it.

Metro 2033: lolno. 25 fps in the first open room at the beginning of the game that has ludicrous graphical effects going on.

DoWII Retribution: the benchmark drags it down to the 40s with a lot going on, but I doubt that's typical. I might play another campaign of this to watch the effects.

Skyrim: maxed out from the options menu, no surprise. But! I still had that barely perceptible "low framerate" feeling in certain areas. Like with the 6970, it goes away if I play in a borderless window. It was the game the whole time. Sorry for blaming you on that one, ATI.

Just Cause 2 used to hitch with ATI but I haven't gotten past the intro so I can't test in the known locations.

I still need to play with ArmA 2 a bit in DayZ. Though I've heard busy servers in that mod can affect framerate anyway. I'll probably leave shadows off so I can see better, and get as much anti-aliasing as I can.

Overall I'm fairly pleased. I bought it for Rise of Flight, which is going to look great. I also wanted to go back and max out some recent games, but Batman and Crysis 2 are going to be tough. I expected that so I can't let it disappoint me.

It's deeply satisfying to compare Nvidia against ATI for all my problems with hitching and stutter. Now I know I'm not going crazy! I know it's either the ATI card or the game.

I didn't notice any vsync stutter. I still have to try adaptive vsync.

[gmonkey]

What resolution and AA settings are you playing with?

[Tim James]

What resolution and AA settings are you playing with?1920x1200 with a stock i5-2500K. I'm not super picky about aliasing these days, so I generally set it to "enabled" or 2xMSAA or 4xFXAA. Something like that. I don't bother pushing it or experimenting with the control panel unless I'm about to play the game. I'd rather hold 60 fps always than make the game look sharper with an occasional framerate dip. Your results may vary if you're an anti-aliasing junkie. Same with higher resolutions. But I find the framerate charts aren't always as useful as firing it up and looking around to check smoothness, especially when there are driver issues (ATI). More games:

BF3: I didn't mess with this much. It kept 60 set to Ultra with SSAO instead of HBAO, and no MSAA. Maybe it can go higher. I don't care right now.

AvP3: maxed out, which is a surprise. DX11 shadows killed my 6970 when aliens moved near flares.

Crysis Warhead: nope. Maxed out was 40 fps in the first level. I wonder if the game was designed for a different era of videocards, so it doesn't efficiently use modern capabilities.

Dragon Age 2: can't do 60 with 8xAA or depth of field. But it no longer stutters with DX11 enabled. Yay! Too bad I don't plan to replay this game.

RAGE: I forgot they added some new options in February. It said I didn't have enough CPU cores to do detailed textures, and they were right. I could spin around in certain areas and watch the textures load in for a second. No big deal, it's still fast and looks great.

Bulletstorm: maxed out, though the framerate flutters around 60 a bit.

Cryostasis: screwy engine. Can't set shadows to high or framerate dips to 40 every time the character breathes. I guess that's why most games try to keep the view static to avoid that. I also can't enable blur or anisotropic filtering (oddly enough) without dipping. It drops a little during some of the gratuitous PhysX effects. It's not the most efficient engine. It's probably hopeless at this point.

Far Cry 2: still stutters badly. Probably the engine.

STALKER CoP: Complete: it renders at 60. I didn't try AA. Like always, it will hitch for a second as I run around. The engine doesn't stream assets very well. It's playable though.

STALKER CS: Complete: 30s in the first camp maxed out with 4xAA and highest quality transparency AA. It's one of the toughest tests on a videocard with sunrays, intricate structures, and lots of shadows. The mod dials it up a notch too. It looks gorgeous and so unlike most bloomy games. But we're not there yet on performance.

Magicka: ha, it still stutters slightly. Stupid game, though it's less than it was with ATI.

Portal 2: I had to set fps_max to 60 to avoid stuttering before. Even without that it seems to be improved. I didn't look at it very closely. The fun part about clean simple engines like this one is I can crank the AA. It looks so sharp.

[Tim James]

I was too lazy to find the map in Dirt 3 I was talking about.

World in Conflict: it doesn't hitch anymore. I'm pretty sure ATI fixed that eventually though. The explosions in the benchmark are tough, but that's an atypical case.

Assassin's Creed: I can increase LOD from 2 to 4 and keep 60 fps in the first town now. Everything else maxed. Maybe it's time to slog through this.

I think I'm out of games to test. I'll post in the DayZ and RoF threads if I notice any interesting performance.

Overall I'm happy with the card. I wish it was just a bit better in Crysis 2. Maybe I will break down and spend the time to overclock. I'm also very disappointed by a couple game engines.

[Blips]

Far Cry 2: still stutters badly. Probably the engine.


I've an old dual core machine with a 260gtx and I've no stuttering issues with Far Cry 2 at 1920 x 1200.

[Tim James]

I've an old dual core machine with a 260gtx and I've no stuttering issues with Far Cry 2 at 1920 x 1200.Does it stay at 60 fps? If not it might be hard to tell. They're occasional hitches as I drive around or pan around.

There's a small chance it's the drivers on both brands, or something with modern videocard design. It might also be another hardware issue on my PC that trips up certain games. In any case, I'm much more confident with my observations now that I've tried two different cards. Fortunately it's mostly old games I don't care that much about. The only heartbreaker is Batman.

[Tim James]

Apparently I didn't understand this so-called vsync stutter problem. Because I do have it, and it's no big deal at all.

I went back to the YouTube videos. From what they showed, it's only a brief hitch every minute or so. These people live a spoiled existence if they think that's a problem. Try an ATI card with Dragon Age 2 in DX11, or scrolling the campaign map in Napoleon: Total War. That's miserable. This "vsync stutter" is an occasional hitch that feels like the engine loading assets.

I guess I'm lucky because it doesn't bother me. It also means those occasional 2-3 fps dips I mentioned should be gone later this month when Nvidia fixes it. Sounds great.

[Tim James]

One other odd thing: a couple of games have detected my refresh rate as 59.something Hz.

[Mike O'Malley]

59.94? That would be NTSC's 29.97 times two.

[Tim James]

No, sometimes it comes up as just 59 as well. This never happened with my last card. Very weird.

[Vesper]

I've seen that a lot on recent video cards. Sometimes even Windows reports refresh rates of 59.9 or 60.