EVGA GeForce GTX 670 Superclocked
Although Nvidia is making its GTX 670 reference design available to add-in board partners, it expects to see a number of custom implementations right out of the gate as well.
EVGA sent us its GeForce GTX 670 Superclocked, which actually employs the same reference dual-slot form factor, but features elevated core (967 MHz), GPU Boost (1046 MHz), and memory (6210 MT/s) frequencies.
At its stock clocks, EVGA’s board offers a nice little performance bump. You can expect to pay $420 for that boosted model—a $20 premium. Many enthusiast won’t be willing to spend the extra money, since the Superclocked card’s overclock is probably well within the reach of manual tweaking. However, the security of EVGA’s three-year warranty on a factory-overclocked component will undoubtedly satisfy risk-adverse gamers who don’t want to bother tweaking on their own.
Interestingly, though, EVGA has a couple of other SKUs planned: a $470 GeForce GTX 670 4 GB and a $490 GeForce GTX 670 4 GB Superclocked.
We know a number of other vendors also have 4 GB models in the works, and the picture of the back of the GeForce GTX 670 PCB on the previous page makes it clear that there are pads on Nvidia's design just waiting for more memory.
Notice that the PCI Express bus is still running at second-gen transfer rates. The same X79-based issue that kept Nvidia from enabling PCIe 3.0 on the GeForce GTX 680 affects the 670, too. For a more thorough explanation (or at least, a more direct hint, I should say), check out page three of GeForce GTX 690 Review: Testing Nvidia's Sexiest Graphics Card.
Overclocking
Of course, enthusiasts who are willing to get their hands dirty can take the GeForce GTX 670 Superclocked and apply EVGA’s superb Precision X utility to it. The recently-updated software facilitates manipulation of Nvidia’s power target, GPU and memory clock offsets, the card’s voltage, and fan speeds. Built-in monitoring makes it easy to keep tabs on power as a percent of rated TDP, clock rate (affected by GPU Boost), and several other variables.
We were able to take the already-overclocked EVGA even higher with a +75 MHz GPU offset and a +50 MHz memory offset, aided by a +22% power target, taking the board power up to about 173 W. At those frequencies, Precision X was reporting core clocks up to 1228 MHz and memory data rates of up to 6302 MT/s.
In most applications, the overclocked EVGA card is able to edge out a stock GeForce GTX 680. In just a couple, the 670 lands in between EVGA's stock clocks and the pricier single-GPU flagship.
All GeForce GTX 670 results in the following pages were generated using a card supplied by Nvidia operating at stock clock rates (915/1502 MHz). EVGA's GeForce GTX 670 Superclocked was only used for the benchmarks on this page. Our SLI results were generated by down-clocking the EVGA board to match Nvidia's.
