GeForce GTX 670 2 GB Review: Is It Already Time To Forget GTX 680?

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Not like it was ever really widely available anyway, right? The GeForce GTX 670 offers most of GK104's on-chip resources, doesn't give up much performance, and costs $100 less. Now, let's see if Nvidia can make enough of them to satisfy demand.

Test Setup And Benchmarks

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Test Hardware
Processors Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) 3.3 GHz at 4.2 GHz (42 * 100 MHz), LGA 2011, 15 MB Shared L3, Hyper-Threading enabled, Power-savings enabled
Motherboard Gigabyte X79-UD5 (LGA 2011) X79 Express Chipset, BIOS F10
Memory G.Skill 16 GB (4 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600, F3-12800CL9Q2-32GBZL @ 9-9-9-24 and 1.5 V
Hard Drive Intel SSDSC2MH250A2 250 GB SATA 6Gb/s
Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2 GB (@ 915/1502 MHz)
Row 5 - Cell 0 Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 4 GB
Row 6 - Cell 0 Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2 GB
Row 7 - Cell 0 AMD Radeon HD 7970 3 GB
Row 8 - Cell 0 AMD Radeon HD 7950 3 GB
Row 9 - Cell 0 AMD Radeon HD 6990 4 GB
Row 10 - Cell 0 Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 3 GB
Row 11 - Cell 0 Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 1.5 GB
Power Supply Cooler Master UCP-1000 W
System Software And Drivers
Operating System Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
DirectX DirectX 11
Graphics Driver Nvidia GeForce Release 301.33 (For GTX 670, GTX 680, GTX 690)
Row 17 - Cell 0 Nvidia GeForce Release 296.10 (For GTX 580 and 590)
Row 18 - Cell 0 AMD Catalyst 12.4 (For HD 7970, HD 7950)
Row 19 - Cell 0 AMD Catalyst 12.2 (For HD 6990)
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
195 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Running to buy it!
    Reply
  • tecmo34
    Great Review Chris!!

    Though there isn't really a performance hit but it would be great to have seen the GTX 670 running at PCIe 3.0.
    Reply
  • borden5
    amd price reduce 2.0 xD
    Reply
  • master9716
    OMFG no 5760x1080 benchmarks again?!! ima have to go to hardware.info or something wow!
    Reply
  • TheBigTroll
    YAHHHHHHH!!! time to get one
    Reply
  • gilgamex101
    "Dude.......seriously!?........you sure?.......wait wait, what about image qual--.....no......looks fine.........awwww.......AWWWWWWW !@#$......!@#$.........!@#$ !^&* *&^%$#@!@.....and you !$%^*(......green peice of !@#$%............GREAT.......JUST BEAUTIFUL.....- AMD in response to 670 GTX reviews
    Reply
  • iceman1992
    $400 is still too high for me... Waiting for something around $225
    Reply
  • rglaredo
    I hate Nvidia and their supply and demand game ...it is obvious that they are just holding off the cards to inflate the prices...I'm going with AMD ....because I'm tired of waiting ...I'm not going to wait anymore ..
    Reply
  • sayantan
    Nice move nV , forcing AMD to drop their prices for entire lineup. A 7970 at $400 would be really awesome...
    Reply
  • godfather666
    The list of games is very unfair to AMD cards. Techpowerup's review, which featured a much longer list of games, had the Radeon HD 7970 faster than the GTX 670 at all resolutions 1080p and higher.

    Nvidia has had a big lead in Dirt 3 and WoW for a very long time. This skews the results.

    The GTX 670 is a fantastic card, don't get me wrong. Just pointing out that it's being slightly overrated here.
    Reply