Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 Review

Nvidia may have taken their time with Kepler, but the end result speaks for itself. They’ve managed to deliver an excellent high-end solution, while keeping the power draw and temperatures in check and to top it all, launch it at a very aggressive price. Since then, they’ve launched the GTX 690, a monster of a card, which combines two Kepler cores on a single PCB. While this is a great exercise, it’s not the most practical solution. Gamers were waiting for a more budget friendly Kepler solution, something with the performance of a GTX 580, but priced closer to the GTX 570, and today Nvidia's launched just that. The GTX 670 was designed to take down AMD’s HD 7950 and also meant as a replacement for the GTX 580. The card hasn’t been stripped down too much, so we can expect up to 85 percent of the power of the GTX 680.  

Decent design and build

Design and Build
The card is a lot smaller and lighter than the GTX 680, which should make it easier to install in slightly cramped cases as well. The outer shell is made up of mostly plastic and isn’t as much of a looker as compared to the GTX 680, but it gets the job done. There’s a single blower style fan at the end used to channel air directly out through the rear vents. The power plugs are placed more or less towards the middle of the card and side by side, rather than one below the other, like on the GTX 680.

A highlight of the specs

Just like the GTX 680, the GTX 670 also supports 3DVision Surround, so we have two DVI ports, HDMI and DisplayPort. The rest of the space is occupied by the exhaust vents. The card also has the Geforce GTX branding on the side, but it’s not backlit like on the GTX 690. The card supports four-way SLI, along with other features that come with the SMX architecture. The card uses aluminium heatsinks with a copper base in order to dissipate heat, which is why it’s so light. Overall, Nvidia's done a decent job with the design and build and while many AIB partners will be using the same design, we can expect custom GTX 670s to arrive shortly from MSI, Galaxy, etc.

Features
Like we mentioned earlier, Nvidia hasn’t neutered the card too much, except for a bit of the clock speed and the number of shaders. The GTX 670 comes with 1344 CUDA cores (GTX 680 had 1536) and the clock speed has been dropped a bit to 915MHz with the GPU Boost frequency set to 980MHz. Thankfully they haven’t touched the memory and you still get 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 6Gbps. With this, they’ve managed to drop the TDP down to 170W, which is very good for a high-end card. Nvidia recommends a PSU of 500W and above for the GTX 670, which is quite reasonable if you ask us.

Two 6-pin power connectors are present

Since the GTX 670 is based on the same SMX architecture, you automatically inherit all the features of Kepler, including GPU Boost, Adaptive V-sync, FXAA, TXAA and 3D Vision Surround. 

Testbench

• Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40 GHz
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE P67A-UD3R
• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (4GB x 2) @1600MHz
• Hard drive: Intel SSD 520 240GB (Boot Drive), WD Velociraptor 300GB (Secondary Drive)
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 670
• PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000W
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit