NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Review Comment Thread

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by raghu78

You talk about karma to me a Indian Hindu Brahmin. I know my religion and my philosophy. FYI the concept of karma is work with complete devotion but without attachment to results or material gains. The more the attachment with results the more the pain/pleasure and more easily the person can waver or lose composure when faced with significant hurdles. Its very easy to talk but impossible for ordinary people to achieve. So lets leave it there.

"6 series kicks the snot out of the AMD 7 series." There can't be something further from the truth. People who have had both the cards and overclocked them have given their opinions. The HD 7970 competes very well with the GTX 680. Especially when you consider overclocking both the cards. They are not running a business like you do. Yours is a business. Any business will have its own business interests to protect. We don't know your website's relationship with Nvidia.
Everything what you say has an extreme tone to it. There doesn't seem to be an objective tone at all. Hardly befitting a tech product reviewer. And the worst part is you are calling me a paid troll. You have got down to that level because you don't have a hold of your emotions. You see there is enough evidence I have shown from other websites that its not all objective here. Thats what got you irritated. Anyway I will leave it at this. If your administrators want to ban me thats fine. They couldn't enforce their rules on you who is an employee of their website. Speaks a lot about objectivity.

Actually, he has been well within the rules of objective debate, it was you with your swearing that crossed the line and earned you the infraction.


Enough, this is about the GTX670. Next comment that doesn't directly related will result in a few days vacation from the site. Since SSwilsons warning was ignored, this is mine.

-ST

[SKYMTL]

Woah. This thread blew up. I'll post a full response when I'm not on my phone. However, I do want to say that EVERYONE has brought up good points. Yes, even Mr. Raghu78. :)

However, I'll ban anyone ....and I MEAN ANYONE....that brings religion into this thread again. Let's keep it civil.

I'll take every critique I can get. However, I can say this until I am blue in the face: I am not paid by NVIDIA nor Intel nor AMD (trust me, I've been blamed of every one). Nor is any site that I know about. Mr Ragu, while I cannot prove this without divulging far too much financial info, I can say that this site is run with nearly every penny of ad money going back into the site. Even though it has become quite popular, HWC remains a complex hobby of mine rather than a full time income source. I work a successful 9-5 job and to be honest, it keeps me grounded in reality so I don't need ad revenue as my primary source of income like so many other site out there.

HOWEVER, some of the very sites quoted in this thread ARE known for exchanging review space (NOT positive reviews mind you) for ad space.

[ipaine]

Ummm, wow. So anyways back onto this card, damn it sure does good. But there is one thing about them that kind of bugs me, their price. Really I mean now my 580's are worth even less so selling them to get something like the 690 just is not going to work that well.

Ah well I'll keep the 580's for now, sure the 670-680s are great, they are not great enough to bother moving from the 580 SLI.

Anyways great work on the review Sky, like always.

[BukitHedd]

Wow. I jumped into a weird conversation. The "Last Page" of this thread was 7 earlier today.

I ordered the EVGA Superclocked 670 Thursday evening from Newegg.ca. This will be my first video card!!

Hopefully I'll get it next week. I think it will look kickass in my white Silverstone Raven case, since the Evga 670 has that white detail on the side.

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by ipaine

Ummm, wow. So anyways back onto this card, damn it sure does good. But there is one thing about them that kind of bugs me, their price. Really I mean now my 580's are worth even less so selling them to get something like the 690 just is not going to work that well.

Ah well I'll keep the 580's for now, sure the 670-680s are great, they are not great enough to bother moving from the 580 SLI.

Anyways great work on the review Sky, like always.

IMO, this is really the most interesting dynamic in today's world of GPU upgrades.... outside of new features like 3D, and barring a major upgrade to a person's display resolution, there aren't any new games which look to be stressing out last year's mid - high end hardware, let alone this year's offerings.

Is there a new crysis in the making, or has the fact that the great majority of graphics intensive games are console ports made stressing out PC gaming a thing of the past?

[BukitHedd]

Crysis 3 IS in the making, I think. And there's a Mech combat game, Mechwarrior Online, based on the Crysis engine coming out this summer. I think "Will it run Crysis?" will be the question again, soon.

[BigPhatPaulie]

Crysis 3 is coming at the end of the year.... its running an improved engine (IMO looks like frostbite might have competition here) but other than that and that mech game no high res games for a while eh?

[SKYMTL]

So let's tackle this one thing at a time, shall we?

I have to say your Eyefinity results for BF3 in HD 7970 in the recent GTX 670 review are really suspicious. The gap between HD 7970 and GTX 680 has increased significantly from your previous reviews.

Can you show me how it is suspicious? You quoted a bunch of websites, none of which uses the same benchmark sequence as I do. I see LegitReviews, which uses Rock and a Hard Place, but judging from their lone screenshot, they benchmark at the beginning of the level, which isn't anywhere near as demanding as our section. This isn't anything against their practices but it highlights how you can't randomly pick a review and assume it makes your case for you. We're completely transparent about the sections and length of our benchmark runs.

As you will see in an upcoming article, in the course of a few driver revisions from NVIDIA, they have significantly improved their performance in BF3. AMD on the other hand has experienced performance LOSSES in some cases.

What you also fail to realize is that we were only of the ONLY sites that reported NVIDIA's kneecapping in Shogun 2 due to an idiotic driver screw up by Creative Assembly. If it wasn't for that patch, NVIDIA's cards would have been EVEN FURTHER ahead of AMD's once it came time to divvy the marks.

I have spoken to a user in ******* forum who has tested both HD 7970 and GTX 680 in multi monitor. His opinion is very clear . the HD 7970 is faster.

I'll put this as diplomatically as possible: so what? Some random user says one thing. Someone else could post another. I'll take my own results over those of a single forum user any day of the week.

The HD 7970 is faster than the GTX 680 and GTX 670 significantly at Eyefinity resolutions

Really? Seriously? Wow....I never knew that...... :



If that doesn't debunk your accusations, let's quote from the article:

....they now have to contend with a card that retails for the same price as a HD 7950 but runs dead even with a HD 7970 in everything except multi monitor resolutions.

FYI operation swordbreaker is the most demanding level in BF3.

B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.

If a site says that, they are simply too damn lazy to play past the first level of the game. They use this "most demanding level" crap as a way to justify their lack of in-game knowledge.

Originally Posted by raghu78

You can take a look at that website. The demanding games they chose like Alan Wake, Witcher 2 Enhanced edition, Anno 2070, Metro 2033, Crysis 2 portray the HD 7970 in different light. Other than Metro 2033 the rest of the games released in the last 12 months and are quite popular.

Wait a sec here....you want me to take a site that tests a $399 GPU at a SINGLE RESOLUTION 1080P seriously? Are you kidding me? Yeah, some of those tests aren't CPU limited at ALL....

AMD needs to catch up and thats what its doing with GCN and HD 7970.

GCN is AMD's answer to Fermi. They are now quite evidently a generation behind.

Originally Posted by raghu78

Do you realise the HD 7950 and HD 7970 can compete extremely well with GTX 670 and GTX 680 when all the cards are overclocked to their best

Really? I have seen a few GTX 680 cards that can hit 1.5GHz Boost clock with a minor voltage increase. I can't remember the last time I was able to get a HD 7970 + some extra voltage to hit 1.2GHz with any kind of stability. At those speeds, the GeForce cards will simply mop the floor with AMD's best. Essentially, you are comparing apples and oranges like many do when they don't understand how GPU Boost works in relation to PowerTune.

And no, a GPU-Z screenshot or a 3DMark11 run doesn't equate stability.

Do you know that there are lots of people who use the GPU for serious GPGPU work or for running GPGPU enabled day to day apps like Adobe Photoshop, video editing software like vReveal etc. Look at Apple's machines. They are very popular because of their video and photo editing software from Apple. Do you want to know how many people take photos and shoot videos and work with them on their PC. I guess the answer to that is very clear from youtube.

I fail to see your point. A GTX 670 will perform just as well as a HD 7970 in GPGPU apps. The same can be said of a HD 7970 and a GTX 680. The reason for this is due to the fact that these high end GPUs only need a tiny fraction of their processing power for GPGPU apps. It usually falls to how well a given company can optimize their drivers for a certain application.

A good example of this is MediaEspresso. NVIDIA and AMD perform similarly to one another from one GPU to the next (minus entry level stuff, but we're not talking about that here) and yet, here comes Intel with their INTEGRATED GPUs and blows both companies out of the water.

Originally Posted by raghu78

I have looked at ******* and they have a good way of benchmarking with fraps recording gameplay sequences. Their BF3 results are much closer than what I see here. They do a benchmark of "Operation Swordbreaker" which is the most difficult level in the game

******* - Battlefield 3 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Video Card Review

"Much closer"?

******* shows a 20% win for the GTX 670 at 2560 x 1600
WE show a 30% win for the GTX 670 at 2560 x 1600

10% isn't all that much considering the massive difference from one mission to another.

And here I see a GTX 670 defeating a HD 7970 in Eyefinity easily. It baffles me.

Can you show me a site that tested the GTX 670 and HD 7970 in multi monitor resolutions with the latest drivers from each and used our exact benchmark sequence? No? Didn't think so. As such, you can't make assumption based upon apples versus oranges comparisons. For all we know, AMD's performance may have issues with some elements of the section I test with.

Is benchmarking truly a science or art ? What is the point of these benchmarks if there can be so much differences between one site and the rest ?

As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.
- Albert Schweitzer


Honestly man, while I recommend EVERYONE reads MULTIPLE sites, it sounds like you are driving yourself crazy over something us "professionals" can't even answer. From my perspective, we do everything we can to ensure accuracy (4 runthroughs, etc) but even then......

Benchmarking is one hell of an inexact science
-SYKMTL

[Fudd Rucker]

owned - this is the reason why I love the reviews here. Not only are the reviews well done, but the reviewers have no qualms with backing up thier work when someone with buyer woes belligerantly badgers and questions thier work.

[EmptyMellon]

Originally Posted by Fudd Rucker

what are the odds of seeing single slot solutions for these cards? I love the uber short pcb , reminiscent of the old days when gpu's played backseat to the rest of the system.

Single slot GTX 670: yes, uber short...ehm...: no
- Galaxy Readies Single-Slot GeForce GTX 670 | techPowerUp
- Another Picture of the Galaxy Single Slot GTX 670 Surfaces - Legit Reviews

So far only the GK107s (GT 640) are "uber short".