Seven GeForce GTX 670 Cards, Benchmarked

by igor wallossek
Although the reference design emerged first, Nvidia's add-in board partners have already flooded the market with custom-cooled, overclocked, value-added interpretations of what a GeForce GTX 670 should be. Naturally, we wanted to know which one is the best.
To that end, we held a seven-way shootout between the. But as you'll see during the course of this story, all seven cards are left standing at the end of our tale. Some came away with more scratches than the others, but with a strong foundation at the heart of each, it would have been difficult for any of these cards to outright fail.
Logistics prevented us from taking that matter for testing, though, since we adhere to strict protocols for benchmarking, sticking to a constant driver build and the same test rig. As a result, all seven GeForce GTX 670-based boards were evaluated under ideal conditions.

we are again putting a lot of emphasis on comparing the acoustic characteristics of each card under load. We've decided that merely measuring and plotting the A-weighted decibel level or sone reading doesn't paint the whole picture of a given card's sound profile. After all, the way sound is experienced can vary widely from person to person.
This time around, we also tested cooling performance twice: once at factory settings, and once with all cards set to an identical clock frequency. In addition, we tried to find a compact and reasonably-priced card that can be overclocked, but still stays cool and quiet.
We ended up liking all of the cards so much that three of them ended up earning awards by becoming the top answers to the following questions:
• Which card offers the best graphics performance?
• Which card sports the best cooling performance at the lowest noise?
• Which card is the best, all-around?

	Asus	Gainward	Galaxy	Palit	Gigabyte	Zotac	Nvidia
ROPs	32
GPU Clock	1059 MHz	1006 MHz	1006 MHz	1006 MHz	980 MHz	1098 MHz	915 MHz
Boost Clock	1137 MHz	1085 MHz	1085 MHz	1085 MHz	1059 MHz	1167 MHz	980 MHz
Pixel Fill Rate	29.7 GPix/s	28.2 GPix/s	28.2 GPix/s	28.2 GPix/s	27.4 GPix/s	30.7 GPix/s	25.6 GPix/s
Texture Fill Rate	118.6 GTex/s	112.7 GTex/s	112.7 GTex/s	112.7 GTex/s	109.8 GTex/s	123 GTex/s	102.5 GTex/s
Memory Clock	1502 MHz	1527 MHz	1502 MHz	1527 MHz	1502 MHz	1652 MHz	1502 MHz
Memory Bus	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	192.3 GB/s	195.5 GB/s	192.3 GB/s	195.5 GB/s	192.3 GB/s	211.5 GB/s	192.3 GB/s
Memory	2 GB GDDR5
Die Size	294 mm²
Transistors	3.54 Billion
Power Connectors	6 + 6-pin	6 + 6-pin	8 + 6-pin	6 + 6-pin	8 + 6-pin	6 + 6-pin	6 + 6-pin
Street Price	$430	Not Available	$440	Not Available	$400	$440	$400

Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11 And Crysis 2 (DX 11)

Crysis 2: DirectX 11

We intentionally selected only one gaming benchmark; adding more wouldn't change the story that plays out between these modified GeForce GTX 670 cards.





Three other models do, however, stand out.

The Quietest GeForce GTX 670: Asus GTX670-DC2T-2GD5

If acoustics are high on your priority list, you're going to like the Asus card. Not only is it a well-built and quiet, but it also boasts the second-highest factory overclock. The new DirectCU II cooler shrank during its redesign for this card, but its performance is still excellent.
Galaxy/KFA²'s card is also quiet, but it didn't win because of its high temperatures under load and annoying coil chirping. That's almost certainly a flaw in our sample, though, and we'll retest when we receive a replacement.
It's important to add that, this time around, a dual-slot card proved to be the quietest, while triple-slot models made more noise. Wow.
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The Fastest GeForce GTX 670: Zotac ZT-60302-10P

Thick, cool, and brutal. Those are the three attributes that came to mind when looking at and using Zotac's card. This heavy, bulky board boasts excellent cooling performance. However, its acoustics are as noticeable as its physical looks. Maybe its fans could spin slightly slower, since the beefy cooler seems to have plenty of potential left over, based on our temperature measurements.
Performance-wise, this card nips at the heels of GeForce GTX 680 cards for less money (and it might even be more widely available). Its high memory clock enables excellent bandwidth. But we wonder about the decision to use only two six-pin power connectors. In our torture test it draws 215 W, which doesn't leave a lot of room for additional overclocking through higher voltages.
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All-Around Best GeForce GTX 670: Gigabyte N670OC-2GD

Gigabyte's card is quiet at idle and not too loud under load. Its cooling performance at idle, during normal desktop work, and during gaming is even better than Asus' card. It ties Zotac's effort for the lowest temperature at idle, but achieves its goal at a mere 20% fan duty cycle. When we configured it to cool our card down to 70°C, its sound level was still acceptable.
This is the slimmest card in our test, it weighs the least, and is even suitable for SLI configurations on motherboards with a just a single-slot gap between 16-lane interfaces. Unfortunately, that's pretty common. Although the N670OC-2GD doesn't include the highest overclock, it's currently selling online at the same $400 price point as completely stock reference cards. And that's with the Windforce 3X cooler. That combination cannot be beat.