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Anyone have one of the new 6 series cards yet?


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And if so how is it.

 

For personnel reasons I am tired of AMD cards now.. And I am wondering how the new nvidia cards are.

 

Anyone have one and can personally attest? Story's of greatness or failure to perform? Please include games played on and at what settings. I just read about how EVGA is recalling all of its GTX 670's because of quality control issues.

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The 600 cards are absolute beasts. While bloody expensive to buy, you are really paying for quality. A 670 is the perfect balance of high performance vs pricing, as it alone beats out 2 580's in SLI, and a single 590.

My advice: wait a little before buying one. 2 reasons for this: the reference cooler design is shocking and leaves a lot to be desired, minor overclocking will hit the temp roof too easily and shut the card down. The other reason: as stated before they are one hell of an expensive lineup, due to them being so new. I'd say wait a little longer on last gen tech until the prices start going down.

 

Source: computer technician and benchmarker.

Edited by Phalanx108
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No, it doesn't beat two 580, it can't touch them, and it can't touch the 590. Not even 680 or 7970 can touch 590 or 6990.

In any game that even supports SLI.

 

It does beat the 580. But on the downside 670 has pretty crappy build, with a dodgy PCB and a worthless cooler. Read any review on it. They should've priced it at $299; for what it sells now you could get a stock 7970 or a very good quiet 7950, the first beats it stock, the latter overclocked.

 

But AIUI the OP has a gripe against AMD. I don't quite see why, but in that case you'd have to get a 690.

670 is not going to be able to touch 2x6950 either. 2x6950 is a bit slower than 6990 and about the same as 590. Both 670 and 680 are much slower than that.

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I was surprised to see the very short pcb of the 670 and I don't trust it.

 

The 680 is very good considering it is technically the midrange card. It uses less power than the 7970 which nvidia hasn't managed in a while.

 

The 690 is a 1000 dollars, more than 2 680's. The 590 wasn't that expensive so TSMC must be getting low yields.

 

There is a rumour that the high-end chip will come out late this year. But probably only as a professional card not a geforce card.

 

So 680 good 670 kinda dodgy.

Edited by Erik005
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I don't trust the 580's at all.. In my experience they are extremely unreliable and very touchy with temps. OC even a little bit and got weird results..

 

But the card I was thinking about was the new Gigabyte GTX 670 with non-reference cooler. It has the PCB of a 680 and if I am not mistaken the GPU of the 680 too, albeit the chip is clocked down a bit. It also at this point in time has the highest factory OC and turbo clock at 1.048 Ghz. The PCB is full 680, so I guess thats good. I am not sure what you guys are saying about the other 670's. What is the problem with having a smaller PCB? The chip itself is more efficient and does not need all the extra caps so what is the problem?

 

Also this may or may not backup what Phalanx108 was saying http://www.hwcompare.com/12523/geforce-gtx-580-vs-geforce-gtx-670/

 

A 590 and 690 still kick the crap out of a 670 but what do you expect.. I mean c'mon its two GPU's on one board...

 

And again, not sure if this means anything to anyone but the 670 comes out on top over the 7950, the 7950 3gb edition and comes close to beating out the 7970: http://www.hwcompare.com/12506/geforce-gtx-670-vs-radeon-hd-7950-3gb/

 

For a real-life application I found this site which compares the 670 the 680 and the 7970. In most games at 1920 x 1080p the 670 and the 680 seem to have a leg up of about 30%. Add into account that the 6 series are more efficient and I think you have a clear winner. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/05/14/geforce_680_670_vs_radeon_7970_7950_gaming_perf/4

 

The 7970 did start to improve its score in the higher resolutions above 1080p, so how much of this is driver issues and what is actually the cards limitations.. I'm not sure. But the 670 is still more attractive to me then the 680 or 7970. In the case of the 680 its great for sure but too expensive. The 7970 is AMD, and I am just done with them. Bad driver support, customer service that doesn't give a flying #### about their customers and overpriced cards that don't get the performance you would expect of them. Which perhaps had always been a driver issue, but its just more reason not to stick around with them, if they can't get their drivers working.

Edited by Dan3345
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But the card I was thinking about was the new Gigabyte GTX 670 with non-reference cooler. It has the PCB of a 680 and if I am not mistaken the GPU of the 680 too, albeit the chip is clocked down a bit.

All 670 GPU are rejected 680 GPU.

For SLI you're better off with something like stock coolers however, that gets the hot air outside.

If not going SLI (but you'll lose performance from your current setup, so why bother?), at least take the Asus DC2.

 

 

What is the problem with having a smaller PCB? The chip itself is more efficient and does not need all the extra caps so what is the problem?

That's being fed by their marketing department. GTX670 has an official TDP of 170W. That is the same TDP as a GTX560Ti - so it needs as much from the board.

The reason behind a cheap board placing everything next to the chip and a dirt-cheap cooler is not some sort of super-efficiency, they are just skimping on them.

 

 

And again, not sure if this means anything to anyone but the 670 comes out on top over the 7950, the 7950 3gb edition and comes close to beating out the 7970:

That's at stock clock. Once somewhat overclocked 7950 and 670 go neck in neck, at good overclock 7950 gets ahead.

Edited by FMod
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The 680 is very good considering it is technically the midrange card. It uses less power than the 7970 which nvidia hasn't managed in a while.

 

There is a rumour that the high-end chip will come out late this year. But probably only as a professional card not a geforce card.

It's the top card in the GTX 600 series lineup, not really a midrange.

 

Another GPU that is in the works, GK110, is not likely to be part of it. The reason for GK104's low consumption and low transistor count is that they basically threw all the dual-precision GPGPU units out of there - GTX680 has half the performance of GTX580 in CUDA, PhysX and other GPGPU tasks.

 

GK110 is to restore these units, which means that consumption and transistor count go back up. It's not going to be part of 600 range at all, at best it might get released as 780. But it indeed also might not get released as a consumer card at all, since the point is to get acceptable GPGPU performance, not game frame rates.

 

The yields on GK100 series are very low due to some weaknesses in silicon design, already straining production as it is, and made TSMC insist that Nvidia buys GK104 paying per wafer, not per tested chip. Unless the weaknesses can be rectified, the yields on GK110 will be even worse, with end-user cost in the range of $1,000 for the chip alone.

 

Currently the weak point of 680 is its only 2GB memory, but it can be easier rectified by making 4GB versions.

Edited by FMod
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It's just speculation of course but the gk104 was really meant to be the midrange card which explains the low gpgpu performance and 256bit interface. The gk110 was to be the 680 but it will probably only come out as a tesla card

 

I think when they realised the gk110 wasn't going to work they modified the gk104 by adding more blocks of cores thus making it the high end card lets hope they tested it enough.

 

But all things considered the 680 is a good card for gaming although it has not enough memory for the advanced features like 3d and 3 screens.

 

And there is probably a good reason that every non reference 670 I have seen has a regular long 680 PCB

Edited by Erik005
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FMOD I'm sorry I don't agree with that.. Nvidia isn't simply skimping on their cards... I like the shorter PCB, makes the card smaller for the same power as a larger one. And if you look at my current setup which I believe is on my profile page, I state that I have two 6950's in crossfire. Theoretically I should be getting performance than one 670 but I'm not. I get lousy FPS in BF3, permanent screen tearing in skyrim and stuttering in just about everything I play. The stuttering I attribute to crossfire and I realize that SLI would be no different, but the permanent screen tearing is BS.. Vsync, I am convinced has been utterly broken in AMD drivers since 11.8. I cannot turn it off, and with it on I still have screen tearing. So either it has never really been on or there is something wrong with it.

 

I got two 6950's to see what it was like and learn from it, and I have. I learned I would not vouch for two cards again no matter how powerful they are. At the moment there are just to many little grievances with both SLI and crossfire and I would not recommend it. There is a reason that most PC builders would recommend you go for one really powerful card instead of two weaker ones. Even two powerful ones will never be as efficient as 1.

 

As for the overclocking of the 670. I personally do not dabble much in overclocking video cards. I have done it before and for the work its either not worth the effort, or it simply doesn't work. Which could be my own lack of experience in the matter. But if you look at the 670's OCing capabilities and compare it to the new AMD cards the 6 series as a whole wins hands down. The 670 and the 680 are both made with overclocking in mind. I have never been able to say the same for AMD..

 

I used to use a phenom x6 in my computer the 1100t. If I overclocked that CPU past 3.8ghz my computer would crash. The threshold for acceptable output on that CPU was absurd. And even more so when you consider how close its own factory turbo boost would put it at 3.7, just a bit less that 1ghz away from killing it!

 

You can't really convince me otherwise on not buying a 6 series card, I am going too, and I have my reasons. You have yours for why you won't and that's fine, but this thread wasn't to argue AMD vs. Nvidia so please don't turn it into that.

 

Edit: if I have misinterpreted your posts as something they are not than I apologize.

Edited by Dan3345
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