Introduction

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 launched today, and we have had the chance to review as many as four unique graphics cards based on it. It also gave us the opportunity to pair two of these cards in 2-way SLI configuration to test how performance scales up. Before you proceed any further, make sure you're up to speed with our single graphics card reviews:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 comes at a good point in time. It closely follows Intel's 3rd Generation Core processor family launch, which presents PC enthusiasts time to upgrade, particularly to PCI-Express 3.0 platforms. Our recent review covering PCI-Express scaling of GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 over the three generations of PCI-Express, and in various lane configurations, proved that PCI-Express 3.0 x8 provides bandwidth that yields performance identical to that of PCI-Express 2.0 x16, and that PCI-Express 3.0 x16 makes these current-generation high-end GPUs no more than 1% faster.

The PCI-Express scaling results give confidence to enthusiasts to opt for the Core "Ivy Bridge" platform, since on most multi-GPU capable 7-series motherboards, the lone PCI-Express 3.0 x16 link from the processor is split into two x8 links (or x8 + x4 + x4, on some motherboards). While NVIDIA's $399 GeForce GTX 670 has much to offer, we investigate the viability of following an incremental upgrade path, in which you buy one card now, and a second card when your games are beginning to get the better of the GPU, or when you've upgraded your monitor to a higher resolution. By today's prices, GTX 670 2-way SLI is a $798 solution. Two other competitors to look out for in this review are the recently-launched GeForce GTX 690 dual-GPU graphics card, which costs $999, but is selling for as high as $1,200; and GeForce GTX 680 2-way SLI, which provides the same performance for $998. In this review, we will test a 2-way SLI configuration of two GeForce GTX 670 2 GB graphics cards, running at NVIDIA reference clock speeds, through our entire performance test-bench.

Test System

<table class="tputbl">
<thead>
<tr>
<th colspan="2">Test System - VGA Rev. 17</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tr>
<th width="120" scope="row">Processor:</th>
<td align="center">Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.7 GHz<br />(Ivy Bridge, 8192 KB Cache)</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td align="center">ASUS Maximus V Gene<br />
Intel Z77</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td align="center">2x 4096 MB Corsair Vengeance PC3-12800 DDR3 <br />
@ 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td align="center">WD Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500 GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td align="center">Antec HCP-1200 1200W</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Software:</th>
<td align="center">Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Drivers:</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">NVIDIA: 296.10<br />GTX 680: 301.24<br />GTX 670: 301.34<br />ATI: Catalyst 12.3</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Display:</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">
LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600<br />
3x Hanns.G HL225DBB 21.5" 1920x1080
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
AA and AF are applied via in-game settings, not via the driver's control panel.

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1280 x 800, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
5760 x 1080, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical high-end gaming multi-monitor resolution. Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Alan Wake

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Alan Wake, released in 2012 for PC, is a highly successful third-person horror shooter that revolves around the adventures of novelist Alan Wake who has to battle the "darkness" which takes over living and dead things. Alan's signature flashlight is used to strip the forces of darkness of their protection, to make then vulnerable to conventional weapons.
The engine of Alan Wake uses DirectX 9, but features complex lighting effects which makes it a quite demanding title. We benched with highest settings.

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Aliens vs. Predator

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Aliens vs. Predator is based on a merger of the Aliens and the Predators franchise: two legendary alien species that are in conflict with each other, fighting to the death with human marines caught in between. The first person shooter game was developed by Rebellion Studios, who also developed the first AVP PC title and released in February 2010. It is one of the first DirectX 11 games with support for new features like tessellation, which is why AMD heavily promoted it at the time of their DX 11 card launches. We use the AVP benchmark utility with tessellation and advanced DX11 shadows enabled.

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Batman: Arkham City

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Batman is back on the LCD screen with Arkham City, a sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, by Rocksteady Games and WB. It was released to the PC platform in November. Batman is imprisoned in Arkham City, an infamous district of the DC Universe that contains the scum of Gotham, most of which Batman helped get in there. In order to get out he must go through scores of baddies, and encounter many of the iconic super-villains along the way. He's not entirely alone.
Batman Arkham City uses the same Unreal Engine by Epic, as Arkham Asylum, but thanks to the engine's modularity, it has been overhauled, outfitted with the latest technologies, including a graphics engine that takes advantage of DirectX 11.

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Battlefield 3

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Arguably the most anticipated online shooter title among real gamers - PC gamers, Battlefield 3 is the latest addition to some of the most engaging online multi-player shooter franchises. It combines infantry combat with mechanized warfare including transport vehicles, armored personnel carriers, main battle tanks, attack helicopters, combat aircraft, pretty much everything that goes into today's battlefields. The infantry combat is coupled with role-playing elements, which makes the experience all the more engaging. It also has a single-player campaign which added a few gigabytes to its installer.
Behind all this is a spanking new game engine by EA-DICE, Frostbite 2. It makes use of every possible feature DirectX 11 has to offer, including hardware tessellation, and new lighting effects, to deliver some of the most captivating visuals gamers ever had access to. Not playing this game on PC is grave injustice to what's in store. Faster PCs are rewarded with better visuals.

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BattleForge

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BattleForge, a card based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after launch the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move and the fact that it was included as game bundle with a large number of ATI cards made it one of the more well-known RTS games of 2009. You as a player assemble your deck before game to select the units that will be available. Elemental force choices can be from forces of Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow to complement each other.
The BattleForge engine has full support for DX 9, DX 10 and DX 10.1, we use the internal benchmark tool in DirectX 11 mode with highest settings to acquire our results.

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Call of Duty 4

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Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates. Later installments of the Call of Duty Series use the same game engine, so this test is also representative of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 performance.

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Civilization 5

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Sid Meier's Civilization V (or Civ 5 in common jargon), is the latest addition to the franchise of masterfully-crafted real-time strategy games that let you play God to a nascent civilization of your choice all the way up to the space-age. Civilization V uses large 3D worlds that are procedurally-generated, and takes advantage of hardware tessellation features offered by DirectX 11 to exponentially step up complexity of cities, models, terrains, and objects. It is also expected of this generation of GPUs to handle the larger texture loads that come with the eye-candy.

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Crysis

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After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their latest shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, and forums were full of "Can my system run Crysis?" threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like accurate physics. For example when you fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over leaving a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are top notch, even today, yet the game still runs well on most computers.

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Crysis 2

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Crysis 2 takes the player into an alien-infested New York City. The game adds a tactical options mode that allows several approaches to attack a heavily infested enemy location. The new Nanosuit 2.0 that the player uses offers more freedom in ability use, for example multiple abilities can be used at the same time. To better accommodate a given play style weapons can be customized with silencers, laser sights or even a sniping scope.
For rendering Crytek's CryEngine 3 is used which comes with reduced system requirements compared to the first Crysis game. Since Crysis 2 is a multi-platform game, with major development focus on console, the graphics on launch day were only DirectX 9. DirectX 11 functionality was added later in a patch. We use the DX11 version and the high-res texture pack for our benchmarking.

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DiRT 3

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The latest addition to the Collin McRae Rally franchise, DiRT 3, of multi-format rally motorsport. DiRT 3 introduced more of the same great racing experience Collin McRae DiRT 2 gave you, but with better gameplay, and the new Gymkhana freestyle motor-acrobatics mode, which you'll more likely love than hate. It uses a more polished, performance-optimized version of the EGO engine, version 2.0, which takes advantage of more DirectX 11 features than version 1.0 used on Collin McRae DiRT 2, did.

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Dragon Age II

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Dragon Age II is the second game in BioWare's Dragon Age franchise and was released in March 2011. As player, named Hawke, you will be able to pick your hero from several classes and grow him over the course of the adventure. Gameplay takes you through a linear narrated story of Hawke's rise to become the legendary "Champion of Kirkwall".
BioWare's Lycium Engine has support for DirectX 11, using tessellation, advanced dynamic lighting and camera effects like depth of field. We benchmark the DX11 version with details set to highest.

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Hard Reset

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Developed by Flying Wild Hog, a studio that prides itself with the fact that its creation is PC-exclusive (bless them), Hard Reset is a first person shooter that's set in a future cyberpunk setting of a dystopian world. It reintroduces many of the gameplay mechanics that made classics such as Quake wicked fun, which today's tactical military shooters eroded, creating a 'void' for.
The game uses the studio's in-house Road Hog Engine, which isn't particularly heavy on new-generation DirectX features, but can still get taxing with some GPUs.

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Metro 2033

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Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game that is set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow - as the name suggests inside the metro system. You will fight mutants or other humans who like to take away your shelter. The game has many gameplay elements similar to STALKER, also the engine has similar features. This is because two STALKER engine programmers left GSC Game World and started their own company which is now making Metro 2033.
The engine has support for all the latest eye candy like DirectX 11 and Tessellation. Unfortunately it leaves a less than optimized impression, making it a candidate to surpass Crysis for the highest hardware requirements. We test in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Very High".

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STALKER: Call of Pripyat

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STALKER: Call of Pripyat takes places shortly after the events of the previous game STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. The player is one of many stalkers who are attracted by the Zone in hope of finding fame, wealth and artifacts. Over the course of the game you meet Strelok, the protagonist of the first STALKER game and team up with him to progress through the Zone.
An updated X-Ray Engine 1.6 powers the game with support for DirectX 11 using Compute Shaders for improved shadow rendering and tessellation to improve model quality.

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StarCraft II

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StarCraft II, released in July 2010, is a sequel to Blizzard's award-winning strategy game StarCraft. In the 26th century three species Terrans, Protoss and Zerg are at war. The campaign takes you through many missions on different planets where you have to face the various enemy factions, sometimes several of them. StarCraft II features a similar number of units as the original game, some of them new. Due to the massive success of the first game, Blizzard chose to focus large aspects of the game on multiplayer combat through Battle.net. The campaign serves as a good introduction to units and concepts and competitive multiplayer is where the action is at.
The StarCraft 2 engine supports only DirectX 9, but several patches have improved rendering quality and available options considerably. We test using a recorded 1 vs. 1 multiplayer replay in the late game phase. Please note that Star Craft II is very CPU limited on high-end cards, especially on lower resolutions, so you may not see much scaling between some cards. Star Craft II does not support multi-monitor gaming, because it would provide an unfair advantage in competitive multiplayer, as a larger portion of the map would be visible.

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Total War: Shogun 2

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Set in 16th century feudal Japan, Total War: Shogun 2 takes the player on a quest for domination to conquer and unite the warlords of Japan. Moving away from the European setting of previous Total War games, the game is now designed around principles of the brilliant Chinese general Sun Tzu and his book "The Art of War". Gameplay is switched between real-time battles during which units on the battlefield are controlled and turn-based strategy which enable diplomacy, economy and production management. Taking control of a castle is comprised of several different stages which adds more complexity to warfare.
We benchmark using the highest settings in DirectX 11 mode, which was added via patch after release.

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The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

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This isn't just a game, it's a masterpiece. A very large sandbox game that rejects the quality-quantity inverse-proportionality. By genre a role-playing game, TES: Skyrim combines some of the best elements of older titles in the franchise, with some new sandbox elements to churn out an extremely engaging, and addictive game. It makes use of Bethesda's Creation Engine, which isn't visually-intensive in that it doesn't use taxing graphics features, but the game's presentation itself, with large open worlds, end up taxing your hardware. Faster GPUs result in smoother gameplay with most eye candy turned on.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

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World of Warcraft is the most successful massively multiplayer online game in the world with far over 12 million monthly subscribers. The game is centered around the epic battle between the Horde and Alliance factions with many other races getting involved in a long and complex story line. Even though it has been released in 2004, Blizzard has always added incremental improvements to the graphics, especially with new expansions. One key success of World of Warcraft is that it will run on a large number of slower systems, but also delivers a decent graphics experience on high-end systems. We test in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Ultra".

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3DMark 11

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3DMark 11 is the very latest from the house of Futuremark, which has given out some of the most comprehensive benchmark applications for PC enthusiasts and gamers. 3DMark 11, as the name might probably suggest, makes use of Microsoft DirectX 11 API, and puts every feature at its disposal to use, creating astonishingly-realistic visuals. In the process, it evaluates DirectX 11 compliant GPUs, and lets gamers know what to expect from games from the near future that make use of the API, in terms of visual realism. The tessellation and depth of field tests are particularly of interest here. 3DMark11 has no proper support for multi-monitor configurations.

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Unigine Heaven 2.0

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Unigine Heaven was one of the first demos that supported DirectX 11. Heaven is a technology demonstration for Unigine engine which supports DirectX 9 through 11 and OpenGL too. Version 2.0 adds more scenes and optionally more complex tessellation features. While there is some controversy surrounding the benchmark whether it is an accurate representation of what to expect from future games in regards to DirectX 11 we still chose it as test to get an insight into potential future gaming.

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Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs. An optimized fan profile is also one of the few things that board vendors can do to impress with reference designs where they are prohibited to make changes to the thermal solution or components on the card.

For this test we measure power consumption of only the graphics card, via PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 with 6.5 digits is used for all measurements. Again, the values here reflect card only power consumption measured at DC VGA card inputs, not the whole system.

We chose Crysis 2 as a standard test representing typical 3D gaming usage because it offers: - very high power draw - high repeatability - is a current game that is supported on all cards due to its DirectX 9 nature - drivers are actively tested and optimized for it - supports all multi-GPU configurations - test runs a relatively short time and renders a non-static scene with variable complexity.

Our results are based on the following tests:

Idle: Windows 7 Aero sitting at the desktop (1280x1024 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle until power draw is stable.
Multi-Monitor: Two monitors connected to the tested card, which use different display timings. Windows 7 Aero sitting at the desktop (1280x1024 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle until power draw is stable.
Average: Crysis 2 at 1920x1200, Extreme profile, representing a typical gaming power draw. Average of all readings (12 per second) while the benchmark was rendering (no title/loading screen).
Peak: Crysis 2 at 1920x1200, Extreme profile, representing a typical gaming power draw. Highest single reading during the test.
Maximum: Furmark Stability Test at 1280x1024, 0xAA. This results in a very high non-game power consumption that can typically be reached only with stress testing applications. Card left running stress test until power draw converged to a stable value. On cards with power limiting systems we will disable the power limiting system or configure it to the highest available setting - if possible. We will also use the highest single reading from a Furmark run which is obtained by measuring faster than when the power limit can kick in.
Blu-ray Playback: Power DVD 9 Ultra is used at a resolution of 1920x1200 to play back the Batman: The Dark Knight disc with GPU acceleration turned on. Playback starts around timecode 1:19 which has the highest data rates on the BD with up to 40 Mb/s. Playback left running until power draw converged to a stable value.

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Performance Summary

The graphs on this page show a combined performance summary of all tests and resolutions from previous pages. Each graph shows the tested card as 100% and all other cards' performance relative to it. A sixth graph summarizes all tests in all resolutions to calculate the total relative performance of the review sample.

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Performance per Watt

Using the relative performance scores from the previous page and the typical gaming power consumption result, the following graphs show efficiency of the cards in our test group.

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Performance per Dollar

If you are looking for the best bang for the buck, then you will love this graph. We looked up the current USD price of each card on the popular online shop Newegg and used it and the relative performance numbers to calculate the Performance per Dollar Index.

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Value and Conclusion

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 SLI is an amazing pixel-crunching solution. Priced at around $800, or 20% cheaper than NVIDIA's Kepler flagship GeForce GTX 690, the solution is found to be just 2% slower. Since the GTX 690 performs near-identical to GTX 680 SLI, the inference carries on: it's just 2% slower while being 20% cheaper. As a result, the two other costlier solutions are smoked in the price/performance equation.

Even for some its earliest drivers, GeForce GTX 670 SLI provides near-linear performance upscaling over single GTX 670. With a power draw of just 28W in idle, and 250W average load, the GTX 670 SLI, for the first time, makes a dual-GPU flagship card look silly, in terms of performance/Watt. Even an efficient 600W PSU should handle the GTX 670 SLI just fine. Gaming at 2560x1600 is smooth on the GTX 670 SLI, and importantly, a large majority of the games in our test-suite are playable at 5760x1080 (3D Vision Surround 3x 1080p). All said and done, the GeForce GTX 670 SLI is an unbelievably good graphics platform. NVIDIA will face a different kind of problem now: that of being able to sell GTX 690 for all its premium mojo, and GTX 680 by the numbers.