Today NVIDIA released their GeForce GTX 670 which caught the enthusiast market by surprise, bringing outstanding performance and decent pricing to this segment. Now we put two of these cards in a dual card SLI configuration on our shiny new Ivy Bridge PCI-Express 3.0 setup to investigate whether it has the potential to be used in ultra-high end killer gaming rigs.
ZOTAC's GTX 670 AMP! Edition is built around an unmodified NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 PCB which provides a great foundation, on top of which ZOTAC is using a large triple slot cooler. GPU clock has been bumped by well over 100 MHz, which lets the card surpass GTX 680 in our testing, with a 3% performance lead.
Palit's GeForce GTX 670 JetStream comes with a decent overclock out of the box and uses the company's dual fan JetStream cooler which provides improved temperatures despite the overclock out of the box. With a price increase of only $20 over the reference design, the card seems a good choice if you want just a bit more.
ASUS has taken the great GTX 670 and improved it by putting their DirectCU II cooler on it, which provides whisper quiet cooling. The card is also overclocked out of the box and uses a custom PCB supporting software voltage control. Overall the card received a perfect ten score!
Today NVIDIA launches their new GeForce GTX 670 which aims to bring incredible performance levels at more affordable pricing. We see the new $399 card cruise past HD 7970 in many of our tests which will put additional pressure on AMD. Even against NVIDIA's own GTX 680 the performance difference is relatively small.
ZOTAC's new GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition comes with a huge overclock out of the box, base clock is 1111 MHz. The card uses a large triple slot, dual fan cooler to provide stable gaming at these high clocks, but noise levels are also reduced.
The HIS Radeon HD 7770 iCooler is a close to reference implementation of the HD 7770. Coming at reference design price and clocks, its biggest innovation is its cooler, which is exceedingly quiet. It is actually the quietest HD 7770 we tested so far.
Today's latest graphics cards come with support for PCI-Express 3.0, which promises twice the bandwidth, while still being compatible with older motherboards and graphics cards. In our article we analyze differences in PCIe performance on Intel's Ivy Bridge with GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970, using 20 games at five resolutions, each at all three PCIe generations and x4, x8 and x16 link width.
Today NVIDIA releases their new GeForce GTX 690 flagship. The $999 card is based on two GK104 graphics processors that have their full potential enabled. The new card has one of the most extravagant designs, making heavy use of metal which adds to the experience. Performance is outstanding, being neck to neck with a dual GTX 680 SLI setup.
MSI's HD 7870 HAWK is the company's mid-range equivalent of the Lightning Series. The card uses a Twin Frozr dual-fan cooler and features increased clock speeds of 1100 MHz GPU and 1200 MHz. It also includes triple voltage control via MSI Afterburner.
Palit's GeForce GTX 680 JetStream offers several enhancements compared the NVIDIA reference design, like a quiet triple fan cooler, overclock out of the box and reduced power consumption. The best improvement is certainly that it comes at no price increase compared to the reference design.
This week saw the release of Intel's new 22 nanometer Ivy Bridge processors. The new CPUs also feature a beefed up graphics core that is faster and includes support for DirectX 11. In our review we test 18 games to investigate whether HD Graphics 4000 can provide a decent gaming experience.
MSI's Radeon HD 7970 Lightning is a heavily customized implementation of the HD 7970 with focus on performance and overclocking. The card uses a beefed up voltage regulation circuitry and massive dual-fan heatsink to ensure stable operation at MSI's clocks of 1070 MHz core and 1400 MHz memory.
The ASUS GeForce GTX 680 Direct CU II TOP uses the company's famous triple slot cooler to bring low temperatures and low noise to the GeForce GTX 680. ASUS has also increased the clocks of the card significantly, which gives it a healthy performance boost, for a reasonable $20 price premium.
MSI's HD 7870 TwinFrozr III improves on the AMD reference design by adding the company's dual-fan cooling solution to the card. It also comes with increased clock speeds of 1050 MHz core and 1200 MHz memory out of the box. In our testing we saw great additional overclocking potential, well into the 1200 MHz range.
The ASUS Radeon HD 7870 Direct CU II is a highly overclocked custom version of the Radeon HD 7870. Coming at clock speeds of 1100 MHz GPU and 1250 MHz memory, it is a good deal faster than the AMD reference design. Thanks to aggressive pricing, the card retails at $360, which means there is no price increase for overclocking.
Yesterday NVIDIA introduced their new groundbreaking GeForce GTX 680, which was very well received. Today we bring you testing of a $1000 dual card SLI setup. We also use the latest WHQL driver to provide up-to-date performance numbers.
Today NVIDIA released their new GeForce GTX 680 which is based on the company's brand-new Kepler architecture. The card comes with massively improved performance per Watt. It also introduces an automatic dynamic overclocking method which gives the card the leading edge, making it the fastest single GPU graphics card in the world.
Gigabyte's HD 7770 OC comes with a massive clock improvement over the AMD reference design. Operating at 1100 MHz ensures that the card has a healthy performance advantage over other boards. Memory clock is also increased at 1250 MHz.
Today AMD released their new Radeon HD 7800 Series, which is based on their new 28 nm Pitcairn graphics processor. The HD 7850 and HD 7870 offer a significant performance increase over the previous generation - up to 40% faster in our testing. Power consumption is also at a new record low, putting these cards in the leading performance per Watt spot.
The ASUS Radeon HD 7750 OC is a custom implementation of the HD 7750 design from ASUS. It comes at reference pricing, yet features slightly increased clock speeds out of the box. We have seen its cooling solution before on other cards from the company so it is a tested design that works well and delivers low temperatures and low noise levels.
The XFX HD 7770 Black Edition Super Overclock is the company's flagship HD 7770. It comes with a massively improved heatsink, dual fan and large overclock out of the box. In our testing we are impressed by the ultra low noise and great performance improvement it delivers.
Today AMD introduces their new Radeon HD 7700 Series. While the spotlight is on the HD 7770, HIS has sent us their HD 7750, which will come at a more attractive pricing than the HD 7770. In our testing the card can claim the title "most power efficient card ever tested" - 3x more power efficient than NVIDIA's GTX 480.
ASUS is using their well-proven DirectCU thermal solution on the new HD 7770 DirectCU. The card also comes with a large overclock out of the box, yet stays cool and runs at super low noise levels. ASUS has chosen to follow the AMD pricing, so no price increase for cooler and overclocking.
Today AMD launched their all new Radeon HD 7770 and HD 7750. In our CrossFire review we take both new cards, put them in a dual GPU CrossFire configuration each, and see where they end up on the performance leaderboard. We will also focus on whether two cards can serve as a replacement for a high-end single GPU card.
