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The GTX 670 is designed to offer best-in-class performance while fitting into a more affordable price segment compared to the GTX 680 or HD 7970. According to NVIDIA, the GTX 670 runs up to 41% faster than its predecessor (the GeForce GTX 570) on average, and over 50% faster in some cases with the most demanding DX11 applications. In upcoming titles like Max Payne 3, the GTX 670 is 30% faster than GTX 570. This means the GTX 670 should offer a ton of bang for the buck, and it could possibly be the best graphics card available in its price range.
Taking a look at the exterior, we can see the GTX 670 only mildly shares a family resemblance with the rest of the cards in the stack. First off it has a simple plastic enclosure with a small GeForce logo near the rear mounted fan. However, since most manufacturers will be using a custom design any aesthetic nitpicking over this reference model are moot, as it will have only limited availability outside of the review samples.
The GTX 670 uses the same GK-104 graphics processing unit as the GTX 680, albeit slightly slimmed down. This means the GPU is built on the same 28nm fabrication process, has a die size of 295mm² and packs in a total of 3.54 billion transistors. The GTX 670 additionally features base and Boost clock speeds of 915MHz and 980MHz, respectively, making this the first Kepler graphics card to not boost over 1GHz. Additionally, the GTX 670 includes 4 Graphics Processing Clusters with 7 SMX units, giving the GTX 670 a total of 1344 CUDA cores, 32 ROPs, and 112 Texture units. The memory specs are exactly the same as the GTX 680, meaning it has a 2GB frame buffer that comes clocked at 1501MHz (6008MHz effective).
The back of the PCB shows off the length of the board, one of the more interesting aspects of the GTX 670. The PCB of the GTX 670 is only 7-inches long while the remaining 2.5-inches is an enclosure for the exhaust fan. That is a lot of power for such as small package. In addition, he GTX 670 has a memory configuration where the chips are found on both sides of the PCB. As you can see there are four chips on the back, while the other four are on the front. However, every other chip is missing, meaning it will be extremely easy for AIB partners to increase the memory from 2GB to 4GB.
The PCB also demonstrates how the layout of the on-board circuitry has been optimized to utilize all the available space on the board. Just looking around the PCB we can see there is front mounted power supply along with dual SLI connectors and of course the memory and GPU. The GTX 670 also runs on a Gen 3.0 PCIe interface which has double the maximum data rate over Gen 2.0, giving the card up to 32 GB/s of bi-directional bandwidth on a x16 connector.
On paper the TDP of the GTX 670 is close to that of the GTX 680. According to NVIDIA, the maximum TDP for the GTX 670 is 170W, which is same as the typical power consumption rating of the GTX 680. However the typical gaming power rating is only 141W, which is extremely low for a high-end graphics card. NVIDIA's new GPU core design is voltage limited in terms of clock speed, and that voltage limit is defined by the TDP meaning the Boost clocks can scale higher than the target rating, but only up to the 170W TDP. With the dual PCIe 6pin connectors plus PCIe slot, the GTX 670 can consume up to 225W under the PCIe specification.
Another interesting aspect of the power design is because the length of the PCB is so small, the power connectors are located at the middle of the card and not at the rear. It is really going to be interesting to see exactly what NVIDIA's partners plan do with the board design. Just from the few I have seen, most will be using larger heasinks but there are single slot solutions in the work, and of course there should be shorter length models down the pipeline as well.
Like the GTX 680, the video outputs on the GTX 670 has been completely retooled to support the expanded 3D Vision and Surround technologies. In total there are two DVI ports, a single HDMI port and a full-sized DisplayPort. Out of the ports, both the DisplayPort and DVI connections can support resolutions of up to 2560x1600, while the HDMI port is capable of supporting resolutions of up to 1080p and comes with native support for all the latest HDMI 1.4a features.
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But yeah, $400 is actually a pretty decent price considering its power. It's only going to come down in price too.
I did just notice one error when skimming around the article:
I wonder if it is a case of spell-check gone awry?
Well, since you're in mistake-correcting mod, I will correct yours: exception is a word, so spell check wouldn't flag it.
Hence why I said "Spell check gone awry". As in, making the wrong correction. The two words share a lot of similarities. Depending on the error made, one or the other word would be the first choice to correct it with.
Even after looking past the cooler and the overclock I fail to see why it would cost more than £400.