NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Reviews, EVGA and Gigabyte

In addition to the NVIDIA reference board, we were able to obtain a couple of retail-ready GeForce GTX 670 cards for the purposes of this article. Below we have the EVGA GeForce GTX 670 Super Clocked edition and the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC Version.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 670 Super Clocked edition looks much like the NVIDIA reference design, but the card has a revamped fan shroud, case bracket, and higher clocks. The cooling fan on the EVGA card extends past the PCB like the reference card, but instead of notched fan shroud with raised inlet, EVGA’s offering is flat with a textured finish and cutouts for the decals. The case bracket also has larger holes to better exhaust air from a system.

In terms of its clock speeds, the EVGA GeForce GTX 670 Super Clocked edition comes in with a base GPU clock of 967MHz and a boost clock of ~1046MHz. The memory clock on the card has able been goosed up to an effective 6210MHz. The increases to the GPU and memory clocks results in 198.72GB/s of memory bandwidth and a peak fillrate of 108.3GT/s.

Included with the EVGA GeForce GTX 670 Super Clocked edition we found an EVGA case badge, a couple of power adapters, a quick installation guide, a driver / utility CD, an EVGA Gaming poster and a couple of “Enthusiast Built” stickers. We should also mention that EVGA offers a 3-year warranty on the card.

Next up we have the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC Version with Windforce cooling. In addition to its custom cooler and overclocked GPU, the Gigabyte card is different from the others in that it uses the same long PCB as the GeForce GTX 680.

The real attraction with Gigabyte offering is the Windforce cooler. Underneath three large fans sits an array of aluminum heatsink fins, linked to a copper base via copper heat-pipes. The fan blow air directly onto the heatsinks, where some is diverted into the case and same exhausted outside. Although we found the Windforce cooler to be a tad more audible than the reference cooler under load, the Windforce cooler does an excellent job of keeping temperatures in check. It also helped us to overclock this card to almost 1.3GHz.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC Version ships with memory clocked at the same 6008MHz (effective data rate) of the reference card, but with a base GPU clock of 980MHz. The boost clock wasn’t specified, but we consistently saw boost clocks in the 1120MHz range during testing. Outputs on the card are the same as the reference version, but Gigabyte’s offering requires 6-pin and 8-pin power feeds.

Included with the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC Version were a quick installation guide, driver / utility CD, and a couple of power adapter. Nothing flashy, but the essentials are there.