Gigabyte Windforce Nvidia GTX 670 OC Version (User Review) & Owners' Thread

[SolMiester]

What store? Looking on pricespy the cheapest I could find one in stock is ~$521USD +GST.

wow, its volatile market, now the cheapest in stock is $603US?!.....blardy hell!

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

I am so tired of waiting to buy this card at $399.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Im taking a wild guess here*laughs* the more i read the more i think it has sweet fa all to do with v sync and more to do with gpu boost.which could become problematic:S,i have a card coming soon too:S
ill keep quiet now till my card comes and pray to the intermittent stutter god and pray he blesses me stutter free.

No... Nvidia has a fix. They said it was Vsync in the drivers, the way it was handled. They were too far into this month's driverset to add it in. The next major release next month will have the fix.

 

[3DVagabond]

No... Nvidia has a fix. They said it was Vsync in the drivers, the way it was handled. They were too far into this month's driverset to add it in. The next major release next month will have the fix.

"This month's" Has nVidia also gone to a monthly driver program, and I missed it? Or, is this just the current beta release? Looking at Guru3D, the last 3 or 4 in a row have been beta releases.

 

[Hauk]

Pretty nice rig btw! :thumbsup:

Thanks! I used to spend more time hiding cables. Lazier now

 

[cmdrdredd]

"This month's" Has nVidia also gone to a monthly driver program, and I missed it? Or, is this just the current beta release? Looking at Guru3D, the last 3 or 4 in a row have been beta releases.

Generally they have been releasing a new driver set each month. I just switched from a 6950 so I can't be sure from experience (I haven't been following). However, they said that next month they will have the fix in the next revision.

The ones on Guru3D are leaks and dev drivers. There's a 302.59 that I'm running that doesn't come with audio or physx drivers.

 

[lopri]

Dunno for some reason the OP's GTX 570 perfoms less than expected. Or is 580 that much faster than 570? I've just sold my 580 and have to ship it out tomorrow. Since I'm contemplating between a 670 and a 7970 I ran a quick bench on my testbed before packing the 580 to ship, and for some reason my 580 is quite a bit faster than his 570. (more than it should be, I think, especially minimum FPS)

Here is my GTX 580 stock. I configured the benchmark the same as his.

Gonna try 3DMark11 later.

 

[lopri]

I mean, the 670 is still more than 30% faster (v. 580) so that's fantastic if I were to buy one, considering that I sold my 580 for $350.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The problem is availability. If you are in need of something immediately then the 7970 might just be a good deal for you. The 680 comes in and out of stock so much it would make me give up personally. The 670 is more available but it's mostly reference designs.

I have no idea why the 570 looks slower than it probably should be. Could be the CPU, could be something running in background, driver version.

 

[tviceman]

I mean, the 670 is still more than 30% faster (v. 580) so that's fantastic if I were to buy one, considering that I sold my 580 for $350.

The detective in me says you were benchmarking heaven on an SSD, which will eliminate the early hitching and increase the minimum frame rates, while the OP was benchmarking with a standard hard drive.

 

[lopri]

The detective in me says you were benchmarking heaven on an SSD, which will eliminate the early hitching and increase the minimum frame rates, while the OP was benchmarking with a standard hard drive.

No, sir. It's actually 1.5 TB Seagate drive. 5400 RPM to boot.

Edit: To be precise, though, I'm only using 160 GB of outer bound for C: drive. I normally use it to test new software.

 

[cmdrdredd]

an SSD doesn't change the score all that much. I still get the hitching on my M4

 

[lopri]

The problem is availability. If you are in need of something immediately then the 7970 might just be a good deal for you. The 680 comes in and out of stock so much it would make me give up personally. The 670 is more available but it's mostly reference designs.

I have no idea why the 570 looks slower than it probably should be. Could be the CPU, could be something running in background, driver version.

I always get both makers' cards when a new generation/refresh hits. One high-end and one mid-range. Last round it was high-end NV (580) and mid-range AMD (6870). I'm unsure this time because there is no "mid-range" for this generation yet. (I mean, 7870 for $350 is simply ridiculous)

 

[cmdrdredd]

7850 is low end then?

Anyway...dunno how to help ya lol. Good Luck

 

[lopri]

Well.. *ideally* 7970 would be $400 and I'd pick that one, and when GK110 hit it'd be $500 max for me to pick up. As for mid-range, anything cheap that does come with all the new features, and decent performance for 1920x1200 - *Ideally*

Enough of off-topic. My apologies, WindForce 670 owners. I'm merely a potential buyer. I appreciate the information I've gathered this thread so far.

 

[Destiny]

The problem is availability. If you are in need of something immediately then the 7970 might just be a good deal for you. The 680 comes in and out of stock so much it would make me give up personally. The 670 is more available but it's mostly reference designs.

I have no idea why the 570 looks slower than it probably should be. Could be the CPU, could be something running in background, driver version.

The detective in me says you were benchmarking heaven on an SSD, which will eliminate the early hitching and increase the minimum frame rates, while the OP was benchmarking with a standard hard drive.

No, sir. It's actually 1.5 TB Seagate drive. 5400 RPM to boot.

Edit: To be precise, though, I'm only using 160 GB of outer bound for C: drive. I normally use it to test new software.

Nice score you have with your GTX 580... I actually have a Samsung 128GB 830 SSD as my primary drive (rig in my sig)... these are the factors I think why your score was better:

Your GTX 580 has more Texture Units (The GTX 570 has one disabled), higher core clocks, and we are both using the exact same Nvidia Drivers.

You have an AMD HEX core (6 Cores) and it looks like you overclocked it to 3.9GHz (My i5-3570k is stock clocked)...

Anyhow I'll try running it again to see what happens and update it if there is a big change...

 

[Destiny]

Well.. *ideally* 7970 would be $400 and I'd pick that one, and when GK110 hit it'd be $500 max for me to pick up. As for mid-range, anything cheap that does come with all the new features, and decent performance for 1920x1200 - *Ideally*

Enough of off-topic. My apologies, WindForce 670 owners. I'm merely a potential buyer. I appreciate the information I've gathered this thread so far.

No need to apologize... we all have the same interests, discussion, and we are all here to share information and help each other...

I was a noob, I built my rig and my knowledge was due to everyone on the Anandtech helping out...:thumbsup:

 

[JumBie]

Well fml, my 7970 Windoforce OC 1000mhz edition gets 84.1fps under the same settings man I definitely over paid, I'm pissed off now.

 

[Ieat]

My stock boost is 1189mhz and max stable overclock is 1293mhz. BTW anyone know how I could force my voltage up to 1.175? Mine seems to max out at 1.162.

 

[Destiny]

My stock boost is 1189mhz and max stable overclock is 1293mhz. BTW anyone know how I could force my voltage up to 1.175? Mine seems to max out at 1.162.

Wow that is pretty nice! I'm not sure how to force the voltage up... my card did it automatically during the benchmarks/stress tests and down clocked the core along with the voltage when I finished the benchmarks/stress tests...

Try running one of the kombuster stress tests at 1080p or higher resolution or something to see what it does?

 

[Ieat]

Ok did some research and this might be helpful to people who have a default max voltage of 1.162. Evga percision will let you raise it to 1.175 but afterburner won't. However with the slight bump in voltage my max stable overclock only went from 1293 to 1307mhz. So honestly it may not be worth the trouble for most people if they prefer Afterburner.

 

[Destiny]

Ok did some research and this might be helpful to people who have a default max voltage of 1.162. Evga percision will let you raise it to 1.175 but afterburner won't. However with the slight bump in voltage my max stable overclock only went from 1293 to 1307mhz. So honestly it may not be worth the trouble for most people if they prefer Afterburner.

Thanks for the update and information.

So you can use EVGA Percision with the Gigabyte Windforce? That is good to know...

Also if you are able to go over 1300MHz and it is stable!!, from what I've read on other forums = You HIT the Silicon Lottery! Because apparantly not a lot of people can go over 1300MHz with stability on their GTX 670 cards...

 

[Ieat]

Thanks for the update and information.

So you can use EVGA Percision with the Gigabyte Windforce? That is good to know...

Also if you are able to go over 1300MHz and it is stable!!, from what I've read on other forums = You HIT the Silicon Lottery! Because apparantly not a lot of people can go over 1300MHz with stability on their GTX 670 cards...

Yep Giga Windforce. I think I got a good card but some people on OCN are claiming stable clocks of 1350 to 1380 mhz so there appear to be some crazy clockers out there.

 

[Destiny]

Yep Giga Windforce. I think I got a good card but some people on OCN are claiming stable clocks of 1350 to 1380 mhz so there appear to be some crazy clockers out there.

Yeah... I saw that too... the people on OCN are crazy! They try to OC anything with voltage and a PCB D:

I'm going to try it tonite with EVGA Precision...its going to be first time trying to OC this card... but I doubt I can go very high because my Boost Clock out of the box tops out at 1163MHz which is the lowest on this thread so far...

 

[guskline]

Yeah... I saw that too... the people on OCN are crazy! They try to OC anything with voltage and a PCB D:

I'm going to try it tonite with EVGA Precision...its going to be first time trying to OC this card... but I doubt I can go very high because my Boost Clock out of the box tops out at 1163MHz which is the lowest on this thread so far...

Destiny: I have a "reference" GTX 680 PNY and I used EVGA Precision and tried some overclocks. I was able to Up the power to 132%, the core to 160 over base and the memory to 500 over base. It upped the diagnostics but I thought about it and removed EVGA Precision. The base reference card is such an improvement that tweeking it more isn't worth the trouble or the risk. Sounds crazy from a guy who OCs his SandyBridge CPUs but so be it. I'm happy as a clam to run a "stock" GTX 680. A wonderful video card that is powering 3 24" 1920 x 1080 monitors in Surround and games are as smooth as silk. Can't ask for more.