GTX 670 4GB TRI SLI Review. "Wasting my money so you don't have to!"

[skipsneeky2]

Man,3 gtx670 cards are absolutely insane for gaming,glad i only game at 1920x1080 and am happy with my 2 gtx670 cards.

Hard to say its a waste of money,people spend money on plenty of stupid crap but if gaming is your hobby of choice,i can say its justified,before the first gtx670 i purchased i told myself i would not need another one,and that did not last long with the second card in my tower less then a week later.:awe:

Seems this generation is a little more bolder,with many more people going sli and crossfire then ever before,seems every other guy with a gtx670 ends up going sli which makes for a interesting observation.

 

[Destiny]

Thanks for the post and tests, OP! Something for me to look forward when I have the guts to go SLI/Tri-SLI and overclocking! :biggrin:

 

[Jacky60]

"Don" isn't into cable management. Annisman* is far to neat.

Don is very into other people's money according to the FS forum!

 

[Annisman*]

OMG whose this Don guy

 

[SlowSpyder]

Russian, seeing as some of those games run on 2GB and even 1GB cards,, I would say we are seeing a mix of too little vram in some games and Nvidia driver issues there. I know people like to parrot how superior Nvidia drivers are, but looking at these tri SLI results and some of those benches you posted, I'd say Nvidia has it's fair share of issues yet too. AMD drivers have always been great for me, well up to the 7xxx cards, I'll admit that for a while drivers for my 7970 certainly lacked a bit of polish (the not coming out of sleep issue was very annoying). Anyway, I think Nividia's driver superiority is more of a perception than reality. Truthfully those tri SLI min. frame rates would make me think that right now a better gaming experience would be had if the OP removed one of his cards. I guess it depends on the game.

 

[cmdrdredd]

It has been well known that with 3 or more gpus that you start getting severely diminishing returns. As far as I remember it is always that way. It isn't necessarily drivers but more of a limitation of the technology I think.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Why don't you test with some SSAA to better utilize the cards?

 

[EliteRetard]

Perhaps he needs another 6 monitors to make a 3x3 array...

 

[RussianSensation]

Russian, seeing as some of those games run on 2GB and even 1GB cards,, I would say we are seeing a mix of too little vram in some games and Nvidia driver issues there.

Perhaps, or maybe memory bandwidth limitations. In cases where the game won't even start or there is a graphical error, it's probably a VRAM issue. In other cases such as Bullet Storm, it could be explained by a driver issue but SLI still scales. NV goes from leading performance with no AA to tanking hard with 8AA. Since most reviewers stop at 4AA, we don't tend to see GK104's memory bandwidth being tested. For example, we know GTX670/680 do very well in Batman AC with GTX680 ~ or within 5% of the 7970 GE. But enable 8AA, and it's 7970 GE leads by 24%. Whether this is a driver issue or NV's poor performance with 8AA is hard accurately isolate.

Still, this Tri-SLI testing by both Xbitlabs and Annisman* shows that SLI doesn't have some magical immunity to 3 card performance overhead issues and/or scaling issues that plague HD7900 series as well. We have even seen scaling drop off in the past with Fermi when paired with 3 cards. 2 cards seems to be the best balance for scaling in games right now.

 

[AdamK47]

3DMARK11 Performance Preset SLI : P16206, 18091 Graphics
3DMARK11 Performance Preset TRI SLI: P19228, 23331 Graphics

18.5% increase


Heaven Benchmark (1920x1080, everything maxxed, 8XAA)

SLI: 2239, 29.7 Min, 227.2 Max, 88.9 Avg.
TRI SLI: 3159, 42.8 Min, 327.3 Max, 125.4 Avg.

41% increase

This is what I posted in the "King of the Hill" thread. Still haven't received my $20 yet. I've been Castielized.

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3701337

 

[KompuKare]

@the OP: wanted to congratulate you on winning the best thread title of the month award!

Seriously, it made me smile...

 

[Annisman*]

@the OP: wanted to congratulate you on winning the best thread title of the month award!

Seriously, it made me smile...

Haha, just trying to drown my sorrows with some humor. Plus, I thought it would limit the 'you wasted your money' comments, by admitting to it outright.

 

[Annisman*]

This is what I posted in the "King of the Hill" thread. Still haven't received my $20 yet. I've been Castielized.

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3701337

Impressive scores!

I'm actually shocked at how much better your scores are, the 7970 usually loses to the GTX 670 in games one on one correct ?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Impressive scores!

I'm actually shocked at how much better your scores are, the 7970 usually loses to the GTX 670 in games one on one correct ?

depends on the clock speeds compared. Also your minimums in heaven were much higher, almost by 20fps. I'd say that in 3Dmark it would be similar. A little bit lower averages but higher minimums. Too bad 3Dmark only lists average fps.

 

[AdamK47]

depends on the clock speeds compared. Also your minimums in heaven were much higher, almost by 20fps. I'd say that in 3Dmark it would be similar. A little bit lower averages but higher minimums. Too bad 3Dmark only lists average fps.

I can run it a few more times and see if I get a random minimum higher than that.

 

[blackened23]

Impressive scores!

I'm actually shocked at how much better your scores are, the 7970 usually loses to the GTX 670 in games one on one correct ?

Not really. It may lose to games that favor nvidia, but only if the 7970 is at stock clocks. And who does that with a 7970 anyway, when its overclocked it passes the 670 quite easily and by a significant margin. The 7970 definitely scales better than the 670 with overclocking, because the 7970 doesn't have all of the stupid throttling and locked voltage mechanisms that kepler does.

Edit: I thought about going Tri SLI 680s for surround but ehhhhhhhhh.....tri and quad sli is territory for benchmarking, many games don't work or scale with tri/quad.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I can run it a few more times and see if I get a random minimum higher than that.

Well, I know with heaven you can increase minimums by mashing enter to cycle through the scenes and that avoids the hitching or stuttering you sometimes might notice.

 

[Annisman*]

Not really. It may lose to games that favor nvidia, but only if the 7970 is at stock clocks. And who does that with a 7970 anyway, when its overclocked it passes the 670 quite easily and by a significant margin. The 7970 definitely scales better than the 670 with overclocking, because the 7970 doesn't have all of the stupid throttling and locked voltage mechanisms that kepler does.

Edit: I thought about going Tri SLI 680s for surround but ehhhhhhhhh.....tri and quad sli is territory for benchmarking, many games don't work or scale with tri/quad.

Good point, the two synethetic benchmarks showed a fair increase, most of the games I tested, not so much.

 

[Annisman*]

I can run it a few more times and see if I get a random minimum higher than that.

Don't bother, from what I have read (and experienced first hand) the minimums in Heaven will vary wildly, and don't even affect the end score hardly at all.

 

[blackened23]

Good point, the two synethetic benchmarks showed a fair increase, most of the games I tested, not so much.

Yeah, 2 GPUs is definitely the sweet spot. Some games work with tri or quad (and quite a few don't), but nearly every game works with 2. I just really prefer the compatibility of having only 2 GPUs...

 

[bryanW1995]

Thank you for wasting the money so we don't have to! That looks like it would be a lot of fun to set up...

 

[dust]

I like the title! .... thoughtful!

Oh, and I'm drunk! Celebrating Ramadan here in the Middle East!

 

[blackened23]

I like the title! .... thoughtful!

Oh, and I'm drunk! Celebrating Ramadan here in the Middle East!

Are you deployed there or something?

 

[dust]

Lol!
I came here by choice! Dubai is great!

 

[skipsneeky2]

Is there any current game of the last 2 years that can choke a pair of gtx670 cards in sli at 1080p?

BF3 is one of the most demanding games period and a pair of these cards just walks all over the game holding 60+,its making me almost wanna find a quality pc game,not a console port to really work them to their limits.

Not a huge fan of poorly optimized console ports to test a set up,but the type that can benefit from hardware,look good with setting adjustments and not like crap while requiring a super computer are very nice.

Hate synthetic benchmarks.