GTX670 Upgrade and Overclocking Review (vs. 5850 crossfire)

[Termie]

Yeah, I did a double take when I saw that. It was considered nvidia favored for a long time because the cayman series had pretty poor tessellation performance, but the tahitis are really strong in metro (and have dramatically increased tessellation performance in general)

Come on. You and Silverforce shouldn't be surprised at my statement if you've seen a recent review of the 7970 vs. 680. The 7970 is literally the only game the 7970 wins...

See, for example: http://guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-670-review/17

 

[blackened23]

Come on. You and Silverforce shouldn't be surprised at my statement if you've seen a recent review of the 7970 vs. 680. The 7970 is literally the only game the 7970 wins...

Alrighty. I don't care much about 7970 vs 680 anymore, you brought that up not me. Whatever man. That didn't even cross my mind. I'm just saying, the argument was the exact opposite in 2010 when 5870 / 6870 was destroyed by Fermi in metro 2033. AMD fans cried , "nvidia favored game, nvidia sponsored TWIMTBP title!"

Just saying. I thought it was odd when I saw your statement because of the history of that game being benchmarked in the past - it was literally the EXACT OPPOSITE in 2010 / early 2011.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Ever since 9.4 or something AMD has been either as fast with the 6970 vs 580 or faster in Metro 2033.

I don't get the "favors" thing, I see titles that are TWIMTBP which do better with AMD hardware, and vise versa (Dirt 3).

 

[Termie]

Alrighty. I don't care much about 7970 vs 680 anymore, you brought that up not me. Whatever man. That didn't even cross my mind. I'm just saying, the argument was the exact opposite in 2010 when 5870 / 6870 was destroyed by Fermi in metro 2033. AMD fans cried , "nvidia favored game, nvidia sponsored TWIMTBP title!"

Just saying. I thought it was odd when I saw your statement because of the history of that game being benchmarked in the past - it was literally the EXACT OPPOSITE in 2010 / early 2011.

I do remember what you're talking about, but take a look at that recent Guru3d review. The 5870 is beating the 470 by a small margin. I can't explain it...maybe better drivers, maybe driver tricks on tesselation. Either way, Metro is no longer the thorn in the side of AMD.

Edit: Balla has some more insights above.

 

[Silverforce11]

Bloody AMD take years to fix poor performance on TWIMTBP games though... NV usually fix their poor perf in AMD games (Deus Ex, Shogun 2, Dragon Age series etc) within a month of release.

 

[Ieat]

Wrong guys. It's the resolution. 1080p is exactly 11% lower total pixels than 1200p. 😉

Your extra boost makes up the rest. Heaven is completely unaffected by CPU - it is the ultimate GPU benchmark. I've tested it many times and found it to be perfectly comparable across CPUs.

Bah, trick me with your long forgotten resolution.😛 But I did run it again. 9% higher overclock and still seeing a 12% gain. You did run the benchmark at 1183mhz right?

 

[Termie]

Bah, trick me with your long forgotten resolution.😛 But I did run it again. 9% higher overclock and still seeing a 12% gain. You did run the benchmark at 1183mhz right?

Oh, yeah, but my memory was at 6400 there, not 6600. Might be the difference. By the way, I'm having a heck of a time getting Heaven to stay stable. Boost offsets that are stable in game are causing Heaven to crash in the same place every time...

Nice boost, by the way - highest I've seen!

 

[Ieat]

Oh, yeah, but my memory was at 6400 there, not 6600. Might be the difference. By the way, I'm having a heck of a time getting Heaven to stay stable. Boost offsets that are stable in game are causing Heaven to crash in the same place every time...

Nice boost, by the way - highest I've seen!

Actually my OC seems to be quite common for the Gigabyte model. The reviews I've seen for it had overclocks of 1262mhz, 1289mhz, 1293mhz and 1334mhz. Did you buy your card from a place that takes returns like Amazon? If you did you might want to consider returning it and getting the Gigabyte or Asus Models when they become available.

As for Heaven I had the opposite experience. I could pass Heaven at 1305mhz but had to dial down to 1293mhz to get it game stable long term (over 2 hours).

 

[Termie]

Actually my OC seems to be quite common for the Gigabyte model. The reviews I've seen for it had overclocks of 1262mhz, 1289mhz, 1293mhz and 1334mhz. Did you buy your card from a place that takes returns like Amazon? If you did you might want to consider returning it and getting the Gigabyte or Asus Models when they become available.

As for Heaven I had the opposite experience. I could pass Heaven at 1305mhz but had to dial down to 1293mhz to get it game stable long term (over 2 hours).

I bought it from Newegg. They take returns with a restocking fee, I believe. I intentionally bought the EVGA model over the Gigabyte, which was also available at that time, due to the length. The 11" Gigabyte board simply wouldn't fit in my system without removing more than I want too. I know I'm sacrificing some boost speed, but that's ok.

 

[Ieat]

Are you using Evga precision or Afterburner? If your using Evga you may want to try Afterburner. Some people are having problems with stability using Evga.

 

[Termie]

Are you using Evga precision or Afterburner? If your using Evga you may want to try Afterburner. Some people are having problems with stability using Evga.

Thanks for the tip. I am indeed using evga.. I'll switch to afterburner - I like the interface much more anyway.

 

[blackened23]

I bought it from Newegg. They take returns with a restocking fee, I believe. I intentionally bought the EVGA model over the Gigabyte, which was also available at that time, due to the length. The 11" Gigabyte board simply wouldn't fit in my system without removing more than I want too. I know I'm sacrificing some boost speed, but that's ok.

I think the 600 series are VGA REPLACEMENT ONLY which means they won't take returns, but will exchange in the case of a defective unit.

Most of their other cards are standard 30 day, but the 670s/680s/690s aren't returnable except for replacement

 

[Don Karnage]

Here ya go:

What do ya got for me? 😉

By the way, this is not my preferred way to benchmark - dropping into the spawn screen messes things up and gives me very low minimums.

No MSAA right?

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
21270, 300000, 51, 129, 70.900

Gotcha beat bro 😉

1300 core, 1525 mem

 

[Termie]

No MSAA right?

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
21270, 300000, 51, 129, 70.900

Gotcha beat bro 😉

1300 core, 1525 mem

Yeah, no MSAA, everything else ultra, 1920x1200. Are you at 1080p by any chance?

Impressive 52% overclock, by the way!

 

[Don Karnage]

Yeah, no MSAA, everything else ultra, 1920x1200. Are you at 1080p by any chance?

Impressive 52% overclock, by the way!

1920X1080. You at 1920X1200?

 

[Termie]

1920X1080. You at 1920X1200?

Yup, yup...there's the difference. I can test at 1080p tonight if I have time. Still pretty impressive performance, but then again, you had to pay for water. 😉

 

[Zanovar]

Cheers for that Termie,was an interesting read:thumbsup:

 

[Don Karnage]

Yup, yup...there's the difference. I can test at 1080p tonight if I have time. Still pretty impressive performance, but then again, you had to pay for water. 😉

If you have a chance to test tonight at my res i would appreciate it.

 

[Termie]

Cheers for that Termie,was an interesting read:thumbsup:

Sure thing.

If you have a chance to test tonight at my res i would appreciate it.

I'll give it a go when I have the chance.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

When a 670 oc gets sub 40 fps as min how does 7850 oc get 50+ fps as min????

 

[Don Karnage]

When a 670 oc gets sub 40 fps as min how does 7850 oc get 50+ fps as min????

He's benching at 1920X1200 while i'm at 1920X1080. He'll retest tonight

 

[RussianSensation]

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I present to you evidence that may cause great shock amongst you:

Battlefield 3

Thanks for the benchmarks Termie!

Your avg overclocking is mostly the result of the reference card. If you wanted a higher chance of getting into 1250-1320mhz range GPU Boost, it would have been preferable to buy the Galaxy Dual Fan, Gigabyte Windforce 3X or Asus Direct CUII. All 3 of those cards have higher overclocking potential than reference from just about all reviews I've read.

Actually your results are more or less what's expected in the games you tested. HD5850 @ 850mhz has been shown at Xbitlabs to be just 2-3% behind HD5870 at 850mhz GPU clocks.

You have 2 of those in CF ~ 2x HD5870 in CF. Avg frames for HD5870 CF are very close to GTX670 in BF3:

Out of curiosity, can you run BF3 benchmarks again with Ultra settings + 4xMSAA? 4xMSAA was a weakness of HD5800 and HD6800/6900 series in deferred MSAA engines. I am curious to see what happens if BF3 is tested at Ultra with 4xMSAA and how that affects minimum framerates for your 5850 CF setup. 🙂

Also, if you test games with tessellation, GTX670 should look much better since HD5800 series has a very weak tessellation unit. Games such as Crysis 2, Batman AC and Civilization V would expose that.

The fact that this generation has moderate price/performance increase is also weighing heavily on the outcome of your upgrade. HD5850 for $269 was a smoking hot deal from day 1. Today GK104 (basically an upper mid-range chip) sells for $400 but is just 25% or so better than GTX580. That's not a next generation high-end chip by any measure no matter how NV tries spinning it. At the same time if Rory Read had been at the helm during HD5800 generation, HD5850 would have likely cost $449 (MSRP of HD7950 at launch). It's going to be a while before there is a $400 card that can truly obsolete HD5850/5870/6950/6970 CF setups.

 

[Termie]

Thanks for the benchmarks Termie!

Your avg overclocking is mostly the result of the reference card. If you wanted a higher chance of getting into 1250-1320mhz range GPU Boost, it would have been preferable to buy the Galaxy Dual Fan, Gigabyte Windforce 3X or Asus Direct CUII. All 3 of those cards have higher overclocking potential than reference from just about all reviews I've read.

Actually your results are more or less what's expected in the games you tested. HD5850 @ 850mhz has been shown at Xbitlabs to be just 2-3% behind HD5870 at 850mhz GPU clocks.

You have 2 of those in CF ~ 2x HD5870 in CF. Avg frames for HD5870 CF are very close to GTX670 in BF3:

Out of curiosity, can you run BF3 benchmarks again with Ultra settings / 4xMSAA? 4xMSAA was a weakness of HD5800 and HD6800/6900 series in deferred MSAA engines. I am curious to see what happens if BF3 is tested at Ultra with 4xMSAA and how that affects minimum framerates for your 5850 CF setup. 🙂

Also, if you test games with tessellation, GTX670 should look much better since HD5800 series has very weak tessellation unit. Games such as Crysis 2, Batman AC and Civilization V would expose that.

I'd seen a number of 5970 BF3 benchmarks, and figured that the 670 would beat that, as shown above in 5870CF losing to the 670. But such was not the case in my testing. The OC'd 5850s, which were very close to 5870 crossfire, actually beat the stock 670 pretty badly.

Take for example, this testing from the 690 review:

My 5850s even at stock were much higher than the 5970 here, while my 670 is right in line with the 680. Those 5850s were possessed, I tell you!


I agree that testing with tessellation should show better results for the 670. I actually have Batman AC, but I play it on my HTPC with an xbox controller - don't want to deal with downloading the 16GB installer package to my gaming PC, since I won't play it on that system anyway. I had Crysis 2, but installing the DX11 pack corrupted the game and I gave up on it. Anyway, the 5850s have already been sold, so I can't do any more comparison testing, sadly. They will be missed!

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Good stuff. Too bad there wasn't more of a performance upgrade for you. For me and a single gtx 480 the 670 is a heck of an upgrade. It'll be nice to try it out. lol. I guess I'm the only cheap ass that didn't spring for faster shipping.

 

[RussianSensation]

Anyway, the 5850s have already been sold, so I can't do any more comparison testing, sadly. They will be missed!

HD5850 OC = "8800GT" of that generation no doubt. Even better since it lasted almost 3 years! $269 for a classic card. Congrats on the new purchase. For next gen games, GTX670 should pull ahead of HD5850 CF setup, minus the micro-stutter that inevitably hits older generation cards the more they start struggling in games.