The best GTX 670

[Rvenger]

You're arguing semantics. It is a blower cooler (like the reference is) with slightly different (wider) dimensions. IT IS designed exactly like the reference fan but slightly wider - it is pretty much exactly the same. You can't have the overclocking headroom with that junky cooler that an asus DC2T would have.

Of course, EVGA fanboys (this isn't directed at you, just saying in general) will cream their pants over any turd of a card that EVGA releases, and then EVGA will overclock it by 20mhz for you at a cost of 30$. 30$ for a superclocked card, good stuff there. Meanwhile for that same 30$ gigabyte asus or MSI will give you a real cooler that gives you actual OC headroom and better quality. As far as customer service, you'll probably need it considering EVGA had so many defective 670 cards.

FTW model, the RAM is overclocked, so is the GPU. It has the 680 reference cooler with the high flow bracket and is $409 AR. High flow bracket costs $10 not including shipping. I don't see an issue with the price.


Core Clock:
1006MHz
Boost Clock:
1084MHz
Effective Memory Clock:
6208MHz


Vanilla clocks are 915/980 on the GPU, 6003 on the memory, a little more than 20mhz. I am not an EVGA fanboy... I did get flamed on here for expressing my bad experiences with their customer support though so there is your unbiased answer.

 

[Zardnok]

Top is bad. Non top flashed with the top bios is good

I haven't had a single problem from my Top with stock boost at 1137 and Kepler boost at 1267. I played around with it some and added another 60mhz with no problems running Heaven benchmarks, but I dropped it back to stock simply because it was already faster than I needed and I didn't want any heat issues. Stock also allowed me to run a quieter fan profile. My old card had the Gigaybte windforce 3-fan cooler on it and I definitely think this Asus DC-II cooler is quieter and easily as effective.

 

[xp0c]

How is your Galaxy? Is it silent and cool? No coil whine?

So far the FTW has 50% of the votes, ASUS has 25% and the two other candidates share the rest.

There is no coil whine.
The card is very quiet up to 55% then you can just hear hit. I leave it at a 1:1 ratio in Afterburners fan settings, and it stays under 60 while gaming, and under 70 when benching. My ambient room temp is quite warm as well.
I can bench 3dmark11 at 1306/7100, and loop the heaven benchmark at 1289/7100

I like the custom full length PCB with the ventilation holes.

It's not the best 670, and far from the worst.

 

[3DVagabond]

Considering we are only talking single digit %'s when comparing difference in performance of these brands, I'd say that customer service would be very important. I think EVGA replacing the problem 670's with the next higher model is far better support than Asus writing a lower clocked bios and telling the customers to flash their cards themselves. Especially considering people bought these cards because they are the highest clocked 670 available.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Considering we are only talking single digit %'s when comparing difference in performance of these brands, I'd say that customer service would be very important. I think EVGA replacing the problem 670's with the next higher model is far better support than Asus writing a lower clocked bios and telling the customers to flash their cards themselves. Especially considering people bought these cards because they are the highest clocked 670 available.

I bought the 'non TOP' version because of the rumors. Same card, just with a little lower boost clocks. I've never been a fan of paying premium for factory overclocked graphics cards, when I can overclock them myself.

One of my cards I can overclock to over 1300MHz Boost, the other one can not even make it to 1200. Both will do a little over 6.8GHz on the mem. I run them i SLI, so I'm using stock boost and sat Powertarget to 122%. One has a stock Kepler boost of 1084MHz, the other one has 1124MHz.

Anyway, I think it's a little weak of ASUS and their quality control to release a huge number of TOP cards and not testing them properly at their overclocked speed. When people pay more for the TOP version, they should get the higher clocks, and maybe some more room to overclock, else there is no point paying more over the 'Non TOP' versions.

This reminds me of XFX and their issues with quality control on factory overclocked cards. I really hope ASUS get their act together and not becoming like XFX.

Edit: Maybe ASUS mixed cards that where meant to be Non-top cards on the assembly line or something, flashed them with the TOP bios and accidently circulated them out on the market. Who knows? Lol

Edit 2: Another thought that has stroke my mind a few times... Every company have some failrate with products. That's just the way it is... Isn't ASUS a much bigger company than most other brands? If so, they probably sell alot more cards VS the others? If so, you will hear more about them, because alot more people buy their products, and some of them WILL get failed products, no matter what.

Edit 3: As to the EVGA GTX 670 FTW versions, in my opinion their strong point is that they blow most of the heat out the back of the case. They also use the GTX 680 reference design and cooler, which is a much better design/cooler VS reference GTX 670. My ASUS DC II cards drops all of their heat inside my case. I have a well enough ventilated case, but I could feel the heat rising and really heating up the motherboards VRM heatsinks, around the CPU socket. So blower type cards have their strong points, but of course their weaknesses. They are more noisy.