SLI Performance Testing
For our quick little check of SLI performance, we connected our reference and Galaxy GTX 670 cards together, using the same 301.34 driver and compared them to a pair of Radeon HD 7950 3GB cards running in CrossFire with Catalyst 12.4.
Sorry for the lame photo here, but last minute camera phone shots will do that do you. Our SLI and CrossFire comparison below only looks at the bar graph versions of our 1920×1080 results as they appeared to be right in with scaling at 2560×1600 as well.
If the HD 7950 was behind in single card testing it only makes sense that it would fall behind in multi-GPU testing as well, which it does. In general, SLI seems to be more compatible than CrossFire with issues arising in our 7950s configuration with Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. For NVIDIA though, if we only take Skyrim out of the equation, the GTX 670 sees an average scaling factor of 1.71x by adding a second card in our testing.
The synthetic benchmarks show a similar story though with higher scaling – both the GTX 670 and Radeon HD 7950 see nearly perfect scaling in 3DMark11 on the Extreme preset. At the Extreme tessellation setting on Heaven we see 94% and 97% scaling respectively as well.
That will indeed hurt AMD as
That will indeed hurt AMD as the last paragraph states. And just as I was planning to upgrade, here comes another option 🙂
For the review, Impressive like always. Can’t wait to see multi screen testing. 🙂
Thanks for the comment. This
Thanks for the comment. This card is really tempting 🙂
It would seem that AMD’s only
It would seem that AMD’s only saving grace right now is that Nvidia can’t keep the Kepler parts in stock thus far. I wouldn’t want to be an AMD executive when Nvidia finally does catch up though…
I do have to say though, a pair of GTX 670’s in SLI does look mighty tempting considering the projected price of the cards.
Cheers,
Dreadteir
Agreed, I wish I had the
Agreed, I wish I had the money, though my unlocked 6950 can still play darn near everything at 1080p.
Myself, I would likey start
Myself, I would likey start with one and add a second card afterward. Considering that I only have a 1920×1200 monitor there’s little point in having two at this point.
Nvidia is certainly making my next system build choices interesting though. I do like AMD, but it’s getting harder to justify going with an AMD part. Even price drops aren’t really going to do it for me personally.
Yeah, that would probably be
Yeah, that would probably be the best way to go to get the most life out of such a setup.
Kepler is looking good though I’ve gone with AMD cards for my builds except for my first build which did use an NV card. Maybe it’s time to go back to the green team heh.
You do realize AMD will just
You do realize AMD will just drop prices accordingly, right?
Soon enough 7950 will be priced at 399 or even 350. 7970 actually can probably stay where it’s at, as relative to 680 it’s pretty close. 670 puts as much pressure on 680 as 7970 imo.
The tahiti chip (7950/7970) is smaller/cheaper than Caymen (6970/6950). 6950’s sold for $250 and less. AMD will have no problem selling Tahiti’s at $300 and even below and making a profit. Dang, are you that unsophisticated?
Selling tahiti at $300? wow,
Selling tahiti at $300? wow, that’s gonna hurt anyone who bought it at $550 😀
All too often I see people
All too often I see people say that prices are going to change and even accuse others of being dumb if they don’t know the prices are going to change. The problem with the assumptions of future pricing is the part about the future. Some people want a video card right now.
Great review. After holding
Great review. After holding of for months I can finally be sure I made the right decision by not pulling the trigger on one of the new AMD cards.Oh how tempting it has been. Is there any official word on yields?Now i am truly excited.
NVIDIA doesn’t release
NVIDIA doesn’t release numbers on yields unfortunately :(. Let’s hope they are better than the GTX 680 yields though 😉
A lot of these 670s were
A lot of these 670s were actually supposed to be 680s but had one unit that couldn’t pass testing right?
I wish you threw in a 570 for
I wish you threw in a 570 for comparison.
I tell you what – I’ll make a
I tell you what – I’ll make a news post with a few graphs this afternoon for you.
I would also like to see
I would also like to see that.
Here you
Here you go:
https://pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/GeForce-GTX-670-vs-GTX-570-Performance-Update
I think I might become a
I think I might become a fanboy of nVidia, because its that damn good lol. No only joking, I hope AMD has something up their sleeves. Or Nvidia will just start charging what they want… Very tempted by the 670 though, my 460 is ok for the moment but could do with an upgrade soon.
Who won the crobar anyway? Or
Who won the crobar anyway? Or was that said IN the 690 live review? I couldnt watch the live review at work and keep forgetting to watch the replay at home :X
570=300, 670=400 680=500,
570=300, 670=400 680=500, 690=1000
the 670 IS the new 570 and provides a better price/performance ratio then 570 when it FIRST came out.
2x 560TI won’t beat a 680 and it prolly equal to a 670 and the 670 is cheaper and ONE card…
The numbers don’t lie, nvidia has an official winner.
Poor AMD they getting front
Poor AMD they getting front and back on the CPU GPU market
Considering this little guys
Considering this little guys are 400 bucks and the 690’s can be found for re-resale for around 1200 bucks I would love to see how 3 670 is SLI compare to 1 690.
Is this possible to test? Compare single 2560 x 1600 resolutions with the highest setting and multi monitor support and any stuttering drawbacks from SLI,
Thanks Ryan and Gang!
This would be nice to see if
This would be nice to see if you could get hold of 3×670’s
We should be getting a third
We should be getting a third in soon… We will test it!
I had upgrade my GTX8800 to a
I had upgrade my GTX8800 to a GTX 460 about a month or so after they came out. Even though I have a Q6600 processor, I saw huge improvements. I am wondering, would it better to buy another GTX 460 for SLI or buy a GTX 670? I think the perform of the GTX 670 will still beat the SLI configuration, but prices for a GTX 460 are about 135-150 on Amazon. This assume my Power Supply can handle the SLI load. What would be a better use case, considering I might upgrade my CPU/Mobo this summer.
Man , this card’s made me go
Man , this card’s made me go mad.But……
Nvidia has got all the equations right this time around(except for one) i.e. GK110
If it was GK110 we could have got another 50-60% performance at the same price.
Since its not ,I am going to buy a GTX 560 SE(my monitor res is 1600×900 @60 Hz) and wait for GK110 and when it comes out I’ll go 3D Surround(hope there will be more 3d Vision 2 monitors then) and 2-way SLI
Great Review many thanks.
I
Great Review many thanks.
I might just buy one for my new system when I build it.
Gaming at 1920×1080? Meh.
Gaming at 1920×1080? Meh. It’s like we’re going backwards.
I saw a small mention to it
I saw a small mention to it in the article. Is there anything on Alienware upgrading the X51 for this card any time soon?
i have a Gigabyte 670 with
i have a Gigabyte 670 with that huge ass cooler on it, makes the card 11 inches long with a air temp in the room of 74 degree’s F, gpu is idleing at between 84-89 degree’s F.
just bought this sweet piece
just bought this sweet piece of art should have it in the next 7days can’t wait to test it