Another GK104 Option for $299

If you missed our live stream with PC Perspective's Ryan Shrout and NVIDIA's Tom Petersen discussing the new GeForce GTX 660 Ti you can find the replay at this link!!

While NVIDIA doesn't like us to use the codenames anymore, very few GPUs are as flexible and as stout as the GK104.  Originally released with the GTX 680 and then with the dual-GPU beast known as the GTX 690 and THEN with the more modestly priced GTX 670, this single chip has caused AMD quite a few headaches.  It appears things will only be worse with the release of the new GeForce GTX 660 Ti today, once again powered by GK104 and the Kepler architecture at the $299 price point.

While many PC gamers lament about the lack of games that really push hardware today, NVIDIA has been promoting the GTX 660 Ti as the upgrade option of choice for gamers on a 2 -4 year cycle.  Back in 2008 the GTX 260 was the mid-range enthusiast option while in 2010 it was the GTX 470 based on Fermi.  NVIDIA claims GTX 260 users will see more than 3x the performance increase with the 660 Ti all while generating those pixels more efficiently. 

I mentioned that the GeForce GTX 660 Ti was based on GK104 and what you mind find interesting is that it is nearly identical to the specifications of the GTX 670.  Both utilize 7 SMXs for a total of 1344 stream processors or CUDA cores and both run at a reference clock speed of 915 MHz base and 980 MHz Boost.  Both include 112 texture units though the GeForce GTX 660 Ti does see a drop in ROP count from 32 to 24 and L2 cache drops from 512KB to 384KB.  Why?

Continue reading our review of the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Graphics Card!!

Spicing up the GTX 670

The Power Edition graphics card series from MSI is a relatively new addition to its lineup. The Power Edition often mimics that of the higher-end Lightning series, but at a far lower price (and perhaps a smaller feature set). This allows MSI to split the difference between the reference class boards and the high end Lightning GPUs.

Doing this allows users a greater variety of products to choose from, and to better tailor users' purchases by their needs and financial means. Not everyone wants to pay $600 for a GTX 680 Lightning, but what if someone was able to get similar cooling, quality, and overclocking potential for a much lower price?  This is what MSI has done with one of its latest Power Edition cards.

The GTX 670 Power Edition

The NVIDIA GTX 670 cards have received accolades throughout the review press. It is a great combination of performance, power consumption, heat production, and price. It certainly caused AMD a great amount of alarm, and it hurriedly cut prices on the HD 7900 series of cards in response. The GTX 670 is a slightly cut-down version of the full GTX 680, and it runs very close to the clock speed of its bigger brother. In fact, other than texture and stream unit count, the cards are nearly identical.

Continue reading the entire review!

Overclocked and 4GB Strong

Even though the Kepler GK104 GPU is now matured in the market, there is still a ton of life left in this not-so-small chip and Galaxy sent us a new graphics card to demonstrate just that.  The Galaxy GeForce GTX 670 GC 4GB card that we are reviewing today takes the GTX 670 GPU (originally released and reviewed on May 10th) and juices it up on two different fronts: clock rates and memory capacity.

The Galaxy GTX 670 GC 4GB graphics card is based on GK104 as mentioned below and meets most of the same specifications as the reference GTX 670.  That includes 1344 CUDA cores or stream processors, 112 texture units and 32 ROP units along with a 256-bit GDDR5 memory bus. 

The GC title indicates that the Galaxy GTX 670 GC 4GB is overclocked as well - this card runs at 1006 MHz base clock, 1085 MHz Boost clock and 1500 MHz memory clock.  Compared to the defaults of 915 MHz, 980 MHz and 1500 MHz (respectively) this Galaxy model gets a 10% increase in clock speed though we'll see how much that translates into gaming performance as we go through our review.

Of course, also in the title of the review, the Galaxy GTX 670 GC includes 4GB of frame buffer, twice as much as the reference cards.  The goal is obviously to attract gamers with high resolution screens (2560x1600 or 2560x1440) as well as users interested in triple panel NVIDIA Surround gaming.  We test both of those resolutions in our game collection on the following pages to see just how that works out. 

Continue reading our review of the Galaxy GeForce GTX 670 GC 4GB graphics card!

7950 gets a quick refresh

Back in June, AMD released (or at least announced) an update to the Radeon HD 7970 3GB card called the GHz Edition. Besides the higher clock speeds, the card was the first AMD offering to include PowerTune with Boost–a dynamic clock scaling capability that allowed the GPU to increase clock speeds when power and temperature allowed. 

While similar in ideology to the GPU Boost that NVIDIA invented with the GTX 680 Kepler launch, AMD's Boost is completely predictable and repeatable. Everyone's HD 7970 GHz Edition performs exactly the same regardless of your system or environment. 

Here is some commentary that I had on the technology back in June that remains unchanged:

AMD's PowerTune with Boost technology differs from NVIDIA's GPU Boost in a couple of important ways. First, much to its original premise, AMD can guarantee exactly how all Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition graphics cards will operate, and at what speeds in any given environment. There should be no variability between the card that I get and the card that you can buy online. Using digital temperature estimation in conjunction with voltage control, the PowerTune implementation of boost is completely deterministic.

As the above diagram illustrates, the "new" part of PowerTune with the GHz Edition is the ability to vary the voltage of the GPU in real-time to address a wider range of qualified clock speeds. On the previous HD 7970s the voltage was a locked static voltage in its performance mode, meaning that it would not increase or decrease during load operations. As AMD stated to us in a conversation just prior to launch, "by having multiple voltages that can be invoked, we can be at a more optimal clock/voltage combination more of the time, and deliver higher average performance."

The problem I have with AMD's boost technology is that they are obviously implementing this as a reaction to NVIDIA's technology. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the tech feels a little premature because of it. We were provided no tools prior to launch to actually monitor the exact clock speed of the GPU in real-time. The ability to monitor these very small changes in clock speed are paramount to our ability to verify the company's claims, and without it we will have questions about the validity of results. GPU-Z and other applications we usually use to monitor clock speeds (including AMD's driver) only report 1050 MHz as the clock speed–no real-time dynamic changes are being reported.

(As a side note, AMD has promised to showcase their internal tool to show real-time clock speed changes in our Live Review at http://pcper.com/live on Friday the 22nd, 11am PDT / 2pm EDT.) [It has since been archived for your viewing pleasure.]

A couple of points to make here: AMD still has not released that tool to show us internal steps of clock speeds, and instead told me today that they were waiting for an updated API to allow other software (including their own CCC) to be able to report the precise results. 

Today AMD is letting us preview the new HD 7950 3GB card that will be shipping soon with updated clock speeds and Boost support. The new base clock speed of the HD 7950 will be 850 MHz, compared to the 800 MHz of the original reference HD 7950. The GPU will be able to boost as high as 925 MHz. That should give the new 7950s a solid performance gain over the original with a clock speed increase of as much as 15%.

Continue reading our coverage of the 7950 with Boost, and get your hands on the new firmware!