GeForce GTX 670 performance overview

Now that NVIDIA's Kepler has hit the $399 mark with the GeForce GTX 670 it's time to take a look at how this new card performs.

AnandTech concludes the card delivers anywhere between 80 percent and 120 percent of the Radeon HD 7970's performance, while being $60 - $80 cheaper. Additionally, NVIDIA also has the advantage in lower power consumption and lower noise output.

Outside of the obligatory AMD matchup, interestingly enough NVIDIA has put themselves in harm’s way here in the process. At 2560x1600 the GTX 680 only beats the GTX 670 by 7% on average. NVIDIA has always charged a premium for their top card but the performance gap has also been greater. In games that aren’t shader bound the GTX 670 does very well for itself thanks to the fact that it has equal memory bandwidth and only a slight ROP performance deficit, which means the GTX 680 is only particularly strong in Metro, Portal 2, and DiRT 3. The 7% performance lead certainly doesn’t justify the 25% price difference, and if you will give up that performance NVIDIA will shave $100 off of the price of a card, but if you do want that top performance NVIDIA intends to make you pay for it. Of course this is also why the GTX 670 is only priced $100 cheaper rather than $150. Potential buyers looking for a $350 GK104 card are going to be left out in the cold for now, particularly buyers looking for a meaningful GTX 570 upgrade.

Legit Reviews notes NVIDIA now has the better performing product in the $399 to $999 price range. The reviewer says the GTX 670 is a great card that will deliver a world of hurt to AMD.

NVIDIA has done a remarkable job with the GeForce GTX 670 and it is the card to buy right now. The performance is close to that of a GeForce GTX 680 and the price tag is $100 lower, so there really isn't much bad to say about the card. The performance, power usage, appearance and overclocking abilities are all in order.

That said it will be interesting to see what NVIDIA plans on doing with the GK110 GPU and we have a feeling we might find out next week during GPU Technology Conference. There have been rumors that NVIDIA will be releasing a GK110 powered GeForce GTX 685 and that they company will slowly phase out the GeForce GTX 680. Last month we would have thought that idea was crazy, but looking at how close the GTX 670 and GTX 680 are in terms of performance it could be plausible. It's always fun to speculate, but we will find out the real story soon.