EVGA GTX670 FTW Discussion

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psyclist

Gawd
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Jan 25, 2005
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Hey Guys,

Just thought Id start a thread for the 670 FTW card, I have only found one review of it so far and thought [H] could use its own! I have one on the way ATM so I cant comment much on its abilities but I am effin pumped thats its coming!

Im moving from dual 6870's, anybody else with a similar experience? Am I going to see a tangible diff between my current setup and the 670?

Also just wondering about possible BIOS flashes, I know the vanilla 670 cant be flashed because they have a totally diff PCB but seeing as how the is on the 680 PCB and cooler, could there be a chance?

Also Clocks achieved, Voltage offsets and best fan speed profiles perhaps? Its been since an 8800GTS that ive been in the Green camp, so ive got a little catching up to do...
 
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All I can comment on is the difference between the 670 and 2x 6870's. I think that you will get similar or slightly better raw FPS, but it will definitely feel a lot smoother. This means that a game running at 40 fps will be a lot more enjoyable than with your previous setup. Also, the extra GB of ram should help a lot with AA at 1440p.
 
Running 2 of them in SLI and love em to death.

I don't have much that can push them to their limit at the moment (not a BF3 player), but hoping to remedy that soon.

By just maxing out the Power Target to 145% I got this for a 3DM11 score.

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3648096

I'm pretty happy with that, but when I get time to mess with the GPU and Memory offsets I'm hoping to see a bit more.
 
i love mine. i am coming from a unlocked 6950 and this thing blows it away. i havent really had the need to oc it (yet) as i am only playing on a single 1920x1080 monitor. i did bring it to work the other day and play on 3 1440x900 monitors. i was able to max out bf3 (minus aa) and maintain 60+ fps.

i do plan on going triple 1080p monitors, i couldnt believe how much fun it was to play on triple monitors.


http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/27432-evga-gtx-670-ftw-reviewed/27432-evga-gtx-670-ftw-reviewed
 
I'm actually disappointed with mine. Windows feels less responsive, and flash is just slower in general. In some games I notice the improvement from my 5850, but general use and older stuff it's just worse. Vsync stutter bug is ass.

I await further drivers.
 
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Mine has been sitting on a table since I got it a couple weeks ago. Trying to gather up final parts of the build for it.

I will say the TIM job wasnt nearly as bad as every other EVGA card ever made. Still could use a good cleaning and thinner application though.
 
Good to hear from the other 6870 owner, i was never really sensitive to the microstutter everyone talked about. but i did notice when ship got crazy in bf3 that it would hitch. Im hoping the new card will be smoother that way.

Im going to need to do a little reading on setting the power targets and clock offsets.

I have heard that some of the cards or setups have some lag issues, but not everyone correct ?...hopefully it get fixed soon.

Gonna see how my temps end up at high clocks and might redo the TIM as well. some AS5 should help a little.

This was a snap decision , so not as much prior research before buying it! oh well it looks like its a good choice for a card. who knows maybe another later on down the road :D how do they scale ? better or worse than a crossfire setup?
 
if the next set of drivers dont fix the framerate dropping issues then I will be selling mine if its too late to return it. its inexcusable that not one damn person at Nvidia could detect this issue before releasing the gtx680/670 cards.
 
I just got done playing a few games with mine, and I'm starting to see some stability issues with either the drivers or the factory oc. I ran heaven 3.0 with max settings 1920x1200, and for around 30 minutes, no problems.
Once I started Max Payne 3, max settings as well, 20 minutes into it, small red dot patterns begin to creep all over the screen, then the screen turns black, freezes, and comp needs a restart.
I know some people have been having various bugs with the game, so I decide to try some others and see if issues persist.
Skyrim was next, and it went great for about an hour, after which, sitting in town, same thing, small red dots, screen flickers a bit, game freezes. This time, the comp did not freeze, so I was able to alt tab to desktop.
BF3 lasted an entire half hour before the same thing happened - small red dots , screen freezes and shifts, and then ctd or later a reboot was required. It happened twice in BF3.
Now, my temps are good. In MP3, they hovered around 67c, and Skyrim, 65c. BF3 was the highest at 71c. I haven't done any overclocking, I've had the card for a couple of days.
I RMAd my 7850 AsusDC2 because it would freeze my comp when it was idle - someone sent me a link explaining how turning off the power saving feature in windows helped with the random freezes. Ok, well, are there any fixes for the gtx 670 ftw? This card was installed on a clean windows build, and literally besides the 3 games I have nothing else except the Precision X software and Xonar audio control panel.
 
I've been running one for a couple weeks now. 1250 core 6800 memory no voltage tweaks. Theres a little more there, but Im happy. Have the power target set to 145% and have seen it up to 129% at times. I let the fan ramp pretty high, keeps the card in the mid 60s at peak. Match the fan speed to temp, so 65 degrees is 65% on the fan. The fan is audible at those levels but not annoying. Using Afterburner
 
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sonicboom said:
I just got done playing a few games with mine, and I'm starting to see some stability issues with either the drivers or the factory oc. I ran heaven 3.0 with max settings 1920x1200, and for around 30 minutes, no problems.
Once I started Max Payne 3, max settings as well, 20 minutes into it, small red dot patterns begin to creep all over the screen, then the screen turns black, freezes, and comp needs a restart.
I know some people have been having various bugs with the game, so I decide to try some others and see if issues persist.
Skyrim was next, and it went great for about an hour, after which, sitting in town, same thing, small red dots, screen flickers a bit, game freezes. This time, the comp did not freeze, so I was able to alt tab to desktop.
BF3 lasted an entire half hour before the same thing happened - small red dots , screen freezes and shifts, and then ctd or later a reboot was required. It happened twice in BF3.
Now, my temps are good. In MP3, they hovered around 67c, and Skyrim, 65c. BF3 was the highest at 71c. I haven't done any overclocking, I've had the card for a couple of days.
I RMAd my 7850 AsusDC2 because it would freeze my comp when it was idle - someone sent me a link explaining how turning off the power saving feature in windows helped with the random freezes. Ok, well, are there any fixes for the gtx 670 ftw? This card was installed on a clean windows build, and literally besides the 3 games I have nothing else except the Precision X software and Xonar audio control panel.
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sounds like you have a bad card. i would say they red dot have to do with bad ram.

it is interesting that everyone is having all these problems. my card is fine and i didnt even do a clean install. i just unistalled the amd drives and installed nvidia drivers.
 
cannondale06 said:
if the next set of drivers dont fix the framerate dropping issues then I will be selling mine if its too late to return it. its inexcusable that not one damn person at Nvidia could detect this issue before releasing the gtx680/670 cards.
Click to expand...

lets hope for the best. no fixed drivers and you sell it to me for $300.
 
sonicboom said:
I just got done playing a few games with mine, and I'm starting to see some stability issues with either the drivers or the factory oc. I ran heaven 3.0 with max settings 1920x1200, and for around 30 minutes, no problems.
Once I started Max Payne 3, max settings as well, 20 minutes into it, small red dot patterns begin to creep all over the screen, then the screen turns black, freezes, and comp needs a restart.
I know some people have been having various bugs with the game, so I decide to try some others and see if issues persist.
Skyrim was next, and it went great for about an hour, after which, sitting in town, same thing, small red dots, screen flickers a bit, game freezes. This time, the comp did not freeze, so I was able to alt tab to desktop.
BF3 lasted an entire half hour before the same thing happened - small red dots , screen freezes and shifts, and then ctd or later a reboot was required. It happened twice in BF3.
Now, my temps are good. In MP3, they hovered around 67c, and Skyrim, 65c. BF3 was the highest at 71c. I haven't done any overclocking, I've had the card for a couple of days.
I RMAd my 7850 AsusDC2 because it would freeze my comp when it was idle - someone sent me a link explaining how turning off the power saving feature in windows helped with the random freezes. Ok, well, are there any fixes for the gtx 670 ftw? This card was installed on a clean windows build, and literally besides the 3 games I have nothing else except the Precision X software and Xonar audio control panel.
Click to expand...

Ive had to buy 4 MSI 670s to get two that worked.
My issues were blinking display in Surround (two were fine attached to the master, the slave was bugged), and constant crashing at factory set OCs.

I never saw any artifacting though.

The two cards I RMA'd also had terrible capacitor "screaming"....as soon as I started a game you could hear the whining something terrible.

My good two are superb, voltage offset +122%, GPU offset +50, memory offset +50......that equates to a gpu base clock of 1015. Ive seen boost of 1250 in game, with an average of 1238 most of the time.

This setup gets higher frames in MP3 all settings max (no msaa, ssao) than my 7970 CF computer!!

You will really enjoy that FTW card.:D
 
Quick update here. I've installed the Evga OC scanner utility, and the stress test cannot run more than 1 minute without producing over 200 artifacts. System crashes right away, and windows error log shows the 301.42 drivers as timing out (tdr). At this point, I will just RMA the card.
 
All this discussion of bad cards! well I guess I can only hope for the best, and bench the shit out of her when she gets here later this week. Seems like QC in both camps needs a little work these days! We can take this card up to a voltage offset of 145% what does that equate to? and what are most 670's voltage offset limits?
 
psyclist said:
All this discussion of bad cards! well I guess I can only hope for the best, and bench the shit out of her when she gets here later this week. Seems like QC in both camps needs a little work these days! We can take this card up to a voltage offset of 145% what does that equate to? and what are most 670's voltage offset limits?
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145% is useless as even under full load stress test at 1289/7000 its only going to use about 120-125% max.
 
sonicboom said:
Quick update here. I've installed the Evga OC scanner utility, and the stress test cannot run more than 1 minute without producing over 200 artifacts. System crashes right away, and windows error log shows the 301.42 drivers as timing out (tdr). At this point, I will just RMA the card.
Click to expand...

That's really too bad.....but hey......if your next card is a good one, you match my 50% RMA rate as well!:eek::eek::D
 
Been using mine for a couple of weeks, I don't have any complaints. I'm playing Dirt3 on High settings with 8xMSAA and getting 60 - 85 fps. This is with three 1200P monitors in surround. I'm OCd to 1250/6600. It maxes at 64 degrees with my fan at 80%. Just a lil bit noisy, but I have my noise cancelling headphone on usually so it doesn't matter. I hope to watercool my system someday (hopefully soon).
 
cannondale06 said:
that's not going to get you any higher clocks as the gpu hits a wall before the power usage ever hits 125% anyway.
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Every sample is different, and will draw different amounts of power with different voltages/clocks. To say one will never use more then 125% cant be correct at all, when you arent going to be using everyone of them out there.

If someone clocks two to 1500Mhz with LN2, and one sample needs 1.3V and another needs 1.2V (clock/voltages as an example only), they are going to be drawing different amounts of power.
 
Cecil said:
Every sample is different, and will draw different amounts of power with different voltages/clocks. To say one will never use more then 125% cant be correct at all, when you arent going to be using everyone of them out there.

If someone clocks two to 1500Mhz with LN2, and one sample needs 1.3V and another needs 1.2V (clock/voltages as an example only), they are going to be drawing different amounts of power.
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voltage is locked on the cards though unless you are going to hard mod it.
 
cannondale06 said:
voltage is locked on the cards though unless you are going to hard mod it.
Click to expand...

LN2 benchers hard mod. No reason to use LN2 on it if the voltage is the bottleneck.

The extra power limit EVGA put on is pretty much for hwbot benchers.
 
Cecil said:
LN2 benchers hard mod. No reason to use LN2 on it if the voltage is the bottleneck.

The extra power limit EVGA put on is pretty much for hwbot benchers.
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for some reason I kept thinking H2O instead of LN2 so yeah those type guys will do some real hardware voltage modding.
 
Ok so one of you mentioned that the card is volt locked? what is it locked to? and is ours diff from the vanilla 670? As I understand it it will jump up and down according to load. So the regular cards ive read will do ~120% power target and ours will do 145% correct? Does anyone know what this equates to? Id have to agree that its hard to backup a statement that says no card will use over 125%

Now is the RAM connected to this power target as well? I would think not but just seeing if anyone knows better?
 
I'm not sure if the ram is tied into it or not but I did notice under benchmarks/games the card barely goes over say 111% but if you run OC Scanner/furmark it will push it to 145%
 
Gio said:
I'm not sure if the ram is tied into it or not but I did notice under benchmarks/games the card barely goes over say 111% but if you run OC Scanner/furmark it will push it to 145%
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even with mine oced to the max, it does not go anywhere near 145%. in the oc scanner tests it goes to 102% for furry and 122% for tessy.
 
I'll try to take a screen shot later. I did notice it when running the furry test for stressing
 
i've been pretty happy with mine.
going to water cool it this weekend with a heatkiller block and my first custom water loop. :) we'll see how it goes
 
Frig I want to get testing on mine! ive got an interview tmrw so ive been preparing for that, probably good that card isnt here yet! I wish there were some more reputable sites doing a review on this card! how do we put in a request? Ive got this coming and two 4gb sticks of Crucial Ballistix Elite 1866 RAM to get in there as well! they supposedly will clock to 2133 CL9 @ 1.65v
 
Hello all,

Just got this card from Amazon should be here this Friday. I'm upgraded from a gtx460, question is can I just uninstall and reinstall the new drivers for this card without issues? or should I do a clean install of windows 7 (which would be a pain but willing to do it). Also should I install the drivers that come in the box or should I install the newest drivers from Nvidias website?

Thanks!
 
sifulee said:
Hello all,

Just got this card from Amazon should be here this Friday. I'm upgraded from a gtx460, question is can I just uninstall and reinstall the new drivers for this card without issues? or should I do a clean install of windows 7 (which would be a pain but willing to do it). Also should I install the drivers that come in the box or should I install the newest drivers from Nvidias website?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Pull out the 460, put in the 670, re-connect the 2 power cables, boot the system.

OS will find the card, and want to reboot once, and you'll be done other than going into the driver settings and tweaking anything special you want.

Thats all I did when I replaced my 2 x 460's with 2 x 670's.
 
sifulee said:
Hello all,

Just got this card from Amazon should be here this Friday. I'm upgraded from a gtx460, question is can I just uninstall and reinstall the new drivers for this card without issues? or should I do a clean install of windows 7 (which would be a pain but willing to do it). Also should I install the drivers that come in the box or should I install the newest drivers from Nvidias website?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
no need for a clean install when changing cards like that. I would fully uninstall precision or any other app that you use and then reboot and an uninstall card and driver from device manger. then of course turn off pc, install new card, install driver, reboot and then install any app such as precision.
 
Limahl said:
Pull out the 460, put in the 670, re-connect the 2 power cables, boot the system.

OS will find the card, and want to reboot once, and you'll be done other than going into the driver settings and tweaking anything special you want.

Thats all I did when I replaced my 2 x 460's with 2 x 670's.
Click to expand...

Wow didn't realize it would be that simply, thanks!
 
Limahl said:
Yep it's pretty painless as long as you're staying with NV.

Enjoy the boost in power, it's pretty sweet.
Click to expand...

Thanks I'm looking forward to replaying all my games. One other question, I just looked at my current drivers and I'm running 266.58 which I take is really old. Once I reboot with the new card in, does windows automatically update my computer with the latest nvidia drivers?
 
sifulee said:
Thanks I'm looking forward to replaying all my games. One other question, I just looked at my current drivers and I'm running 266.58 which I take is really old. Once I reboot with the new card in, does windows automatically update my computer with the latest nvidia drivers?
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You might want to install the 304.48 beta's before you do the swap then.

Those older drivers won't know what the 670 is and you'll end up having to install newer drivers anyway. Might as well get a head start.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1700104
 
I still say its best to uninstall the card and drivers first. it literally takes a few seconds to do that.
 
Limahl said:
You might want to install the 304.48 beta's before you do the swap then.

Those older drivers won't know what the 670 is and you'll end up having to install newer drivers anyway. Might as well get a head start.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1700104
Click to expand...

Cool thanks again!

cannondale06 said:
I still say its best to uninstall the card and drivers first. it literally takes a few seconds to do that.
Click to expand...

I agree, so first I will uninstall (all nvidia drivers), turn off computer, install new card, reboot, cancel any prompts to install drivers for new card, finally install the 304.48 beta drivers. Does that sound right?
 
The latest WHQL release drivers 301.42 will be perfectly fine. As for the new beta's, currently installed those (added a front case fan too) and was able to push my card to 1279 core and 7512 ram (+80, and +650). Ran Heaven and 3dmark 11 again a few times to verify as well as OC Scanner. 3dmark 11 score now P10020
 
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