Nvidia's latest drivers are flying under everyone's radar.

[Checkitman22]

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about them, here are some examples from the latest tests from TechPowerUp.

Even at massive resolution a 2GB 670 keeps up with a 7970.

Also may I mention the minimal power consumption?

Read the full review here.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/E...ature_2/5.html

[Opsilon]

dude most ppl know this and andandtech stated that the best cards this year are the 670 and the original 7970, and they are close, ghz is just a higher overclock, and the reason why no one is paying attention is because crysis 3 is coming out and we are going to get new drivers feb. 2013 so the final battle is coming...

[Helltech]

Mmmm Crysis 3. Hopefully it eats cards up.

[Checkitman22]

dude most ppl know this and andandtech stated that the best cards this year are the 670 and the original 7970' date=' and they are close, ghz is just a higher overclock, and the reason why no one is paying attention is because crysis 3 is coming out and we are going to get new drivers feb. 2013 so the final battle is coming...[/quote']

I see many people on these particular forums claim that the 7970 "destroys" the 680 due to 12.11 drivers, which obviously isn't true.

[EChondo]

1. The Nvidia drivers are from January 5th, we've already seen benchmarks.

2. The EVGA GTX 670 FTW card was just reviewed TODAY, which means the Nvidia drivers flew under YOUR head, otherwise you would have posted this sooner.

3. "I see many people on these particular forums claim that the 7970 "destroys" the 680 due to 12.11 drivers, which obviously isn't true." Uh, the charts you posted show the 7970 beating the 680...probably not "destroys" it, but it DOES beat it.

[killerx525]

Another thing is that EVGA is factory overclocked hence why the performance gap is closer.

[GoodBytes]

Another thing to note is that AMD GHZ offering and latest drivers which boosted game performance, while provide impressive fps, aren't providing a constantly smooth fps experience as Nvidia does in comparison.

[killerx525]

That's changing in the next driver release.

[Brendan]

Why don't those benchmarks ever include GPUs like EVGA 680+ FTW 4gb editions.

[xAcid9]

in before Nvidia gpu deliver smoother visual despite lower fps.

[Opsilon]

dude most ppl know this and andandtech stated that the best cards this year are the 670 and the original 7970' date=' and they are close, ghz is just a higher overclock, and the reason why no one is paying attention is because crysis 3 is coming out and we are going to get new drivers feb. 2013 so the final battle is coming...[/quote']

I see many people on these particular forums claim that the 7970 "destroys" the 680 due to 12.11 drivers, which obviously isn't true.

Ofc it's not standard 7970 is 670 lvl, GHZ edition is just cherry picking of standard 7970 chip with a higher bin

[TechFan@ic]

Another thing to note is that AMD GHZ offering and latest drivers which boosted game performance, while provide impressive fps, aren't providing a constantly smooth fps experience as Nvidia does in comparison.

That was just patched in the latest AMD drivers last week.

[TechFan@ic]

Radeon 7000 series FPS Latency Issue resolved :

http://techreport.com/review/24218/a-driver-update-to-reduce-radeon-frame-times/4

[TechFan@ic]

Why don't those benchmarks ever include GPUs like EVGA 680+ FTW 4gb editions.

Tomhshardware included 680s overclocked to 1111mhz on the core & the HD 7970 Ghz still beat it .

[Checkitman22]

1. The Nvidia drivers are from January 5th' date=' we've already seen benchmarks. 2. The EVGA GTX 670 FTW card was just reviewed TODAY, which means the Nvidia drivers flew under YOUR head, otherwise you would have posted this sooner. 3. "I see many people on these particular forums claim that the 7970 "destroys" the 680 due to 12.11 drivers, which obviously isn't true." Uh, the charts you posted show the 7970 beating the 680...probably not "destroys" it, but it DOES beat it.[/quote']

It didn't fly under my radar, It was just the fact that everyone says the 7970 (and 7950) is significantly better that made me make the post to inform others. And yes, I was talking about destroys, it doesn't beat it by a large margin, not as large a one as people on these forums make it out to be. Its 3 percent on average, and the 7970 is around 50 dollars more for the cheapest of each I could find. Not to mention you can grab 670s for under 300 dollars now.

I'm just proving with unbiased results that the 670 isn't some "crappy overpriced bad cost to performance card", "because the 7950/7970 are much better due to 12.11 drivers". I literally see that posted on these forums so many times a day, and its completely false.

[Checkitman22]

Why don't those benchmarks ever include GPUs like EVGA 680+ FTW 4gb editions.

Except that the last Tomshardware review was before the latest Nvidia driver release =/ So the point is null.

[TechFan@ic]

1. The Nvidia drivers are from January 5th' date=' we've already seen benchmarks. 2. The EVGA GTX 670 FTW card was just reviewed TODAY, which means the Nvidia drivers flew under YOUR head, otherwise you would have posted this sooner. 3. "I see many people on these particular forums claim that the 7970 "destroys" the 680 due to 12.11 drivers, which obviously isn't true." Uh, the charts you posted show the 7970 beating the 680...probably not "destroys" it, but it DOES beat it.[/quote']

It didn't fly under my radar, It was just the fact that everyone says the 7970 (and 7950) is significantly better that made me make the post to inform others. And yes, I was talking about destroys, it doesn't beat it by a large margin, not as large a one as people on these forums make it out to be. Its 3 percent on average, and the 7970 is around 50 dollars more for the cheapest of each I could find. Not to mention you can grab 670s for under 300 dollars now.

I'm just proving with unbiased results that the 670 isn't some "crappy overpriced bad cost to performance card", "because the 7950/7970 are much better due to 12.11 drivers". I literally see that posted on these forums so many times a day, and its completely false.

The only 670 that I've seen for under 350$ is the reference PNY 670, which has a lot of overheating problems .

I generally don't recommend buying reference design cards from neither AMD or nVidia because reference AMD cards are noisy and reference nVidia cards get quite hot .

The difference in performance between a Ghz 7970 and a 670 is quite large, you can get 1000mhz overclocked 7970s for under 390$ like the Sapphire dual X and the Gigabyte windforce OC cards.

The GTX 670 is by no stretch of the imagination bad, it's just too expensive for what it offers .

If 670s with custom coolers for around 350$ existed I'd definitely recommend them .

[Dim]

The 7970 GHz is pretty much the top-end single GPU card at this time. Bear in mind the 680 wins some, loses some against it.

I wouldn't say the 7970 is equal to the 670. I would say the 7950 OC is more on the 670 level.

Bear in mind that prices fluctuate from country to country. In Australia, the GTX 680 Lightning is $50 more than the 7970 Matrix Platinum; both are pretty top-end cards, if not the top of each line.

In Australia, the Lightning GTX 680 is $650. The Power Edition GTX 670 is $470. Obviously in this case the 670 is better value-for-money. But the 7950 is $100 less than the 670, and the 7970 GHz costs the same as the GTX 670 Power Edition.

Here, the 7970 is the best, as well as the best value for money card.

[Checkitman22]

1. The Nvidia drivers are from January 5th' date=' we've already seen benchmarks. 2. The EVGA GTX 670 FTW card was just reviewed TODAY, which means the Nvidia drivers flew under YOUR head, otherwise you would have posted this sooner. 3. "I see many people on these particular forums claim that the 7970 "destroys" the 680 due to 12.11 drivers, which obviously isn't true." Uh, the charts you posted show the 7970 beating the 680...probably not "destroys" it, but it DOES beat it.[/quote']

It didn't fly under my radar, It was just the fact that everyone says the 7970 (and 7950) is significantly better that made me make the post to inform others. And yes, I was talking about destroys, it doesn't beat it by a large margin, not as large a one as people on these forums make it out to be. Its 3 percent on average, and the 7970 is around 50 dollars more for the cheapest of each I could find. Not to mention you can grab 670s for under 300 dollars now.

I'm just proving with unbiased results that the 670 isn't some "crappy overpriced bad cost to performance card", "because the 7950/7970 are much better due to 12.11 drivers". I literally see that posted on these forums so many times a day, and its completely false.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125438&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

Also, the 670 isn't loud at all.

And that's at 100 percent fan speed, which is never necessary since they barely get hot.

The difference between the 7970 GHZ and 670 isn't QUITE LARGE it's 11 percent, couple that with the fact I wasn't even talking about the GHz edition, I'm talking about the normal edition anyway.

[Helltech]

For NA markets, everyone is missing a big point.

In terms of performance

7970 > 670 > 7950

In terms of price

7970 > 670 > 7950

The 670 is perfectly priced for its performance, simple as that. Anyone who says otherwise is missing the point. (Other countries have different pricing I know).

If your budget is 350 dollars get a 7970, if its 300 dollars get a 670.

Unless of course you need CUDA, good 3D, or Physx. Or on the other hand want simple multi-monitor (though Nvidia does well now).

[R4STABAN]

310.xx are rubbish drivers. 306.23 are the best recent ones.

[Opsilon]

310.xx are rubbish drivers. 306.23 are the best recent ones.

sry m8 but i don't see how since i updated to a new driver every time they come out... i had 0 crashes since November when i bought my 670 and did a fresh windows instalation ( my psu was defective and was crashing my pc, got a new one everything is fine), my gpu works like a dream, i don't play BF3 but i play crysis a lot ( all that are out so far ), DoTA 2, League of Legends, CoD, Trackmania, a bunch of rts games ( newer and older ), L4D2 and i had 0 issues with nvidia drivers, and i downloaded GF experience for optimizing my games, i could not be happier, can you pls explain why 310.xx drivers are bad

[R4STABAN]

310.xx are rubbish drivers. 306.23 are the best recent ones.

-Poor overclocking stability vs 306.23.

-Clock speeds being calculated differently.

-GPU core voltage dipping when it shouldn't (see first point)

-Skyrim textures flickering

-Stuttering in SLI for Crysis 2 DX11 (not dx9)

-310.90 causing failure to boot from cold for some users

-Strange latency issues in SLI(see crysis)

-Epic stutter in far cry 3 (SLI)

As it happens though, nvidia just released the new drivers from the new driver branch I was waiting for, will post properly below.

[R4STABAN]

New beta drivers: 313.95 http://www.nvidia.com/object/win8-win7-winvista-64bit-313.95-beta-driver.html

From what I'm hearing, vastly improved over the 310.xx GUFF.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=23647854&postcount=13

This is the recommended GeForce driver for the Crysis 3 Multiplayer Open Beta. It delivers a smoother gaming experience, and boosts SLI performance by up to 65%.

EA’s recommended GeForce GPU for Crysis 3 is a GeForce GTX 560 or higher. For the Hi-Performance PC Specification, EA recommends GeForce GTX 680. See the full Crysis 3 system requirements on GeForce.com.

GeForce R313 drivers also provide significant performance increases in other top games like Assassin’s Creed III, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and Far Cry 3.

New in GeForce R313 Drivers

•Performance Boost – Increases performance for GeForce 400/500/600 series GPUs in several PC games vs. GeForce 310.90 WHQL-certified drivers. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

GeForce GTX 690:â—¦Up to 65% in Crysis 3

◦Up to 24% in Assassin’s Creed III

â—¦Up to 15% in Civilization V

â—¦Up to 14% in Call of Duty: Black Ops II

â—¦Up to 12% in Dirt 3

â—¦Up to 11% in Just Cause 2

â—¦Up to 9% in Deus Ex: Human Revolution

â—¦Up to 8% in Far Cry 2

â—¦Up to 7% in Far Cry 3

â—¦Up to 7% in Batman: Arkham City

â—¦Up to 7% in Dragon Age II

â—¦Up to 5% in Battlefield 3

â—¦Up to 4% in Shogun: Total War

â—¦Up to 4% in Stalker: Call of Pripyat

GeForce GTX 670:◦Up to 28% in Assassin’s Creed III

â—¦Up to 11% in Civilization V

â—¦Up to 8% in Far Cry 3

â—¦Up to 6% in Just Cause 2

â—¦Up to 5% in Deus Ex: Human Revolution

â—¦Up to 5% in Dirt 3

â—¦Up to 5% in Batman: Arkham City

â—¦Up to 5% in Far Cry 2

â—¦Up to 4% in Call of Duty: Black Ops II

â—¦Up to 3% in Shogun: Total War

â—¦Up to 3% in Stalker: Call of Pripyat

•NVIDIA SLI Technology – Adds or updates the following SLI profiles:

◦Crysis 3 – updated SLI profile

◦Warframe– updated SLI profile

◦DmC: Devil May Cry– added SLI profile

•NVIDIA CUDA

â—¦Includes support for applications built using CUDA 5 or earlier version of the CUDA Toolkit. More information at http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit

Additional Details

•Installs PhysX System Software 9.12.1031.

•Installs HD Audio v1.3.23.1

•Supports OpenGL 4.3 for GeForce 400-series and later GPUs.

•Supports DisplayPort 1.2 for GeForce GTX 600 series GPUs.

•Supports multiple languages and APIs for GPU computing: CUDA C, CUDA C++, CUDA Fortran, OpenCL, DirectCompute, and Microsoft C++ AMP.

•Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11, and OpenGL, including 3-way SLI, Quad SLI, and SLI support on SLI-certified Intel and AMD motherboards.

[Frestylezz]

Dat fanboy rage *-_-

No card destroys the other one. a 7970 performs better than a 680? Who actually cares that "their brand" performs better by as little as 1 FPS? You can run skyrim at 73FPS, but I can only run it at 72? Big deal. The whole "ATI vs Nvidia" thing is extremely exaggerated. I mostly advice Nvidia cards, but if I really want to be close to a budget I often look at ATI, who has a wider variety of cards. Why do I advice Nvidia? Because they work, and always have worked for me.

ATI finally fixed their drivers. Nvidia had working drivers for ages (yes new releases have problems, but so does every new version of a program).