EVGA GTX 670 FTW Signature 2 2GB Review 31

EVGA GTX 670 FTW Signature 2 2GB Review

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Value and Conclusion

  • The EVGA GTX 670 FTW Signature 2 is currently available online for $420.
  • Good overclocking potential
  • GTX 670 with GTX 680 clock speeds
  • Quiet
  • EVGA Step-Up program provides easy upgrade path
  • Low temperatures
  • Up to four active displays make surround possible with one card
  • Comes with EVGA Precision OC software
  • Support for PCI-Express 3.0 and DirectX 11.1
  • Support for CUDA and PhysX
  • Relatively high price
  • Memory chips not cooled
  • Voltage regulator circuitry not cooled
Although it's a little late to the party, the EVGA GTX 670 FTW Signature 2 is an excellent implementation of a GTX 670 custom design. While the PCB design is heavily inspired by that of the GTX 680, the cooler is EVGA's in-house design. The Signature 2 dual-fan cooler uses four heatpipes to draw heat from the GPU, and they do an excellent job at keeping the card cool. Noise levels are at a minimum to ensure a quiet experience, no matter if you are browsing the Internet, working, or gaming, but other custom-design GTX 670 cards are a bit quieter. The EVGA GTX 670 does, on the other hand, generate slightly lower temperatures, but they are, in my opinion, not as useful as lower noise levels. Sadly, the Signature 2 cooler doesn't directly cool the memory chips or MOSFETs.
Thanks to an out-of-the-box overclock that matches GTX 680 reference clock speeds, we see a 5% improvement over the regular the GTX 670, which puts it 2% behind the GTX 680 due to the reduced CUDA core count. Other GTX 670 cards offer higher clocks and higher performance, but the differences are relatively small due to NVIDIA's boost clock algorithm leveling the playing field.
Power consumption of the card is great and barely more than the reference design. NVIDIA GTX 600 Series cards have a significant advantage over comparable boards from AMD: NVIDIA's cards go to their lowest power state, even while using multiple monitors or watching Blu-ray content.
Pricing of the EVGA GTX 670 FTW Signature 2 is not cheap at $420, especially since you can find reference design GTX 670 boards below $350, and I personally think that a more reasonable price for the GTX 670 FTW would be between $390 and $400. The card comes with EVGA's step-up program, which lets you upgrade to a faster card within 90 days, so the extra cost might be justified if you plan on getting a GTX 700 card a little later this year.
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Nov 28th, 2024 18:49 EST change timezone

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