Normalizing Clocks To Test Cooling Performance
We set all cards to employ a 1059 MHz GPU clock (which the reference board handles at a load temp under 80°C) and a 1527 MHz memory frequency. All of the boards ran at that combination of clock rates without crashing throughout testing.

A look at the thermal and sound level measurements at this clock rate make it clear that our critiques on Zotac's card were premature. All of the other cards have to work hard in this environment, while the AMP! Edition board gets to relax a bit.
To our surprise, Nvidia's reference card can keep up with the pack. It even pulls in front of two three-slot competitors. The high bar of 78°C is no cause for concern; this is an intentional stress test.


Cooling Them Down to 70°C
Our next comparison involves measuring acoustics when we dial in a fan speed able to hold each card at 70°C, a temperature chosen for its long-term attractiveness in heavy workloads like Bitcoin mining. We're using each card at its factory clock rate because overclocked reference cards simply cannot hold 70°C.

Zotac's AMP! Edition board shines here. It can even spin slower to maintain 70°C at this lower clock rate. But the real winners are Asus and Gigabyte. Meanwhile, our Galaxy/KFA² board again annoys us with its high-frequency chirping.
- Seven GeForce GTX 670 Cards, Compared
- The Speeds And Feeds
- Asus GTX670-DC2T-2GD5
- Gainward GTX 670 Phantom
- Galaxy 67NPH6DV6KXZ
- Palit GTX 670 JetStream
- Gigabyte N670OC-2GD
- Zotac ZT-60302-10P
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 Reference Card
- How We Test
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11 And Crysis 2 (DX 11)
- Sound Level And Temperature: Stock Settings
- Sound Level And Temperature: Overclocked
- Sound Level Comparison, With Video
- Power Consumption
- Seven Solid GeForce GTX 670s, But Three Stand Out
Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject
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0 Hidemonkey670 , 6 July 2012 17:36Nice round up, how come there's no EVGA GTX670 FTW? Cheers
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0 Hidedansgas1000 , 13 August 2012 04:24Benchmarked? I wanted some game benchamrks with these
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0 Hideh9dlb , 14 August 2012 21:39Thw Asus is the winner for me