Many were a tad disappointed by Nvidia’s Sunday announcement, having expected it to include reference to the upcoming GTX 670, along with the GTX 690. One way or the other, details do seem to be popping up from various places in what is either a breach of secrecy, or possibly the result of more ‘buzz’ marketing by Nvidia. These suggest a near-future release and a very probable announcement at Computex (5-9 June). If the prosecution may make its case?
Firstly we have a slide leaked by Leadtek to ‘Videocarz.com’. This, as well as showing the GTX 670 for the first time, suggests the card will be cut-down version of the GTX 680 using 1344 cores (vs 1536 on the GTX 680). The overclocked GTX 670 pictured otherwise has the exact same specs as the GTX 680 - 1006 MHz base, 1058 ‘boost’ clock, with 2GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus running at 6.0GHz and PCIe 3.0. We also have a Gigabyte GTX 670 O/C product page from well known Canadian shop 'pccanada.com' (the page is currently still up) showing their model as running at 980 MHz, though it's not known if this is base or boost speed.. Supporting this, Malaysian site ‘tipidpc.com’ briefly had a (now removed) GTX 670 product page with some confirming specs for its memory interface / amount. wccftech.com among others, have shown leadked shots of the GTX 670’s naked PCB, and we have some confirmed shots of the card itself via lowyat forums.
The specs imply the card has one ‘SMX’ cluster disabled; effectively an eighth of the GK-104 core. This strategy has been followed many times by Nvidia; the GTX 260, GTX 470 and GTX 570 were all based on their bigger brothers, but with portions of their cores disabled. Mostly, the model below the top model is made from ‘harvested’ faulty chips, or just ones that didn’t quite make the grade. Similarly it's usual for core and memory speeds are lower on such cut-down cards than with their bigger sibling. Hence we believe it very likely the Nvidia's GTX 670 will run more slowly than GTX 680 speeds, with Leadtek’s example being representing a significant factory overclocked model and Gigabyte’s a more typical one. Exactly what the reference Nvidia GTX 670 core and memory speeds are remains to be seen. There are also persistent rumours about a GTX 660 with an additional SMX cluster disabled, however there’s just no verification on this part yet.
Update:
The GTX 670 has already leaked out in several countires - including right here in Australia (it may still be possible to pick one up in person). In the miniscule island they call New Zealand, shops have received no requirement to keep the cards off the shelves - they'll be available there in the next few days.
Our previously reported raw specs of 1334 cores, 2GB of DGGR5 and a 256-bit bus are correct according to those with the card. We still suggest standard base clocks will likely (we can't be sure with this yet) in the lower 900 MHz and sub 1GHz boost clocks, as well as > 5GHz memory speeds. As specced the Nvidia GTX 670 should likely perform a tad above the HD 7950 and be a good 20% cheaper than the GTX 680 once it reaches shelves (early pre-sales were ~$520). As always, further updates as we get them.
