Before I make a mistake is this an OK choice for a GTX 670?

[balane]

As I've said, that bug affects/can affect both the Gigabyte Windforce 3x GTX 670 and 680. But only in combination with Z77 motherboards and Ivybridge (When PCI-E 3.0 are utilized).

I'll cross that bridge when it comes. If the bug is there I'll just physically move the card to the 2X slot, leave the 3X slot unused and use the other SATA ports. I only have two hard drives and one DVD which I never use anyway.

I spent some time on the Gigabyte forums and the only threads I saw revolved around the 670 cards. Hopefully it's lesser in the 680 series.

I wonder if down clocking the card some would help the problem. I do have Z77 and I do have a 3770K

I pray it just works fine. I just had to RMA a MSI Twin Frozr 7950 because it wouldn't run any 3D app for more than a few moments so maybe I'll get lucky on this Gigabyte card.

/pray

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I'll cross that bridge when it comes. If the bug is there I'll just physically move the card to the 2X slot, leave the 3X slot unused and use the other SATA ports. I only have two hard drives and one DVD which I never use anyway.

I spent some time on the Gigabyte forums and the only threads I saw revolved around the 670 cards. Hopefully it's lesser in the 680 series.

I wonder if down clocking the card some would help the problem. I do have Z77 and I do have a 3770K

I pray it just works fine. I just had to RMA a MSI Twin Frozr 7950 because it wouldn't run any 3D app for more than a few moments so maybe I'll get lucky on this Gigabyte card.

/pray

Downclocking does not help if you encounter this bug. There are only 2 fixes: RMA the card or switch to PCI-E 2.0. Though a new graphicscard or motherboard bios could help.

 

[Rvenger]

You are wrong. It's the cards that has coilwhine. My reference MSI GTX 670 had just as bad coilwhine on my Corsair 750 TX as it does in my other computer, which has Corsair 550 VX.

My ASUS cards has no coilwhine when playing. Except you can hear a faint buzz when game menus at 2000fps. The MSI card whines like a pig in normal gaming. My ASUS cards do not have this.

No I am not wrong on this. Coil whine develops through harmonic resonance through the coil at any given load. If a certain signal was passing through a coil and that coil is not insulated it will create a squeel which means the coils are vibrating from the electricity passing through. The PSU has coils that works similar the graphics card and they can also vibrate when the GPU is giving a certain load on the PSU. All of my graphics cards have given coil whine, even my Asus GTX 680. It also depends on the PSU. I have an HD 7750 that screams like no other on my Llano system with a CX430. If I take it over to my Intel system with an HX650 its darn near silent.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

No I am not wrong on this. Coil whine develops through harmonic resonance through the coil at any given load. If a certain signal was passing through a coil and that coil is not insulated it will create a squeel which means the coils are vibrating from the electricity passing through. The PSU has coils that works similar the graphics card and they can also vibrate when the GPU is giving a certain load on the PSU.

If it was my PSU causing the coilwhine in my reference MSI GTX 670, it should at least get a bit different coilwhine in my other system, which it did not. It sounds the same. It's annoying as hell. Other people who had graphicscards with bad coilwhine have tried switching every component in their system, to no avail.

I've heard your theory before, but sadly it does not hold ground. Only way to avoid coilwhine is to get cards which does not have coilwhine. ASUS DC II is a pretty safe bet when compared to alot of other cards.

And yes, I know PSU's and mobos also can have coilwhine. But in most cases people report coilwhine on graphicscards. And it's isolated to the card.

 

[balane]

Downclocking does not help if you encounter this bug. There are only 2 fixes: RMA the card or switch to PCI-E 2.0. Though a new graphicscard or motherboard bios could help.

Any way of predicting the odds of getting it? Has to be pretty slim I'm guessing, likely very minute or Gigabyte would be acknowledging and acting on it, which they currently aren't according to their forums.

Also, was your friend's board a SLI/Xfire board or did it just have a single PCIe slot?

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Any way of predicting the odds of getting it? Has to be pretty slim I'm guessing, likely very minute or Gigabyte would be acknowledging and acting on it, which they currently aren't according to their forums.

I have no idea how likely it is. But it happens. That's all I know. You've just have to wait and see

 

[balane]

I edited my last post, maybe you missed it. Curious what motherboard you friend was using? I can't find a single instance of this happening on an ASrock board so that's a mark in the good column.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I edited my last post, maybe you missed it. Curious what motherboard you friend was using? I can't find a single instance of this happening on an ASrock board so that's a mark in the good column.

My friend is using a ASUS P8Z77-V. Just like his brother. Only difference is his brother has a Gainward reference GTX 670, and he was not affected by this problem.

It could well be this problem is isolated to a few mobo brands and Ivybridge. But I've seen this happen in MSI Z77 boards too, when searching google.

 

[rickon66]

I find it somewhat amusing that one person has posted 16 times in this thread trying to sway the OP's choice of video card, let the guy pick the one he wants for goodness sake! Quit trying to scare him. Gigabytes in stock at newegg as I write this.

 

[balane]

Gigabytes in stock at newegg as I write this.

Gigabyte GTX 680 inventory is now minus one.

 

[Rvenger]

Nice! That's the best value 670 out IMO.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Nice! That's the best value 670 out IMO.

He bought a 680 though heh.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

As long as he avoids the PCI-E 3.0/Windforce 3x 670/680 + Z77 + Ivy bug, he has got a great card in the Gigabyte Windforce 3x GTX 680. These cards have a very nice cooler. Both efficient and really silent.

 

[SolMiester]

snip

what on earth is happening with the AMD cards there?...

 

[RussianSensation]

what on earth is happening with the AMD cards there?...

JHH black magic (or marketing $).

Secret World in DX9:

Turn on DX11 + Tessellation

Most clearly seen is the tessellation of wall bricks, but to be honest, this option is not very attractive to me. The bricks look even more unnatural then the DX9 version.

I guess that's what happens when NV works closely with the developer on driver optimization and code development in the creation of the game. A nice way to sell more GTX680 GPUs without making the game look any better. With AMD stepping up Gaming Evolved (Dirt Showdown) and NV continuing to pour $ into tessellation, soon we'll need both vendors GPUs to play games. :sneaky:

I am all for tessellation if it actually makes the game more realistic but the way it's done in SW is not appealing to me to say the least.

P.S. No, I don't have any evidence that NV intentionally asked the developer to implement extreme tessellation for bricks/walls in this game. But considering the game gets 91 fps on an HD7970 and 96 fps on a GTX680 in DX9, it's awfully convenient that AMD's $450-500 GPUs once again get crippled by extreme tessellation, not dissimilar to Crysis 2 barriers (coincidentally a game on which NV also worked closely with the developer).

 

[guskline]

Just put 2 EVGA GTX 670 FTWs in my first rig below running 3 monitors and I'm impressed. No need to OC with 2 in SLI.

 

[RussianSensation]

Just put 2 EVGA GTX 670 FTWs in my first rig below running 3 monitors and I'm impressed. No need to OC with 2 in SLI.

I would hope so! That's $800 of GPU power at the end of PS3/Xbox360 life-cycle.

 

[Rvenger]

He bought a 680 though heh.

Whoops. OP Did you get that $25 off coupon for the Gigabyte 680? $25 off w/ promo code GIGA7X6

 

[balane]

I did. It was one of the deciding factors that tipped me towards a 680 purchase.

On a side note, I see (As of this posting.) that NewEgg has placed the non-TOP Asus 670 on Deactivated status. You can only get auto-notified now upon the arrival of the $429 card. Did Asus stop making the lower clock version and now offer only one?

TOP
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121638

Non-TOP
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121637

 

[Rvenger]

Newegg does that all the time. Sometimes it will go on Autonotify and sometimes deactivated. I think it depends if the inventory system detects that there are more on the way.


That was a good move getting the OC 680. It has a nice cooler and a good OC compared to the ref models. Let us know how it works out for you.

 

[guskline]

I would hope so! That's $800 of GPU power at the end of PS3/Xbox360 life-cycle.

RussianSensation: I'm well aware of that and sold off my AMD "gaming" rig to pay for most of it. You can see I'm powering 3 24" monitors with this SLI setup. Flight sims ROF by 777 studio and the new Microsoft Flight look outstanding on a tri- monitor setup.

I play COD MW3 mostly as a first person shooter but I have BF3. Last night I cranked it up on the SLI rig. It played nicely when I had a single GTX 680 running the 3 monitors. However, with these 2 GTX 670 FTWs in SLI tri-monitor gameplay is simply amazing.

No argument about the money. It's not cheap.

For a single monitor with resolution not exceeding 1920 x 1200 or 1080 a single 7950/7970 or 670/680 is super fast. It's just when you crank the resolution up to where I am 5760 x 1080 that 2 of these cardsin SLI or CF really shines.

 

[balane]

UPS dropped it off today. (Next day air.) It's installed, running at stock speeds and so far, so good. No lock ups and I've played Secret World for an hour with no issues. Frame rate is about 50-55 with everything maxed at 1920x1200

The only thing I see, and I'm sure it doesn't mean anything, is that GPUZ does not have the PhysX box checked. I'm guessing that PhysX is still working fine in games. I have the latest version of PhysX (And GPUZ for that matter.) installed.

Is there another test for PhysX out there anywhere?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Physx should be marked in GPU-Z.

http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/physx-fluidmark/

If you can't run that, physx is not installed properly.

 

[poohbear]

or it could be an error in gpuz. check the nvidia CP & in game that physx ia working. u installed the physx drivers yea?

 

[Wally1979]

Think I have the bug mentioned above and I'm gutted

So I'm a total newb when it comes to gaming PCs but ive built plenty of servers and VMs in my time

I just Splashed out more then I should have on a new rig, apart from all the peripherals the core components of my rig are gigabyte Z77X-UDH5, i7 3770k, Gigabyte WF GTX670 Oc, 16gb GSKill RJz, OCZ 240SSD, 3x2TB WD HDD, Win764b HP,

I can't play any game or run Heaven BM software without the GPU freezing and the driver stoppping. I get an error saying NVidia driver stopped responding and has been recovered.

I've tried every GPU/MB BIOS combinations available. All the avilable Nvidia drivers current, legacy and beta. Rebuilt windows from scratch three times. Updated DX ext ext...

I've just opened an RMA with Dabs where I purchased the 670.

Glad I found this site as I was totoally out of ideas and theres no info anywhere else. Opened a support case with Gb sent them everything, DX diags, screen shots Ez bios share, got nothing back at all. Will try them again but first Going to try PCI-e 2.0 as suggested before my GPU is RMA'd

What's the chances of RMAing my card and the new replacement having the same issue? Should I get a refund and choose a new card?

I'm worried