GTX 670 Phantom 2GB is Gainward’s premium model for gamers and enthusiasts, which is pretty much clear from the fact that it runs at reference GTX 680’s clocks. The memory and 256-bit system are common for both of these cards, whereas Phantom actually has slightly faster memory. Still, that wasn’t enough to beat the GTX 680, which has eight SMX units and 1536 CUDA cores. GTX 670 on the other hand has seven SMX units and 1344 CUDA cores.

At the end of the day though, Gainward GTX 670 Phantom has every reason to stand proud because it showed excellent performance. In fact, on few occasions it even manages to beat the GTX 680.

We’ve seen that there’s some overclocking headroom left as well, even despite the already high GPU overclock to 1006MHz. Thanks to our overclock, Gainward GTX 670 Phantom even managed to beat GTX 680 in Crysis 2 by 4 percent. Gainward will also provide you with its upgraded card management tool ExperTool II.

The only thing that didn’t impress us is the Phantom cooler, which is what the card should be notable for. Performance wise, it beats the reference GTX 670’s solution, but noise levels are about the same. That’s not to say that it’s very loud, but we can’t say it’s inaudible either. Despite the overclocked core, we’d still much rather see Gainward keep the tradition of making coolers that beat reference solutions in both cooling and noise departments.

If you’re yearning for GTX 680’s performance but can’t quite afford it, then Gainward’s GTX 670 Phantom will save you some €50 while delivering comparable performance. You can improve its score even more if you’re into tweaking, which makes the card one sweet package.