Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 Launch Review - PAGE 7

not bad. not bad at all.

~51fps in bf3 @ 2560 x 1600 w/ 4xAA & 16xAF? thats a big meatball!

and theres enough performance left to force all those other fancy features, like transparency AA.

when you got it, nvidia, you got it.

the next generations of GPUs will be very interesting. i dont think the gtx 680 will be anywhere near quite as powerful to max out next-gen console games as i would bf3 (2560x1600 & beyond, bunches of AA, big ol' AF, etc) assuming directx doesnt have any major efficiency reworks. its a fun ride.

i really loved this review. great job guys. this card would have been a major consideration for me as a replacement card, had it not been for the unfortunate fact that they dont support 3 monitors (right? please tell me thats changed!).

either i wait and see what the 690 is like (and its cost!), or ill probably have to settle for eyefinity on the 7970, and sacrifice the CUDA that Folding@Home greatly benefits from.

TBH the 580 and 6950/6970 aren't even fully pushed at max yet on 1920x1080 by latest titles. In a new build then sure I'd probably go for, but TBH I don't quite see the need to move from those to the new ones yet.

Any news on how much bandwidth the 7970 and 680 need? As far as I'm aware PCIe 2.1 x16 hasn't yet been saturated yet.

with PCI-e 3.0 on new mobos, i dont think we will have to care about bandwidth...at least not for a very long time.

quote ashantiqua

...i dont think the gtx 680 will be anywhere near quite as powerful to max out next-gen console games...

Somehow I don't want to believe that those consoles will be THAT powerful.

^yeah i wouldnt believe it for a second. unless they use the 680 in consoles. thats another story.

Hardly a 7970 killer. A much more efficient architecture no doubt, and congrats to Nvidia this time around on that

AVP matched the 7970 with both at stock levels.
Only 8.6% faster at the highest settings in Arkham City on with both at stock clocks.
Smokes the 7970 by 18.6% at best in Battlefield.
Loses to the 7970 in Crysis by 21.6% at the highest settings.
Up to 24% faster than the 7970 in Dirt three in the middle tier settings. Around 18% in the others.

Loses by 15-25% in metro compared to the 7970. And Metro is not an AMD biased or optimized game. Until the 6xxx cards came out AMD always lost by a wide margin. The 7970 either is a better architecture for the game or currently has better drivers. I have no doubt the 680's performance could have been better with the game as it's a new architecture and could probably use some driver work.

The 680 also loses in Total War between 10 and 17%.

On average that makes the 680 about 5% slower at the highest settings.

Like I said, hardly a 7970 killer, very efficient architecture and it certainly trades blows the AMD but it's not nearly 10-15% faster across the board as stated in the article. I really have to question whether you did the math or just eyeballed it.

The overclocking of the 680 was 15.5% core and about 19% vram.
The 7970 on the other hand had a gpu OC of 21.6% (925mhz to 1125 mhz) and about 14.5% vram OC. So the overclocking is kind of 'meh' compared to it. It's a nice increase no doubt but it's nothing to write home about. The 7970 is able to go past the limits set in CCC in the 7970 review but the gtx 680 actually capped out before its software limits, whether that's due to power or physical limitations of the architecture at that voltage I don't know though.

The pricing and efficiency is what makes this a great card, not the raw performance.
Perspective is important.

quote hiigaran

^yeah i wouldnt believe it for a second. unless they use the 680 in consoles. thats another story.

a 680 in a console would be much, much more efficient than a 680 in a PC, due to drivers, OS environment and other factors (directx for PC according to developers is borderline retardedly cumbersome). you can find a GPU for the PC thats extremely similar to those found in current gen consoles (the x360's GPU is something like 15% faster on average than the ps3's, so lets assume you go to match the x360's GPU)... so take that similar GPU, give it a similar CPU and try to play modern console ports. you wont match the performance of consoles. not by a long shot.

to play next-gen console ports, your compy will need to be considerably more powerful to run 'em. you want to notch up the resolution, add mods and force spiffy gfx options? be ready to throw a ton more power at it.

and emulation is a whole 'nother story.

quote ashantiqua

quote hiigaran

^yeah i wouldnt believe it for a second. unless they use the 680 in consoles. thats another story.

a 680 in a console would be much, much more efficient than a 680 in a PC, due to drivers, OS environment and other factors (directx for PC according to developers is borderline retardedly cumbersome). you can find a GPU for the PC thats extremely similar to those found in current gen consoles (the x360's GPU is something like 15% faster on average than the ps3's, so lets assume you go to match the x360's GPU)... so take that similar GPU, give it a similar CPU and try to play modern console ports. you wont match the performance of consoles. not by a long shot.

dont forget that the coding is done with specific, set hardware in mind...similar to macs. but even then, my point was that i doubt manufacturers would be showing that beast in to a console. i hardly think that games on consoles need the sheer brute force power that this card has...or anything remotely similar to it.

gah how i wish a single next gen console could have the power of a single gtx 680. itd be magical!

just sayin' by the time next-gen console games are ported to PCs, a gtx 680 probably wont be too relevant.

The first overclocking review (that I've seen):



Weird how it can sometimes have negative scaling (if that is the correct usage of this somewhat technical term).

From what I've seen, the improvement of the 7970 over the 6970 is wider than the improvement that the 680 gave over the 580. Maybe Nvidia didn't seem pushed enough. Seems to keep a GTX 580 as a viable choice TBH. That's just based on the assessment of one benchmarking site though, and since it doesn't like the highest and lowest scores of that set, I'm not quite sure on its reliability.

quote harbin91

From what I've seen, the improvement of the 7970 over the 6970 is wider than the improvement that the 680 gave over the 580. Maybe Nvidia didn't seem pushed enough. Seems to keep a GTX 580 as a viable choice TBH. That's just based on the assessment of one benchmarking site though, and since it doesn't like the highest and lowest scores of that set, I'm not quite sure on its reliability.

Hi Harbin91,

Thanks for the response on our GTX 680 review. I noticed this is the second time you have mentioned not being sure of the reliability of our scores. Can you tell use what you would like to see different in the way we approach and analyses our benchmarking results ?

Thanks

quote Vagabond

quote harbin91

From what I've seen, the improvement of the 7970 over the 6970 is wider than the improvement that the 680 gave over the 580. Maybe Nvidia didn't seem pushed enough. Seems to keep a GTX 580 as a viable choice TBH. That's just based on the assessment of one benchmarking site though, and since it doesn't like the highest and lowest scores of that set, I'm not quite sure on its reliability.

Hi Harbin91,

Thanks for the response on our GTX 680 review. I noticed this is the second time you have mentioned not being sure of the reliability of our scores. Can you tell use what you would like to see different in the way we approach and analyses our benchmarking results ?

Thanks

It's not the reliability of your scores, it's a different website I was talking about.