Nvidia's GTX 680

[snuggans]

March 22nd edit: official reviews are out

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/n...gtx-680-review

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...mark,3161.html

March 20th [original thread] leaked Toms Hardware graphs:

Game & 3DMark 11 Benchmarks

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Power Consumption, Temperature & Noise

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Averages

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

originally found in Toms Hardware gallery before it was removed, it was leaked here at xtremesystems.org

*all the game benchmark graphs I posted are of 1920x1080 resolution.
in 2560x1600 the 680 and the 7970 consistently have similar performance.
in 1680x1050 the 680 consistently beats the 7970.
check the rest of the graphs in the link above if you want to see the rest of the resolutions.
edit: the graphs in the link above have been removed.


it's been reported that the msrp for the 680 has now been set to $499, making it cheaper than the 7970 (for now).

seems like the only benchmarked game it has problems with is Metro 2033 as Radeon cards really like that game. the 680 still wins by roughly 3 fps with analytical anti-aliasing, although i'm not sure why you would spend money on this type of card and choose to play without MSAA. still, it will be interesting to see what this card can do with more fleshed out FXAA.

with these six games, it's a 18.3% performance increase over the 7970, and 30% increase over the 580. the performance increase over the 580 is bound to go up as driver optimizations start rolling out for the 680.
it's a super efficient card that runs a bit quieter and cooler than its predecessor and performs about the same in these areas as it's competition, the 7970, although the 7970 does run 4 degrees cooler under load.

it will be interesting to see the overclocking capability of this card, especially MSI's Lightning version.

the Sandra and Luxmark benchmark show Kepler to be underperforming severely in general purpose computing when compared to the 7970, but this could be due to the benchmark not supporting the architecture yet. for the gamers this means nothing.

[Phier]

I've been watching these with a lot of interest the last few days. Honestly I have no idea whatsoever what to think. It seems pretty good over all, though I doubt a majority of the buyers will care it shines in performance/watt.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

from what im hearing the toms charts may be off aka higher then they should be a couple of other review sites that ive talked to arent seeing the same performance bump that Toms is seeing so its up in the air could be variation on platform thats tested, aka 1 of many possible configs etc,

that said GTX 680 is still faster but the $499 price tag is most likely wrong from what ive heard so far its $549 unless Nvidia changed their mind during todays conference call.

[Huberto]

If this is true I'm going to be very temped to blow my heard-earned cash to do an Ivy build with this.

[Phier]

Its funny how you hear things like 'This is an AMD fanboy site' or the like with benchmarks. I'd hope that politics could stay out of what would be an empirical test. Run test, measure results, post results.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

well it depends ive seen companies like MSI offer up $900-2000 PCIe SSDs for someone testing their motherboards to give them a bigger positive spin etc, its all just marketing it is what it is, its why i read all sites and correlate the data, by comparing those that got paid for a good review with those that didnt and then the few sites that test as is, results in a good avg performance from which i can say yea that looks about right.

[paradamed]

So can I pretty much assume 7970 is the way to go? The minimum gain in performance of the gtx 680 in comparison to the price is not really worth it, is it? Will 680 only come as a 2Gb version initially? If so, this is another thing that will make the 7970 more worth it, wont it? I mean the extra Gb can make a difference in higher settings, specially in games like S2TW which renders millions and million of polygons. If you guys had to choose, would you buy the gtx 680 2gb or the 7970 3gb?

[snuggans]

So can I pretty much assume 7970 is the way to go? The minimum gain in performance of the gtx 680 in comparison to the price is not really worth it, is it?

if the graphs are to be believed it's obvious the 680 is the better choice over the 7970, both at the rumored $499 price tag (which is $30-70 cheaper than current 7970s) or the more believable $549 (which is the same price as current 7970s).

Will 680 only come as a 2Gb version initially? If so, this is another thing that will make the 7970 more worth it, wont it? I mean the extra Gb can make a difference in higher settings, specially in games like S2TW which renders millions and million of polygons. If you guys had to choose, would you buy the gtx 680 2gb or the 7970 3gb?

there will be a 4GB version of the 680 coming out later, but even 3GB of VRAM is approaching ridiculous at the moment. you won't even hit 2GB at 1920x1080 and on max settings and 4x MSAA on Battlefield 3.

the users who need more than 2GB of VRAM will
-be playing on relatively high resolutions, least 1920x1080, specifically 2560x1600 or higher
-be trying to max out texture quality and especially anti-aliasing, possibly through control panel such as 32x
-use a myriad of custom mods with even bigger texture resolutions and eye candy (i.g Skyrim)
-try to enable every other eye candy possible
-be planning on future proofing against the games of the next few years, rather than someone who upgrades their GPU each year. somebody who ugprades their GPU annually is taking a stair-step approach to VRAM, while somebody who is not planning on upgrading again for a long awhile needs to take a BIGGER step in order to not be left behind by newer games, so 3GB-4GB is a more intelligent purchase for them. this way you avoid hitting the VRAM wall in the future and hope the processing power sees you through.

680 is essentially a 660 but not named as such Nvidia has a GTX 685 coming thats supposedly 50% faster then the 680 but it wont be released till August / September at which point AMD will be gearing up the 8000 series production

however Nvidia could sandbag and release the 685 instead as the GTX 780 toward the end of the year when it comes time for the refresh cycle,
http://legitreviews.com/news/12673/

if that $650 price tag is to be believed, then i'm definitely waiting for that instead. my two 560 Ti can last me till then. anyway i need to replace my moaning power supply right now.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

680 is essentially a 660 but not named as such Nvidia has a GTX 685 coming thats supposedly 50% faster then the 680 but it wont be released till August / September at which point AMD will be gearing up the 8000 series production

however Nvidia could sandbag and release the 685 instead as the GTX 780 toward the end of the year when it comes time for the refresh cycle,
http://legitreviews.com/news/12673/

[paradamed]

But 685 will probably cost as much as a 8970 on release and who knows which card will be faster: 8970 or 685?

[snuggans]

anything's possible, as always i will examine performance charts first before purchasing.
admittedly though, when it comes to drivers and SLI/xfire profiles, Nvidia seems more appealing to me right now.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

All i can say right now is that at 2560x1600 the GTX 680 isnt that much faster, when compared across a large number of games, the difference is minor at best, 1920x1080 the 680 is the better buy

but considering my 7970 is sitting at 1100 core 1450 memory rock stable and silent aka i can hear my HDDs over my gpu at full load, and im sitting at 55-61c load temps on air cooling im happy with my purchase, considering stock is going to be extremely tight for the 680 at launch aka think 7970 launch took over a month for stock to come in and maintain to the point people could purchase the brands they wanted with the features coolers etc they expected.

it depends really on what you do and the games you play, for being late the party at 1920x1080 the 680 is just fast enough at $550 aka overclocked models are $590-630 right now to be a better buy but for 2560x1600 and eyefinity / multi-monitor the 7970 is the better buy,

its also already been pointed out that some benchs seen floating around the internet are hogwash, one benchmark showed BF3 running 8xAA well, BF3 only offers 4xAA in game and 8xAA configured in control panels can easily be skewed reviews go live tomorrow so the proof will be in the review comparisons between graphics cards.

[snuggans]

but for 2560x1600 and eyefinity / multi-monitor the 7970 is the better buy

and how's that?

[Crazyeyesreaper]

at 5760x1080 and higher the 3gb frame buffer kicks in its not huge but gives the 7970 the edge so does the 384bit memory bus aka memory bandwidth becomes a bit more important at that stage as well overall both cards are fairly even depending on what your looking for,

5760x1080 is 6,220,800 pixels
1920x1080 is 2,073,600
2560x1440 is 3,686,400

so essentially 2560x1440 is half the pixels of 5760x1080p

Vram usage at 1920x1080 already hits the 1400-1500mb range in various games
pushing higher resolutions of course pushes more vram usage, that said higher you go in res the more the 256bit bus and lower memory bandwidth saps the 680s performance,

Sadly in reality both AMD and NVIDIA right now are sandbagging,

NVIDIA has always released a monolithic single gpu aka 500mm^2 the 685 will be said gpu but wont arrive for 6 more months, availability if things hold will be 7-8 months, at which point AMD will be gearing up 8000 series for a December / January launch again,

AMD fired the people behind their small die size big performance ideals, aka the man behind the 4870 5870 6970 being damn good performers for the die space got canned, so Time will tell which direction AMD will go but

considering NVIDIA purposefully hampers FP double precision performance on consumer GPUs and looks to be pushing smaller die sizes for higher profit margins while cutting out compute performance aspects found in Fermi shows Nvidia leaning more towards what AMD was shooting for a few generations ago. AMD on the other hand looks to be moving toward monolithic designs that do everything, 8000 series refresh and 700 series refresh will most likely show how far down each others path they went.

[snuggans]

the rumored $499 msrp proved to be true! AMD will have to shuffle to lower the price of the 7970 and every other card down the line. good going Nvidia!

while the 680 were so very briefly up on newegg:

[mrmouth]

This is the same thread (no offense, sunggs) that is posted every time that Nvidia releases something. The vast majority of the time, it simply isn't worth dropping crazy coin on Nvidia's initial offering in a new 'series'. If people want to take that to another level by attacki9ng Nvidias marketing - that is probably vaild to some point. Honestly, I could care less. I will buy the best bang/buck card, with the only caveat being drivers, which Nvidia is simply better at, at this point.

I sold my 6850 for a 460 for that very reasons. A lateral move that cost me nothing, but I was a hell of a lot happier with Nvidia's drivers. I suspect that I dont really register on AMD's radar in this respect, otherwise I would be a fan...

People are going to buy these first, overpriced offerings. And it does nobody any favors.

[Totalheadache]

This is the same thread (no offense, sunggs) that is posted every time that Nvidia releases something. The vast majority of the time, it simply isn't worth dropping crazy coin on Nvidia's initial offering in a new 'series'. If people want to take that to another level by attacki9ng Nvidias marketing - that is probably vaild to some point. Honestly, I could care less. I will buy the best bang/buck card, with the only caveat being drivers, which Nvidia is simply better at, at this point.

I sold my 6850 for a 460 for that very reasons. A lateral move that cost me nothing, but I was a hell of a lot happier with Nvidia's drivers. I suspect that I dont really register on AMD's radar in this respect, otherwise I would be a fan...

People are going to buy these first, overpriced offerings. And it does nobody any favors.

meh!

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/1

guru review in.

[Phier]

Mmmmmm..... Well....mmmm... what to do. One thing I can say is damn that Asus Mars II rocked, too bad they don't make it anymore. I'm still torn on full blown retard (2-680s), one 680, or two 580's. The one 680 makes the most sense but if I SLI later I like to use the exact same cards, something that won't happen if I wait.

[Totalheadache]

Mmmmmm..... Well....mmmm... what to do. One thing I can say is damn that Asus Mars II rocked, too bad they don't make it anymore. I'm still torn on full blown retard (2-680s), one 680, or two 580's. The one 680 makes the most sense but if I SLI later I like to use the exact same cards, something that won't happen if I wait.

well a single 680 is fine for single screen 1920x1200 unless you want run obscene amounts of aa etc..

an oc'd 580 does me fine with x4 aa and 16af plus you can add some extras...

if you want a fun pc challenge for a single 680 on water and overclock the hell out of it. doing watercooling is a must if you are a bit of a pc enthusiast...

i'd spend the money on that rather than sli/xfire...more value for money..(or i'd prefer to spend more on a real quality single screen).

that said am considering sli myself as i can get my hands on a cheap 580 (£150). 580's will be around as quite a few people will be upgrading to a 680.

[paradamed]

I think that a single 680 card is enough to run each game nowadays in ultra settings with average 60fps (which is enough for me). I think time has finally come to retire my sli gtx 460. I will buy one of these cards. Wont go initially for sli cause of the price. But I will wait for this 4gb version to come. I will skip the 2gb version.