Graphics 2 X GTX680's arrived this morning. SLI benchies inside!!!

Well, in these sorts of situations I tend to put my consumer cap on. So I suspect the likelyhood is that I will put them on waterblocks. It also seems silly to be using two RX360's just to cool a 2600k.

 

Moved to New Thread - Sorry about hijacking

 

Man you lot must have deep wallets would take me 4 months to save for 1 of these babies my poor little conspicuous 5770...

 

Willy wavers will like that for numbers on a synthetic, but with that memory bandwidth and amount of RAM, 3 way and 4 way are pointless for games.

2 way is also questionable, but not pointless

 

Not at 1600P it's not. 37/45fps with BF3 at 4x AA 1600P with max settings... how is this questionable that you need 2 way? If you've spent a great deal of cash on a 1600P screen, and you like playing games with all the shineys switched on, then you're probably not going to want to play with a minimum framerate of 37. I know I wouldn't. I'd be really annoyed that I would have to start turning settings down to play properly.

 

Well pookey, I don't need to tell you this but I will anyway.

Game hardware requirements do increase as new games are released (nss). As shown by deadbeat, BF3 is already taking two 680s to the limits of what they have to offer - questionable for 2 brand spanking new cards worth in excess of £850.

As I said, its not pointless, but questionable if you take future titles into consideration. I would get a large dose of the shits if £850 worth of gfx cards get VRAM thrashing issues in 6 months, which is quite possible considering they are already at the memory limits in a current game.

 

Minimum FPS should be 60 for smooth motion. When FPS drops even down to 40 I really see and feel the difference. Since I play many games in stereoscopic 3d then I need even more horsepower. I play at 1080 though but in stereo 3d that requires a lot of gpu power.

I wouldn't want to play with an fps of 37 or 40. 60 is minimum for me and it has been demonstrated that this fps is required for truly smooth motion.

 

Here's a little side note that I hadn't seen in the reviews. The 580s had an issue where connecting two monitors to a single card stopped it from downclocking. It was a real waste of electricity. The 680 however, does hold the clocks down in 2D mode, and down even further when your monitors go to sleep.

Here's a snap of monitors waking up in 2D mode. You can see the clocks jump up, and the memory click in particular is higher than a single monitor, but it's still a big improvement if I recall the 580 situation properly.

 

I'm now really debating whether to get my 680 Step up...
Before I set off to work last night (Night driving to Aberdeen and back. 28hr driving round trip over the weekend) I had a quick play on BF3 with the same level and setting as Dead beat.
Now my min was 55FPS and max of 105FPS with a average of staying around 78FPS.
This indicates that the GTX 680 is getting held back by the VRAM. As my 900mhz core Classifieds are keeping pace with the GTX 680's.

I will post some screen shots up on Monday night when I get home.

 

You can fix even that increase : http://httputility.com/article/dual-monitor-power-saving-nvidia

 

That's a tough one isn't it? 2 x 3gb 580's are really powerful.

"59 FPS is the lowest I have seen.

I was playing Noshar canals TDM with 43 players and the Vram usage did go up to 2.1GB. However I did not notice a decrease in performance, neither did I get any stuttering that you would normally associate with running out of Vram. Gameplay seems to remain very smooth. Though I still have more testing to do in BF3. "

I think I'd have a hard time with this one because 3gb is great on a 580. Your decision must be based on whether u want the other features of the 680 - lower power usage, more advanced physics (which may or may not be utilised and isn't utilised in the battlefield series), PCIe 3, TXAA?

If I had the 2 x 3gb 580's I would sit and wait perhaps but I guess u will lose your crappy 90 day step up.

Wait for the 4gb 680's, then consider selling your 580's which should still get you a good return to offset the cost of the 4gb 680's if they're not too overpriced.

 

Now this IS good news! I had to buy a GT430 to run my second screen in order to let my 580s clock down! I then had to upgrade the damned mobo to allow me 16x/8x/16x with three cards.

I could lose the 430 and whack a decent sound card in the same slot then. This pleases me.

This^

I'm definitely waiting for the 4GB versions. I suspect those who game at 1600P who jumped on 680s early may regret their choice a little.

 

From this:

To this:

In 2 hours.

Some people change their mind quickly, others at warp speed!


Edit: also understand, 4GB 680s are not guaranteed to scale like 580s do with that amount of memory bandwidth.

Harry alluded to a big SLI article in the summer, I imagine ill be pulling the trigger on my new gear after that article.

 

thanks for this mate, think I may send mine back when it arrives and wait for the 4gb 680

 

Don't step up. I can honestly see the 2GB 680s becoming quite undesirable with top end users when a better alternative is available (I don't want to say the 4GB version for definite as I'm not convinced looking at the numbers).

Whereas the classifieds will still be a very good option for many. You have far more usable power.

Nvidia have not considered SLI users with this memory spec.

 

@ AOE - You game at 1080/1200p. 2GB is more than enough at your res.
1600p is nearly double the pixels rendered, and triple monitor setups will be triple the pixel count of 1080/1200p. So this is where more VRAM is required.

 

Huh? My first response was in answer to someone who stated that they thought the need for even 2 way SLI was questionable.. my second was that I am waiting for 4GB versions.

How are these two comments A) related... and B) evidence of me changing my mind? I pretty much said I was waiting for 4GB versions about 3 pages ago.

 

I think NV have done this to keep cost down, and make the GTX 780 look better (When it comes out in Q4 2012) as a marketing deploy, so peeps with GTX 680's will upgrade again.

If they bring out the GTX 680 4GB cards with a 512bit bus, then we may see a big jump in memory bandwidth, thus more FPS.

 

Why reply to my post if you didn't understand it properly. I was talking specifically about *SLI'd 2GB 680s* which happens to be what this thread is about.