Hardware Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2GB Review

If only "we" could curb our enthusiasm, and force down prices rather than dive in regardless...

dunx

 

Wow what a card, I'm sorely tempted. It makes my GTX 560ti look positively old skool.

 

Methinks I need my new monitor sharpish. Then bye bye 570 hello 680 =]

 

Na, the 560ti is a great card. Id suggest waiting for the 7 series before upgrading. If you need more oompf then SLI that bad boy. I love my SLI 560ti's!

 

Indeed it's an awesome card, the only saving grace for the 7970 seems to be its massive OC potential, and it seems to benefit more from overclocking as well. Albeit in most cases, the 680 is still a tiny bit faster.

Power consumption is a non issue here i think - only a few dozen in difference in most cases. Some reviews online used plenty of games (toms for example) to measure the power usage, and in most cases the amd card uses 20-30w more power, but not in all.

Also, regarding the GK110 - it is rumoured to have 2304 cores, so it should be plenty faster. when it comes is anyone guess though, but should arrive Q4.

Overall, it seems the tables have turned compared to previous generations - amd used to put less emphasis on compute, and more on gaming. Now however, GCN is very heavily tuned towards compute, while (small) Kepler is not.

Very interested to see if amd will release a revised tahiti xt, let us call it 7980 for reference. If they could do it ,and release it at something like 1300 core / 1750 memory, it could be up to 40-50% faster than 7970. Would that be enough though?

 

Haha, true.

Given that the first point was corrected, I imagine it got lost in the wave of posts and other workload.

 

So if all this is achieved with the smaller GK104 chip then how much more is the largest one...GK110?... going to bring?......or perhaps that will be more geared to compute power for the hpc market rather than gaming power?

 

I love how everyone expect GK110 to be a gaming card, or even released at all. What if it is going to be Tesla-only chip ?

 

Erm, the 680 is up to 85% faster than a 560Ti. Pretty nice upgrade in my book!

 

That's very much my feeling; the yields on 28nm just aren't good enough yet for giganto-chips to be viable for consumers. Different case for Tesla though, as Nvidia can shift them on for $0000's of dollars a card.

 

Baz, what is your recommendation for large res or 3 screen users?

Looking at the numbers in the hardware section from a 1600p 680 SLI user, VRAM is a major issue.

 

Wow, so glad I held off buying the amd card.

The people that didn't are going to be rather peeved I wreckon.

 

It's interesting how the 7970 got a lower score than this card when at the time it blew the 580 out of the water and was the undisputed champ. I realize that it was the "value" score that made the biggest difference and I agree with that analysis, but the performance score should have been the same yet it was a tick lower.
Also in your 7970 review you said and I quote "However, it's questionable whether you seriously need that much graphics performance." Now the Nvidia card comes out and pretty much trounces the 7970 but no mention of overkill here?
If you had not written, and I quote again "Regardless, you'd arguably be foolish (or perhaps an AMD fanboy) to jump the 28nm gun so quickly." I may not have written this post had you not decided it would be foolish(or perhaps an AMD fanboy) to buy the 7970. It seems to me Harry, that you sir, have a bit of a hard on for Nvidia.
I know what your thinking, well you're wrong, my video card is a 5970 and the one before that was a GTX295 and my next one will be the 680. They both make good hardware and I'd buy and have bought products from either company.

 

Could not agree more - I believe this was the rumored "better-than-580 performance for $300" card that was teased...thanks for sucking so bad AMD, now they get to sell it to us for $200 more. Ack.

 

Judging by the HardOCP review the Eyefinity/Surround results are pretty much a wash between the GTX680 and the HD7970.

If you were considering a card for multi monitor only I would probably push more for the HD7970. It has more Vram which could be a deciding factor in future titles and comes with everything you need to run Eyefinity out of the box. As I understand it the GTX680 does not.

I run a HD7970 for Eyefinity and couldn't be happier with it.

I doubt I would be disappointed with a GTX680 either although considering my card is clocked at 1125/6600 for everyday gaming I don't think a move to a GTX680 would be on the cards anytime soon.

 

Large Res = 680
3 screen = 7970

GTX 680 is faster on larger resolutions, but Nvidia Surround still isn't up to Eyefinity in terms of game support and ease of use yet. This might change in the future, but for now if you're going three screen, I'd stick with Eyefinity.

And I'll reiterate my belief that a consumer GK110 GPU isn't coming out anytime soon.

 

very tempted by this card!
however, in addition to gaming, i sometime develop CUDA software on GTX cards, and according to some rumours this one won't be as capable as Fermi cards? Are nvidia firmly going to separate their gpus into gaming and computing categories from now on?

Great review btw.

 

Can't see them releasing a consumer gk110

Might release a graphics version under there other brand but it will cost a fortune (£4000+ is normal for high end quadro)

Dout general pc user will see one though

Not sure I'd buy another hot noisy gpu either

690 duel gpu more likely is next gpu if i was betting To counter 7990

 

the power consumption is really nice.. nvidia has been really bad at that with the latest batch of cards.. wonder what changed in their design?

be interesting to see some wpa numbers.. or do we xD the hype ship always steers clear of that.. not many people run brute force attacks anyway