680 GTX review is out and blows away ATI!!

[Lyonheart]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review enjoy!

[Sajuuk]

I wouldn't call that "blowing away ATI."

That it goes head-to-head/slightly better than ATI's 7970 for a 'lower' launch price (yeah, that low price of 500 isn't going to stay low).

Eh, I'ma just keep puttering along on my Intel Integrated graphics.

[Lyonheart]

I wouldn't call that "blowing away ATI."

That it goes head-to-head/slightly better than ATI's 7970 for a 'lower' launch price (yeah, that low price of 500 isn't going to stay low).

Eh, I'ma just keep puttering along on my Intel Integrated graphics.

There are tests at 1900-1200 res that it beats even the duel GPU cards. Other than Crysis, it beats the 7970 by 30+ FPS in most tests, and in all the games people are playing ( BF3 for example ). Its cheaper..faster, quieter and uses less power. I think that qualifies it as "blowing away" the 7970.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I would love to have a video card source such that I could test these things in multiboxing situations. I suspect the results would be similar to what you see at the huge resolutions in these single-client tests due to effectively using 3-10x the client surfaces but that's only a guess.

WTB video card sugar mama, PST.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I wouldn't call that "blowing away ATI."
If we're gonna be consistent with the way things were stated when the ATI cards were about this much faster than the NVidia cards in the early Fermi days, then yeah, it most definitely blows away the ATI offerings, even beating the dual-GPU solutions in some games.

Really, though, I'm only interested in how it fares in multiboxing applications (e.g.: WoW, Rift and SWToR) with 5-10 clients. Sadly, nobody has test reviews of that setup.

[Oatboat]

Youtube video of the card. (http://youtu.be/4SfPLhTgRPQ)

[Sajuuk]

If we're gonna be consistent with the way things were stated when the ATI cards were about this much faster than the NVidia cards in the early Fermi days, then yeah, it most definitely blows away the ATI offerings, even beating the dual-GPU solutions in some games.

Really, though, I'm only interested in how it fares in multiboxing applications (e.g.: WoW, Rift and SWToR) with 5-10 clients. Sadly, nobody has test reviews of that setup.
eh, ok.

[crowdx]

Looking through this review it seems BF3, Crisis Warhead and Metro 2033 all are very close with the 7970 vs the 680 at 2560x1600 which is where I am at presently.
I do wonder how it would handle multiboxing though, it seems that would be a whole different ball of wax lol

[Catamer]

pretty much any NVidia card blows away all ATI cards if you ask me.
I was playing CoH for a while and the only machine with an ATI card failed, might be 5 min into the game, might be 2-3 hours into the game but on average it was 30 min.
I used about 10 different driver versions and all failed.
it didn't matter if I used 1 or 2 cards, crossfire enabled, disabled, one card only, the other card only.
all of my problems went away when I threw those ATI cards into the trash can and bought a relatively cheep 460 NVidia card, which is able to run CoH on that particular monitor at 60Hz.

[MiRai]

When you look at reviews like this you also have to know which game titles are sponsored by nVIDIA (The Way It's Meant To Be Played or TWIMTBP for short) and which aren't -- It can make a huge difference. While the GTX 680 looks nice, I think my GTX 580s will hold me over until the GK110 GPUs come out later this year (supposedly).

[Oatboat]

I do like the 4 monitor support that this one card offers.... That seems nice.

[Lyonheart]

When you look at reviews like this you also have to know which game titles are sponsored by nVIDIA (The Way It's Meant To Be Played or TWIMTBP for short) and which aren't -- It can make a huge difference. While the GTX 680 looks nice, I think my GTX 580s will hold me over until the GK110 GPUs come out later this year (supposedly).

Yea i just got my 3GB 580 last month. I'm very happy with it for what i use it for>> single 27' monitor running 1900, 1080. It will last me a long while I'm sure. I also have a 580 1.5 GB I'm not sure what to do with it, its value just took a nose dive hehe... might just save it as a back up.

[Bollwerk]

Cataclysm benchmarks of the new 680 using the 64-bit client. (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-review-benchmark,3161-12.html)

[MiRai]

Controversy behind this nVIDIA release.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=162901

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Part number controversy lolol...

[Knytestorme]

So now comes the decision of which way to go.

Asus 2Gb 680 is $699, Asus 3Gb 7970 with 6 outputs is $679.....

The slight extra speed of the 680 does not seem to outweigh the extra framebuffer size and ability to run one character per monitor fullscreen of the 7970 but am interested in others opinions before I pull the trigger next week.

[MiRai]

So now comes the decision of which way to go.

Asus 2Gb 680 is $699, Asus 3Gb 7970 with 6 outputs is $679.....

The slight extra speed of the 680 does not seem to outweigh the extra framebuffer size and ability to run one character per monitor fullscreen of the 7970 but am interested in others opinions before I pull the trigger next week.
It's a tough call but, there's something that stuck in my mind from glancing over lots of threads on it over the past few days. People were talking about the memory bandwidth on the GTX 680 and how it might be lacking at higher resolutions. Now, I realize that most of us don't play above 1920x1080 but, that's 1920x1080 x3 or x5 or more... so the pixels start adding up. I don't know enough about all of that to really make the call but, I can't imagine you can go wrong with the 7970.

Here's a thread about some memory bandwidth stuff - http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2234397

[Knytestorme]

It's a tough call but, there's something that stuck in my mind from glancing over lots of threads on it over the past few days. People were talking about the memory bandwidth on the GTX 680 and how it might be lacking at higher resolutions. Now, I realize that most of us don't play above 1920x1080 but, that's 1920x1080 x3 or x5 or more... so the pixels start adding up. I don't know enough about all of that to really make the call but, I can't imagine you can go wrong with the 7970.

Here's a thread about some memory bandwidth stuff - http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2234397

Yeah, that's the issue I was considering with the framebuffer and the same reason going from 1Gb to 2Gb or 1.5Gb 580 to 3Gb 580 made such differences previously. We're not really running 1920x1080 when boxing but rather 1920x1080xClientCount which with a 5box would be close to running 1920x1080 at 8AA so a higher framebuffer will always be better. In fact yeah, if you are running at a lower fps across all clients due to lower framebuffer on a faster card then the power increase isn't really a benefit.

This of course is without taking into account the memory bandwidth and if 680 can use it's memory more efficiently to overcome the lower framebuffer. Might have to see what AT forums do have to say about it as it's an interesting theoretical discussion.

[crowdx]

Well this maybe the issue I am seeing with the new 7970 I just got. I run Rift at 2560x1600 at medium on my main monitor and the slaves are running on two secondary monitors in software render mode. When use AMD system monitor to measure the GPU usage I am getting max of 80% YET my frames are only around 30fps dropping as low as 15 fps in Meridan. The 7970 is a 3gb card but I wonder how much memory it is using and if the frame buffer is a bottle neck.

[Noids]

Considering they have increased the amount of memory and the speed at which it is utilised through better/more processors, it does seem a bit strange that they have gone from a 384bit bus in the 580 to a 256 bus in the 680 again... Almost feels like they are deliberately gimping this build a bit like they were forced to with the 480 (albeit disabling shaders due to thermal problems which this card does not appear to have) so that the next gen card can use fairly similar architecture to achieve much better performance through simple upgrades (Assuming memory bus and buffer size will be improved) for the 780?
ie. Fermi MkI (480) Fermi MkII (580)
Kepler MkI (680) Kepler MkII (780?)

[Sajuuk]

Considering they have increased the amount of memory and the speed at which it is utilised through better/more processors, it does seem a bit strange that they have gone from a 384bit bus in the 580 to a 256 bus in the 680 again... Almost feels like they are deliberately gimping this build a bit like they were forced to with the 480 (albeit disabling shaders due to thermal problems which this card does not appear to have) so that the next gen card can use fairly similar architecture to achieve much better performance through simple upgrades (Assuming memory bus and buffer size will be improved) for the 780?
ie. Fermi MkI (480) Fermi MkII (580)
Kepler MkI (680) Kepler MkII (780?)

It's easier to do that than create new architecture every generation.

[Selz]

Yes the new GTX 680 is super fast but, its time to wait and re-think

The 2nd model is on the way and is still a "Single GPU" with 4gb DDR5

[EVGA] GTX 680 4GB FTW

http://eu.evga.com/articles/00669/#GTX680FTW

[Lyonheart]

Yes the new GTX 680 is super fast but, its time to wait and re-think

The 2nd model is on the way and is still a "Single GPU" with 4gb DDR5

[EVGA] GTX 680 4GB FTW

http://eu.evga.com/articles/00669/#GTX680FTW



That is what i am waiting for! I have a 3GB 580 now, but I might just say "WTF" and get the 4GB 680 8)

[Selz]

http://media.bestofmicro.com/Q/U/331446/original/wow 5760.png

It seems dual GPU is supported in the x64 bit version, but only makes a difference on the nVidia cards
in fact a single GTX 680 is just as good as crossfire 7970, but as a funny note, it seems that the AMD cards
does not scale at all. So since I know WoW is a nVidia supported game, perhaps that x64 bit platform came in to support SLI ?