GeForce GTX 680 2 GB Review: Kepler Sends Tahiti On Vacation

[gam0reily]

nyc. Lets see about the gtx 660. Thats gonna stimulate the competetion now.

 

[ubercake]

[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom]One reason for the 7970's high price could be the 3GB of RAM it's lugging about and that 384-bit memory interface. Another is that it's got a lot more compute hardware than the 680.I'd expect the 7970 to be faster in multi-monitor mode due to those points. The 680 is a true beast of a card though, and feels for all intents and purposes like what a Cayman successor would have - decent compute, but stunning performance whilst using less power than the comparable AMD card. It feels as if AMD and NVIDIA have actually traded architectures.[/citation]
Ironically, once again more RAM on the AMD card has proven to give it no advantage in multi-monitor setups (check out the hardocp review pitting NV surround vs eyefinity with the 680/7970). Maybe AMD should decrease the RAM by 1GB and take the money from the cost they recover there and spend it on a better driver development team?

 

[verbalizer]

malmental thanks all for the Kepler thread..

 

[DjEaZy]

... radeon price drop on the way... nice, nice, nice...

 

[julianbautista87]

[citation][nom]scotty99[/nom]Its a midrange card, anyone who disagrees is plain wrong. Thats not to say its a bad card, what happened here is nvidia is so far ahead of AMD in tech that the mid range card purposed to fill the 560ti in the lineup actually competed with AMD's flagship. If you dont believe me that is fine, you will see in a couple months when the actual flagship comes out, the ones with the 384 bit interface.[/citation]

sorry, but this card is actually their flagship. Pretty cool card, though.

And Nvidia has the fastest gpu now, but that doesn't mean they are a better company, it's like saying that Ferrari is better than Renault for the same reason, even when the price/performance of Renault is way better than Ferrari's (just an example). The price/performance index is what really matters, unless you are rich.

 

[johnsonma]

7970 OC will hang with 680 OC any day of the week. The price is the main difference between those two cards and nvidia wins.

 

[animalosity]

@ Scotty99

You sir. Are an idiot. Mid Range card my ass. I realize that Nvidia is realeasing another later this year (AKA dual gpu card). This is Nvidia's flagship right now so get off your high horse. Also learn to speak intelligence before you start making diarrhea come out of your mouth. Or fingers in this case.

 

[A Bad Day]

I'm kinda confused, does that mean that the GPU's power limit will prevent an OCer from slapping on a water cooling rig and being able to get higher clock rate than 1.2 GHz?

 

[ubercake]

[citation][nom]scrumworks[/nom]If you don't care about Chris's nvidia fanboyism and want a bit more realistic and objective review, head to techreport.com. Sure, the Kepler is impressive and a bit faster, but NOT THIS MUCH. Fine selection of pro-nvidia game titles instead of games that are actually new and equal to both platforms makes a world of difference in benchmarking.[/citation]
Never heard of techreport.com being an authority on hardware reviews. Check out hardocp and you'll find similar results to those here. Techpowerup.com... same. Anandtech.com same.

Although, if you're a hardcore AVP player and that's all you play, I'd definitely stick with the 7970.

 

[julianbautista87]

And I don't think AMD will counter-attack with a faster single-gpu card. that's not how they do their things. I think they will bring the flagship price down a bit and, most important, release a 7950 or a 7970 with half the memory (1.5 GB) and a lower price in order to fight the price/performance battle, that's how AMD managed the situation when the 560ti - 570 appeared, with a 6950 1GB with a killer price.

 

[ubercake]

Great review. Looks like it's going to be hard to get your hands on a 680, though. As a result, this could possibly drive the price up.

 

[nebun]

did i just see only one 6 pin power connector?....this is very good news indeed....less cables in the case, got to love it

 

[ubercake]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]did i just see only one 6 pin power connector?....this is very good news indeed....less cables in the case, got to love it[/citation]
It uses 2.

 

[brendonmc]

SLI scaling? Better than AMD?

 

[punnar]

Competetion means better for us consumers. Way to go nVidia.

 

[baracubra]

Great review!!! Although I know you hear that often on these new reviews, I really enjoyed this one. I'm always intrigued by your concise, to-the-point, no waffle reviews, and especially now I felt everything was truly grounded in real world applications and scenarios - those that matter for us! I'm really looking forward to the multi monitor review, and comparisons to the upcoming IB Quick sync... Again, great review and keep them coming - thx Bara

 

[Guest]

can we have FOLDING@HOME benchmark?

 

[stonedatheist]

Very impressive performance numbers, especially considering the die size. I bet even AMD fanboys are loving this card. AMD will certainly have to drop prices to remain competitive. Tahiti price drops are a given but I bet even Pitcairn and perhaps Cape Verde will drop a little as a result.

Personally, I'm waiting on the next round of high end single GPUs, either AMD Tenerife or NVIDIA GK110. I expect they both will beat the current dual GPU cards (6990 & 590) hands down which is very tantalizing

 

[hyder13]

good for nvidia

 

[cknobman]

This is not a surprise to me. After all when AMD release GCN architecture we new they put a higher emphasis on compute and less on gaming. We knew it was AMD's first iteration of a new architecture and has tons of room to improve.

Kepler is 2nd gen Fermi and done right but Nvidia made trade offs to get there. Lower compute performance to get higher game performance.

Credit to Nvidia on the 680 its a nice piece of hardware and will bring bs AMD prices down to earch.

But also keep in mind Nvidia cards are running much higher clocked cores and memory and AMD boards. If you OC an AMD 7970 you can easily match the 680 performance.

 

[chulex67]

Hold yourselfs, The Price War is Coming

 

[zooted]

[citation][nom]cknobman[/nom]This is not a surprise to me. After all when AMD release GCN architecture we new they put a higher emphasis on compute and less on gaming. We knew it was AMD's first iteration of a new architecture and has tons of room to improve.Kepler is 2nd gen Fermi and done right but Nvidia made trade offs to get there. Lower compute performance to get higher game performance.Credit to Nvidia on the 680 its a nice piece of hardware and will bring bs AMD prices down to earch.But also keep in mind Nvidia cards are running much higher clocked cores and memory and AMD boards. If you OC an AMD 7970 you can easily match the 680 performance.[/citation] Isn't it 3rd generation fermi?

 

[cknobman]

[citation][nom]zooted[/nom]Isn't it 3rd generation fermi?[/citation]

LOL you could say that but I thought Nvidia was like "oops forget the first 400's that wasnt fermi our bad take these other ones which are really fermi ".

 

[thehoj]

How is this is a Fail review.. It's reviewing out of the box performance to out of the box performance.
It's a review for the people who want to install a card and play.

[citation][nom]BigMack70[/nom]Fail review. Not comparing OC'd 680 to OC'd 7970 = irrelevant comparison, since we all know that 99.9% of 7970s will OC by 20-30%.overclock3d's review is far betterThe card, however, is impressive - coming in at a lower price than the 7970 but beating it at stock and (according to techpowerup and overclock3d) trading blows with it when it's compared as OC vs OC. The lower price point is what really makes it a success. The performance difference between the cards, however, is not as large as this review would have us all believe.[/citation]

 

[wolfram23]

Awesome card. Couldn't care less about compute performance...

One thing I think this review sorely misses, though, is comparing an OCed 680 to an OCed 7970. Seeing how the 680 is gimped for over clocking, I think the 7970 might actually come out as a winner but again, can't say until someone shows benchmarks.