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

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I can see the point of some people, BUT if you pump up a 7970 to the same clock speed of an gtx 680 how much extra power will it consume? remember, the stock gtx 680 uses les power then the 7970 even if its clocked higher. The difference in performance its minimal but the performance /watt its bigger.
 
Thanks Chris! Yet another stellar review! I hope you caught-up on your sleep. BTW - time for a 2/3/4-WAY comparison -- would be sweet to see!

Now I am ready to replace my 3-WAY GTX 470's with 3-WAY GTX 680's that is as soon as 4GB models are listed for sale and either EK or Koolance offers the blocks. Then I'll place my order and with a smile on my face get screwed. I'd really like to find/see models that are pre-blocked...who knows when that will be?

I expect the GTX 580's to drop like a rock over the next few days...who knows, if the prices are insanely low then maybe I'll get (3) 3GB GTX 580's?! In my set up I don't want another episode of a vRAM bottleneck so I am in a holding pattern.

Choices. Glad to see, as expected, the HD 7970 had a short limited reign.
 

how's the LGA 2011 bruddah.?
 
This is a good card, but it only has 66% of the RAM that the 7970/7950 have. Once again Nvidia is being cheap with RAM. Also this toms review is biased towards Nvidia. From overclock3d: "In terms of actual frame-rates, the GTX 680 is nearly identical to the HD7970 and for the first time in a long while you truly can throw your hat in with whichever company you prefer and know that you aren't compromising anything. The performance, low power, quietness and general usability ensure that the GTX680 is worthy of our OC3D Gold Award."

In Crysis Warhead the 7970 wins at all resolutions tested. (check anand article) Seeing as how that's one of the most graphically demanding games, I would give the win to the 7970 overall - and that's without overclocking it! Once overclocked, the 7970 sails ahead in just about every benchmark.
 
"While Crysis was a strong game for the GTX 580, the same cannot be said of the GTX 680. NVIDIA is off to a very poor start here, with the Radeon HD 7970 easily outperforming the GTX 680, and even the 7950 is tied or nearly tied with the GTX 680 depending on the resolution. On the bright side the GTX 680 does manage to outperform the GTX 580, but only by a relatively meager 17%.

Given the large gap in theoretical performance between the GTX 680 and GTX 580, as it turns out we’ve run into one of the few scenarios where the GTX 680 doesn’t improve on the GTX 580: memory bandwidth. In our overclocking results we discovered that a core overclock had almost no impact on Crysis, whereas a memory overclock improved performance by 8%, almost exactly as much as the memory overclock itself. When it comes to the latest generation of cards it appears that Crysis loves memory bandwidth, and this is something the Radeon HD 7900 series has in spades but the GTX 680 does not. Thankfully for NVIDIA not every game is like Crysis.

The minimum framerate situation is even worse for NVIDIA here, with the GTX 680 clearly falling behind the 7950, and improving on the GTX 580 by only 10%. At its worst Crysis is absolutely devouring memory bandwidth here, and that leaves the GTX 680 underprepared." - OC3D
 
It is a fast card, but it only has 66% of the memory that the 7970/7950 have. Also this review is unfair, comparing an overclocked 680 to a stock 7970 which can overclock 25% easily. From overclock3d: "In terms of actual frame-rates, the GTX 680 is nearly identical to the HD7970 and for the first time in a long while you truly can throw your hat in with whichever company you prefer and know that you aren't compromising anything. The performance, low power, quietness and general usability ensure that the GTX680 is worthy of our OC3D Gold Award."

Crysis Warhead - 7970 beats 680 at all resolutions tested. (anand article) Seeing as how that's one of the most graphically demanding games, I would give the win to the 7970 overall - and that's without overclocking it!

Once the 7970 is overclocked, it rockets past the 680 in just about every benchmark.
 
Yeah for the upcoming pricewar!
Hurray for me getting a second 560 Ti in the $150 range soon!
Although... I want to see what the 660 or 660 Ti can do...
 
Great article - if I could make a suggestion, if you have a slightly different color or shade for the dual-gpu cards, this would make it easier to compare fuji apples to fuji apples and to granny smith apples . . . you know what I mean? Shouldn't take much work overall.

Love Tom's gpu benchmarks!
 
With something variable like overclocking, which may or may not be consistent across boards (we don't know yet since no one really has them yet), How would overclocking this individual 680GTX actually paint the correct "whole picture" of the 680GTX?
It's nice to see a factory default comparison of cards when a card is initially released.

[citation][nom]BigMack70[/nom]The review does not paint the whole picture of the card. It only looks at part of the picture, and then draws generic conclusions that aren't qualified enough to be universally true.The job of the reviewer (if they are unbiased) is to provide as complete of an analysis of the product as possible, and then present their findings to the consumer. Ignoring overclocking is no different than ignoring GPU-compute - if you ignore either, then your review is incomplete and your conclusions are not as nuanced as they should be.This is doubly true since one of the biggest selling points of the 7970 is its ability to almost always achieve a 20-30% overclock.Like I said - the card is good, this review is bad and skews results far more in favor of the 680 than more complete reviews (techpowerup, overclock3d) show. When more data + more analysis = different/more nuanced conclusions than this review, you know that this review is a fail.[/citation]
 
[citation][nom]malmental[/nom]how's the LGA 2011 bruddah.?[/citation]
The MOBO is in the process of being shipped back to me after an RMA from 2/27~3/2, the GTX 680's are going to my 'daughters' i7-980X rig. Worked great for 2~3 days then poof. 🙁 I'll PM you today.
 
[citation][nom]animalosity[/nom]@ 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.[/citation]

I'm only mentioning this because of how rude you are, but Nvidia is supposed to release another card based off of the 580, technically speaking this card is more closely related to the 560. That's why there's talk about the actual "mainstream" card.
 


Who cares about "compute performance"... this is a gaming card. You want to "compute", you take the "professional" cards like Quadro.



And if you OC the 680?

😀
 
Very impressive performance numbers, especially considering the die size. I bet even AMD fanboys are loving this card.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if i'd consider myself a fanboy, but I have had ATi cards since the 9700 Pro (and nVidia prior to that). I am a fan though, of 2 great companies waging war with awesome high tech toys, and only in my opinion, it seems like we could have that tmore so this gen. But I can say that this card certainly made me take notice. I'm very thankful for the price point that they have released at when they could have just as easily matched the 7970's. I have about a month to wait out the pricing game until Ivy Bridge releases (hopefully) and I think at the moment, if the 7970 drops to the $450.00 price point it should have been Ifrom the get go I will stay with it, but if both sit at $500.00 I think I may jump sides this round.

As for nVidia's new features, I do like the idea of dynamic V-Sync as long as it happens seamlessly between the on and off state. I also thought the GPU Boost was interesting. I may have to read more about it to better understand it, but it seems like AMD's method aims more at power consumption and nVidia's at eeking out the last bit of performance from the GPU. Both are very good ideas and tailor to 2 sets of needs. I think I may lean a little towards nVidia's approach as a personal taste, if I am understanding the article correctly, only because I don't really have any heat/power issues to contend with right now.

Hmmm... choices choices! As a long time ATi customer, I have to take my hat off to the green men... Cool card!!
 
I expected more from Kepler given the string of leaks leading up to these benchmarks.

The price is surprisingly appealing. However, the power consumption is very high. The 680 doesn't appear to be significantly better than my 7950 OC card. It's slightly better at stock, yes, but I can easily OC to the same performance and power consumption if I wanted to. I really expected more from Nvidia this time around. It's good to see them competing with AMD though. We need more competition like this. After reading this article I am still happy with my 7950 OC purchase. I have paired it with an i7 3820, enabled PCIe 3, and have been having a great time so far.
 
[citation][nom]article[/nom]Sliding back a bit to a 150 MHz offset gives us stability, but performance isn’t any better than the 100 MHz setting. No doubt, it’ll take more tinkering to find the right overclock with GPU Boost in the mix and always on.[/citation]

And you have to adjust these settings for every game
 
Well, don't buy a GTX680 for compute. I thought the 1/8 DP on the GTX480/580 was crippling, and the 1/12 on the GTX460/560 was simply out of the question. But 1/24 DP? That seems a bit severe to me, even for a gaming oriented card. For those who game but also depend on compute performance, especially DP, this may not be a viable upgrade option. Unfortunately we'll probably have to wait for GK110 for a more balanced performance option from Nvidia.

As strictly a gaming card however, this is without question the best option for high-end enthusiasts. The GTX680 costs less, performs better, and consumes less power while running quieter at load than the HD7970. In addition it provides a 72% increase in performance per W over the GTX580, in comparison to the once touted ~20% increase of the HD7970. I think it's really funny how performance per W and cost were the most important arguing points for AMD fanboy's... up to this launch. For generations performance per W and pricing were the only things that mattered, more than absolute performance, and certainly more than compute performance. Compute? What's that? It's irrelevant for consumer cards. But now that Nvidia has implemented performance efficiency better than AMD ever has, while in addition coming in at a lower price, the emphasis in their arguments shift to compute performance. Well, I guess that's what makes them fanboys. Ignore weaknesses, emphasize strengths, and throw consistency and self respect out the door... amazing.
 
Picked up my card from Newegg.com at $499.99. The even sent out a free shipping code last night. All brands were the same price except PNY at 529.99. They started showing up around 9:20AM EST and completely sold out of all brands in about 30 minutes. I tried to add the ASUS card to my cart and purchase, but at some point received an insufficient supply notice. Then it was on Auto Notify. I hit refresh and it was available, so I quickly checked out. I left like I was rushing to win an eBay auction in the last 10 seconds.

These went like HOTCAKES!
 

be looking for it and I still want dibs on outgoing hardware... 😉
 

moving up in rank you are jedi.
erm..
 
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