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

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[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]

Not everyone will OC their 7970. Many person don't know how or don't want to.
Yeah, it would have been great to see some benchmark with OC cards.
 
I think its funny how emotional people get when talking about GPU manufacturers. As a consumer, it really comes down to price/performance on the day I click the "submit order" button. Long live the king. amd has better oc capabilities, nvidia kicks the crap out of amd...blah blah blah. Wait 2 weeks from today and see where the prices fall. That is the only thing that sways my decision to buy a gfx card.
 
Noise, temperature, and power draw are still factory set items.
I meant that OC'ing is left up to the user, and can vary significantly on a user to user basis depending on memory or GPU batch, or even methodology.

You imply that Toms favours nvidia. From my experience of reading Toms reviews over the years, they give credit where it's due. I see them praise AMD when the results warrant it, and I see them praise nvidia when the results warrant it.

[citation][nom]BigMack70[/nom]Noise, temperature, and (to a lesser extent) power draw are going to be variable as well (especially due to the dynamic overclocking on the 680), yet they are compared.Your argument makes no sense. You can only gain data and nuance by comparing overclocked results. You don't have to compare 100 samples of overclocking to give relevant overclocking advice to the end user - all overclocking just needs to be qualified by "individual results may vary", and you're good to go.Fact is: OC vs OC these cards trade blows, stock vs stock the 680 is consistently faster. Tom's review would never let the end user know this, therefore it fails.It's similar (though far less egregious) to something like a GTX 480 review that ignores power/temperature/noise data.[/citation]
 
[citation][nom]article[/nom]Did you think you’d see a day when the GeForce GTX 580 would be the anchor on a chart of eight high-end graphics cards? Crazy.[/citation]

That's the fast pace of technology,baby.
 
[citation][nom]superflykicks03[/nom]I think its funny how emotional people get when talking about GPU manufacturers. As a consumer, it really comes down to price/performance on the day I click the "submit order" button. Long live the king. amd has better oc capabilities, nvidia kicks the crap out of amd...blah blah blah. Wait 2 weeks from today and see where the prices fall. That is the only thing that sways my decision to buy a gfx card.[/citation]
The AMD crossfire customers will have to wait for decent drivers for crossfire for a year or more to accommodate the new cards (they were still working the bugs out with BFBC2 as recently as January!). Until then, the crossfire customer gets screwed over time and time again. Nvidia's drivers are solid from launch and only get better. Driver support is not a consideration of yours when considering the buy though?

The AMD driver team made me a true Nvidia fan.
 
[citation][nom]Article[/nom]In comparison, the GeForce GTX 580/590’s GF110 GPU is better-suited to general-purpose compute tasks. And Nvidia argues it’d rather sell you a workstation-oriented Quadro card or dedicated Tesla-based board. We’d counter that AMD’s Radeon HD 7900-series cards are, at least from a performance perspective, clearly viable alternatives in this particular workload (not to mention a lot cheaper).[/citation]

Good point. And that's where the Nvidia rep will say "But we're the better team, as we used to control how people use our PhysX technology and we once released a driver that fried GPUs".

No offence meant against Nvidia. But AMD is much more experienced when it comes to "sweet spot strategy".

Also, it was Nvidia who kept pushing CUDA and now they're de-emphasizing compute performance...OUCH
 
One thing Ive noticed about nvdia and ati cards is that even though sometimes nvidia gets higher fps it seems to be less smooth. Anyhow great competition going on here. Currently running a gtx 570 so I'm good for now.
 
680 seems to be top of the line gaming card. great review.
people pitching gfx card oc seems like the ones who whined about bulldozer oc after bd came out. overclocking shouldn't be a factor in comparing performance, as much as stock performance should be.
and the ones (very incorrectly) accusing of nvidia bias - amd hasn't enabled vce support after 4 !@#$ing months, amd's driver team must be showing nvidia bias by having amd cards underperform in transcoding.
 
GTX 680:
Lower cost
Higher performing in 95% of games
Better drivers
Quieter
New VSync mode
New Antialiasing modes
PhysX
Lower power consumption
Smaller PCB
New dynamic overclocking technology

7970:
Might be as fast as a GTX 680 when overclocked
Better ultra-high resolution, multiple monitor performance
Higher performing in 5% of games
 
Hey Chris, I don't know if you noticed it, but you know those Technical boardshots available on their ftp server? At least two had "670 Ti" as file tags.

You have more on that? Or is that under NDA for now?
 
[citation][nom]ubercake[/nom]The AMD crossfire customers will have to wait for decent drivers for crossfire for a year or more to accommodate the new cards (they were still working the bugs out with BFBC2 as recently as January!). Until then, the crossfire customer gets screwed over time and time again. Nvidia's drivers are solid from launch and only get better. Driver support is not a consideration of yours when considering the buy though?The AMD driver team made me a true Nvidia fan.[/citation]

Not really. But then Ive never messed around with crossfire for my personal build. I've never had more resolution than a single card could handle (given the games and corresponding gfx cards of the time) I've used more ATI/AMD cards than NVidia cards over the years, but never once had a driver issue with either company:

The lineage: Voodoo 2 1000, Voodoo 3 3000, GeForce 3 TI 200, Radeon 9800 Pro, Radeon X800, Radeon 1950XT, 8800 GTS 640, 9800 GTX KO, Radeon 4890, Radeon 5850
 
[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]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.[/citation]

If compute performance didn't matter, Fermi wouldn't exist as we know it. Civ V makes use of compute shaders which is why Cayman didn't do so well at it and, despite the lack of driver command lists, Tahiti does far better. So, yes, compute can and does matter in some games.

How can you be sure that NVIDIA provides a more efficient performance solution "than AMD ever has"? I remember when the 6xxx series came out and a lot of people thought it was less efficient than the 5xxx series, plus also remember that every new architecture doesn't perform at its best with the initial drivers. I may sound like an AMD apologist here, but the performance of the GCN architecture will improve over time as will that of Kepler. You MIGHT be 100% correct about Kepler, but until the drivers are mature and detailed tests are conducted, you can't very well say that for now. Let's put it this way - compared to Fermi, it could hardly go backwards, though admittedly, I personally never expected such an improvement.

Your last statement certainly made me chuckle... "Ignore weaknesses, emphasize strengths, and throw consistency and self respect out the door... amazing." Funny, because that's what NVIDIA fans have been doing as regards Fermi, though I won't be so harsh as to factor consistency and self respect into the equation.

The 680 is the new king, and it should bring down the price of the 7970, but this is AMD's own first generation Fermi, if you like, and NVIDIA seem to have gone for a more Caymen-style architecture in comparison. It'll be interesting to see where they both end up.

[Small edit - it was the 5xxx series that was considered less powerful per shader than the 4xxx series]
 
[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]Hey Chris, I don't know if you noticed it, but you know those Technical boardshots available on their ftp server? At least two had "670 Ti" as file tags.You have more on that? Or is that under NDA for now?[/citation]

I just flipped through the folder (downloaded the entire FTP as soon as I saw it available), and they all have GTX 680 on them. Maybe someone got onto the FTP before me and took a screen grab to show them as 670 Ti? I'd tell you if I knew anything, but seems it was changed before I got there...
 
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