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

[cangelini]

Enthusiasts want to know about Nvidia's next-generation architecture so badly that they broke into our content management system and took the data to be used for today's launch. Now we can really answer how Kepler fares against AMD's GCN architecture.

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

 

[Guest]

Hail to the new king.

 

[borden5]

oh man this's good news for consumer, hope to see a price war soon

 

[johnners2981]

Damn prices, in europe we have to pay the equivalent of $650-$700 to get one

 

[outlw6669]

Nice results, this is how the transition to 28nm should be.
Now we just need prices to start dropping, although significant drops will probably not come until the GK110 is released :/

 

[Guest]

Finally we will see prices going down (either way )

 

[Scotty99]

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.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Wow not too bad. Looks like the 680 is actually cheaper than the 7970 right now, about 50$, and generally beats the 7970, but obviously not at everything.

Good going Nvidia...

 

[Guest]

run the test on the same speeds then lets talk...

 

[SkyWalker1726]

AMD will certainly Drop the price of the 7xxx series

 

[rantoc]

2x of thoose ordered and will be delivered tomorrow, will be a nice geeky weekend for sure =)

 

[scrumworks]

Nothing surprising here. Little overclocking can put Tahiti right at the same level. Kepler is actually losing to Tahiti in really demanding games like Metro 2033 that uses the latest tech. Pointless to test ancient and low tech games like World of Warcrap that is ancient, uses dx9 and is not considered cutting edge in any meter.

 

[Scotty99]

[citation][nom]scrumworks[/nom]Nothing surprising here. Little overclocking can put Tahiti right at the same level. Kepler is actually losing to Tahiti in really demanding games like Metro 2033 that uses the latest tech. Pointless to test ancient and low tech games like World of Warcrap that is ancient, uses dx9 and is not considered cutting edge in any meter.[/citation]

Sigh...

WoW has had DX11 for quite a long time now. Also, go play in a 25 man raid with every detail setting on ultra with 8xAA and 16x AAF and tell me WoW is not taxing on a PC.

 

[yougotjaked]

Wait what does it mean by "if you’re interested in compute potential, you’ll have to keep waiting"?

 

[scrumworks]

Wow, now that I moved some more pages I see Kepler really sucks at computing. I think it's very surprising even if you claim otherwise! That how Kepler managed to barely overpass Tahiti in gaming because it's totally useless in computing apps. That is something that Tom's and folk usually praise in nvidia, their ability to be like supercomputers. I guess there is a totally different ring in the bell now and all the sudden computing doesn't matter.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Just throwing this out there now, but some AMD fanboy will find a way to discredit or marginalize these results.

...oh, wait.

 

[klausey]

Great to see nVidia jumping back into the game and forcing AMD to lower its prices accordingly. I was shocked to see the card actually available at the MSRP of $500 on launch day. I guess we'll see how long that lasts.

For everyone suggesting that nVidia will release another true "flagship" beyond the 680, I think you are spot on, IF AMD gives them a reason to. There's no reason to push it at the moment as they already hold the crown. If, on the other hand, AMD goes out and makes a 7980, or 79070 SE card with higher clocks (more like what the 7970 can achieve when properly overclocked), I definitely see nVidia stepping their game up a bit.

Either way, it's awesome to see both AMD and now nVidia taking power consumption into consideration. I'm tired of my computer room feeling like a toaster after an all nighter.

 

[rantoc]

[citation][nom]yougotjaked[/nom]Wait what does it mean by "if you’re interested in compute potential, you’ll have to keep waiting"?[/citation]

He means waiting for the GK110, that will be a more of a compute card while this GK104 is more equiped towards gaming.

 

[EXT64]

Really disappointing DP compute, but a tradeoff had to be made and this card is meant for gaming, so I can understand their position. Hopefully GK110 is a real card and will eventually come out.

 

[Guest]

but will it run tetris with multiple displays?

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Oh yeah, team green strikes back! Now let's see what 660 Ti will be like, might suggest that to a friend.

 

[rantoc]

[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]

The card you mention is the GK110, it will most likely be aimed towards computing (cuda ect) and have a significantly bigger chip budget as well as price. The big question is how much it will lean toward computing... if its leaning alot towards computing wich i think - it will also be less effichient when it commes to gaming.

 

[silverblue]

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.

 

[yougotjaked]

[citation][nom]rantoc[/nom]He means waiting for the GK110, that will be a more of a compute card while this GK104 is more equiped towards gaming.[/citation] Ah ok thanks. How long before those cards are out?

 

[badtaylorx]

this article is skewed HARD!!! im non biased (i own 2 560ti's and 2 6970's) and find this an insult to tech journalism