GeForce GTX 680, Part 2: SLI, 5760x1080, And Overclocking

[Marcus52]

The reason I didn't buy a GTX 580 at the end of last year was that the one I wanted wasn't available at the time I was hot to buy one. The reason I didn't buy a Radeon 7970 was it wasn't available at the time I was hot to buy one. The reason I didn't buy a GTX 680. . .

So, I guess what I'm saying is, please keep paper releasing these things or releasing them in short supply so impulse buying isn't a part of my decision. Now that I don't have to fight that urge, I can wait until "Big Kepler" comes out. Of course when it does they will sell out in a couple hours, so I can get over that stage, once again, with my wallet intact, and look forward to Maxwell.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]walropodes[/nom]Do you guys plan on doing an Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 benchmark where you render the "Paladin sequence" like you did with the 480 and 580? I'm curious to see how it fares against those cards as the 680's GPU compute performance seems to not be as good as the 580's[/citation]
Definitely doable! I'll see where I might fit it in!

 

[animalosity]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]If ever you're in Bakersfield, CA, you're welcome to drop by and check the lab out. It's like a gamer candy store, literally stacked with graphics cards higher than I can reach![/citation]

Um... http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=2858????

 

[animalosity]

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMGOOMG OMGOMGOMGLOGLGOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL FANBOY!

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]animalosity[/nom]OMG OMG OMG OMG OMGOOMG OMGOMGOMGLOGLGOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL FANBOY![/citation]
lol... wut?

 

[alchemy69]

Any word on microstuttering?

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]If ever you're in Bakersfield, CA, you're welcome to drop by and check the lab out. It's like a gamer candy store, literally stacked with graphics cards higher than I can reach![/citation]

You guys are in Bako? I live here and I had no idea, ha. Where are you located?

 

[walropodes]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Definitely doable! I'll see where I might fit it in![/citation]

thanks! I'm putting together a rig for gaming and video editing and this information will be very handy.

 

[billybobser]

From an unbiased perspective for games.

More FPS, less heat, less power.

7970 may have excellent o/c headroom, but to be frank, if it's so easy to obtain it why not utilise in the first place?

From each companies PoV however, AMD are still winning.

 

[Guest]

Outstanding review, particularly given the degree of difficulty associated with max-fatigue!

Looking for a couple opinions, Chris. (I'm predicating this on you having bought two of the AMD's as confirmation that you and/or the others in the lab like lots of horsepower)

1) Given the choice between a real good 30" monitor and three 1080's, what's the consensus there?
2) I've read that PCIE 3 has no material impact on performance given that PCIE 2 wasn't saturated. Do you concur or should we "stay tuned"?
3) If you were to guess, will the much-speculated big-Kepler be for gamers or would it have an alternate target market?

 

[confish21]

[citation][nom]Oldnconfuzed[/nom]I've read that PCIE 3 has no material impact on performance given that PCIE 2 wasn't saturated. Do you concur or should we "stay tuned"?3)[/citation]

Great Question! Pls reply!

 

[dragonearth]

Thank you so much for the accurate professional review.

It really helps so much to decide, which card should I get, compare to the others reviews.
I was waiting to see how well adaptive V-syc work. Epically, when you play on one monitor has 60 HZ.

Thank you for your effort.

 

[jaquith]

Correct, PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 has nearly no impact with the current resolutions and GPU's. You'll get the 0-3 FPS drop @ PCIe 2.0 with x8 lanes, and that's on a 5760x1200 render. On a typical 1920x1080 monitor, I really doubt any repeated tests will show anything. I do suspect once 4K monitor and GPUs that can properly drive them become more readily available then sure the differences will point to a PCIe 3.0 advantage.

I've asked TH to do an article quite a while back, didn't I Chris?

 

[Markon101]

Nvidia has another winner! All hail to the new king! Or kings in this case.

 

[mortonww]

Can we designate one person to make the comment "competition is good for consumers" on all articles from here on out? Just one person to get it out of the way. Or maybe we can just take it as a given from now on?

 

[tigerwild]

so where are the "tanks"? I want to see the sli of gtx 590 at 5760x1200 (my current running config w gtx 570)

 

[billybobser]

[citation][nom]Markon101[/nom]Nvidia has another winner! All hail to the new king! Or kings in this case.[/citation]
We'll see who is king, when nVidia release a card the masses might buy.

I imagine that AMD are still far more profitable given that they have most market segments covered, whereas after the initial rush for the 680 dies down, nvidia will be shipping next to chuff all until they can get us a winner vs 7870 (or something priced at 7770 which isn't completely balls)

 

[monkeymonk]

[citation][nom]general lee[/nom]Both companies still need to work with their multi-gpu driver support. If I spend 1000$ on GPUs I'd expect them to work. At the moment there's too many games and settings where multi-gpu doesn't work. Add to that micro-stutters and increased noise and power consumption and multi-gpu doesn't seem like all that good of an idea.[/citation]
The micro stutter is a deal breaker by itself.

 

[littleleo]

Amd always seems to have their drivers holding them back. nVidia just seem to work. Good to see the green team deliver a winner and at $499 a lot better deal then what AMD has been sticking to us. Now AMD will have to give the consumer some better pricing.

 

[JamesSneed]

Im gonna guess its the AA but our friend "chip in a box" posted in the previous 680 review that in sli (even quad) hardwareinfo.com found at 5760x1080 in BF3 the crossfired 7970 was beating the 680... your review says differently though. Still this isnt bad for nvidia for a midrange card at least.

Here's the pic he posted

/quotemsg]


Maybe its the 4x AA vs 4x MSAA?

 

[bystander]

[citation][nom]jamessneed[/nom]

Im gonna guess its the AA but our friend "chip in a box" posted in the previous 680 review that in sli (even quad) hardwareinfo.com found at 5760x1080 in BF3 the crossfired 7970 was beating the 680... your review says differently though. Still this isnt bad for nvidia for a midrange card at least.Here's the pic he posted/quotemsg]Maybe its the 4x AA vs 4x MSAA?[/citation]

Most 4x AA is using 4x MSAA. MSAA is just a specific type of AA.

One thing you might have read in this other article, is that Nvidia's drivers will override MSAA and use FXAA instead, which is much faster, and has just a good or better image quality. I'm sure some of the differences are attributed to this. http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1455/pg16/asus-geforce-gtx-680-oc-vs-r7970-oc-vs-gtx-580-oc-performance-review-fxaa-and-txaa.html

Off all the results in this article the above image quality comparisons and framerates show the most clear cut win. FXAA offers better IQ than none or 4xMSAA and higher framerates than the traditional method by some way. The bonus is that by default turning on Anti-Aliasing in-game actually enables FXAA rather than MSAA.

 

[bystander]

As a result, I've love to see a lot of these benchmarks ran again, without AA.

 

[louish1982]

I would like to know about the ccc settings ( and the nvia counterpart) for these reviews? Is it set and and nvidia default without touching anything? Just trying to compare with my results...My rig is similar except i have a 3820 at 4.3ghz with 32gb of 1866 ram and a vertex 3 ssd and run my dual 7970 at 1100mhz on clock and 1500mhz on memory as everyday settings and score X6100 on 3dmark 11 with default ccc settings. Is it the way to do it? Adding super sampling aa and more texture filtering take down results to X4700!!!

 

[Reynod]

Great article and very balanced Chris.

Enjoyed reading this.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

I'd like to see the 680s in a Quad-SLI benchmark.