GeForce GTX 690 Review: Testing Nvidia's Sexiest Graphics Card

[g-unit1111]

*drool*

*looks at price tag*

*still continues to drool*

 

[rockitman]

FINALLY! Triple monitor resolution testing!!!!!! Good job Tom's!! Please make this standard on all future GPU tests!!!!! Only wish you could go back in time and give me the 6950 Crossfire with those res's.

 

[hellfire24]

2+2b=2gb usable vram!
and i think 2b is enough vram to max out any game.

 

[eddieroolz]

That looks just stunning. And the performance...wow.

 

[jimmy19]

But can it play Crysis ?

 

[cchsballa0655]

Just think...every time they sell one of these 2 people are missing out on a gtx 680, insttead of making 2,000 gamers happy there will only be 1,000 gamers with massive overkill lol

 

[srgess]

amd fanboy are pretty quiet those day, well they only can say its overpriced, well i can agree with them.

 

[borden5]

[citation][nom]outlw6669[/nom]WTF!?!GTX 590 launch...GTX 580 launch price: $500GTX 590 launch price: $700Difference: 140%Now today GTX 690 launch...GTX 680 launch price: $500GTX 690 launch price: $1000Difference: 200%So, is it just me or is nVidia really gouging on the price here?Why the hell else would they be charging an additional 43% more than their last dual GPU launch while using less silicon?Come on AMD, we really need some more competition here.[/citation]
590 is not 2x580 btw so that's why the price is lowered than 2x580

 

[cchsballa0655]

Btw the 590l was $700 because both gpus were neutered...they had their cuda cores artificially limited...the only real full dual 580 card was the asus mars 2

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

Best looking card I have seen in a while, but a 1000 clams 🙁

 

[rsktek]

Dang, I was just thinking... meh, so it does well... but then I saw the resolutions it was running at, and then I looked at the FPS... :O jaw dropped

 

[knissel]

Fantastic, well written article as always!

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

I can't help but wonder how differently this article would be written had this card, all things being equal, had an AMD badge on it. I'm not so sure that the $1000 price tag (and likely much higher street price) as well as the obvious paper launch coupled with permanent expectations of SEVERELY limited availability would be received quite the same way. I mean, cmon, comparing a graphics card to supercars? I think your comparison is more than a bit exaggerated.

Best GPUs for the money April overwhelmingly AMD. Nvidia did a paper launch less than a week before the cards became (very limited) available. People don't think the 680 and 7970 are too expensive so if the 7990 performs the same as two 7970s is it worth $950? All I am saying is people get mad whenever a review site says something good about a company they don't like or feel the review company is saying something bad about the company they like. Toms is pretty balanced IMHO, so try not to let company loyalty get in the way of how you view things. AMD and Nvidia are both great companies, but neither are perfect. I root for both teams!!!

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

Dang, I was just thinking... meh, so it does well... but then I saw the resolutions it was running at, and then I looked at the FPS... :O jaw dropped

ME TOO! 😱

In all serious I have a 680 and it is so hard not to sell it for one of these. I love my 680, but this way I get twice as much lovin and can 4 way SLI (rig only has two pci slots). 114 FPS not that cool... wait is that @ 2500X1600? I think I just shat myself.

 

[The_Trutherizer]

Great card. I must say though that I am starting to get tired of any kind of judgement of cards by their exterior - Knowing that a sizeable design budget probably goes into just that. Maybe it will be nicer once CPUs with integrated graphics come into their own. I mean a CPU is just packaged like a CPU. I don't think that will change any time soon. I can only imagine how nice that will be for the sake of simplicity. Also cards like these are toys. Hardly a smidge on the total income graphics card makers make. And still the same amount of silicon real estate. Similar circuit boards across any given range. And then Just a fancy cooler strapped on. Ever taken of a graphics card's cooler? It's not so sexy. Only the power is sexy.

 

[jonnyboyC]

The amount of power these cards is mind numbing, I just saw the battlefield 3 benchmark one card ripping 3 hd screens on ultra on bf3 mind blow

 

[aviral]

Really need to think twice or may be thrice before going for 690 as it is a Bugatti Veyron for graphic card.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]robwright[/nom]I wonder, given the price of the 690, just how limited the quanitities will be. Which brings up another question, one that Nvidia (and AMD as well) would probably be reluctant to answer: are they making and shipping fewer of the top-shelf Halo cards today than they did 5 or six years ago?[/citation]
Actually, that's a really good question Rob. NV is saying as many 690s and 590s, but if you go back further, not sure how the comparison would look!

 

[_Pez_]

I wonder what would be the AMD's answer to this BEAST? 😀 im curious...

 

[cchsballa0655]

Bigmack....gpuboost is a feature...just doesn't have the right name...should be called something like adaptive gpu clocking...or smart clock....smartgpu clock

 

[tuffjuff]

[citation][nom]robwright[/nom]I wonder, given the price of the 690, just how limited the quanitities will be. Which brings up another question, one that Nvidia (and AMD as well) would probably be reluctant to answer: are they making and shipping fewer of the top-shelf Halo cards today than they did 5 or six years ago?[/citation]

I would assume the answer is yes.

 

[ubercake]

[citation][nom]_Pez_[/nom]I wonder what would be the AMD's answer to this BEAST? im curious...[/citation]
Surely it will continue to be 2nd best, though it seems the prices are getting worse for 2nd best these days; harder to justify.

 

[ubercake]

[citation][nom]BigMack70[/nom]If this card had 4GB vram per GPU, didn't have the unbelievably gimmicky GPU Boost "feature", and were actually available, I would trade my 7970 Crossfire setup for it immediately.However, I don't trust 2GB vram per GPU to last more than a year or two, GPU boost is stupid and not a feature but an annoyance, and this card will probably be gone within 5 minutes of being listed online.*sigh*[/citation]
We've been hearing about the VRAM argument for years. It seems like the Radeon cards have always had more and even with that, for the last five years the top Geforce with less VRAM always seems to outperform the top Radeon card at the highest resolutions.

This leads me to believe a bigger factor in the overall performance has to do with the way the data are processed and not so much with how much is stored in VRAM. I'm sure the VRAM will increase over time. That much is true. So will processing speeds and efficiency. So will a need for larger disks, and so on...

 

[balister]

[citation][nom]outlw6669[/nom]WTF!?!GTX 590 launch...GTX 580 launch price: $500GTX 590 launch price: $700Difference: 140%Now today GTX 690 launch...GTX 680 launch price: $500GTX 690 launch price: $1000Difference: 200%So, is it just me or is nVidia really gouging on the price here?Why the hell else would they be charging an additional 43% more than their last dual GPU launch while using less silicon?Come on AMD, we really need some more competition here.[/citation]

You forget, however, that the GTX 590 was 2 GTX 570s, not 2 GTX 580s. The GTX 690 is 2 GTX 680s. Big difference for purposes of what the card can/could do. The GTX 690, as Chris shows, is almost as good as 2 SLI'd GTX 680s, where as the GTX 590 was running equal to 2 SLI'd GTX 570s as benchmarks have shown.

 

[LePhuronn]

[citation][nom]outlw6669[/nom]WTF!?!GTX 590 launch...GTX 580 launch price: $500GTX 590 launch price: $700Difference: 140%Now today GTX 690 launch...GTX 680 launch price: $500GTX 690 launch price: $1000Difference: 200%So, is it just me or is nVidia really gouging on the price here?Why the hell else would they be charging an additional 43% more than their last dual GPU launch while using less silicon?[/citation]

GTX 590 was a lot slower than GTX 580 SLI, whereas the GTX 690 is almost identical to 2x 680 SLI - you are getting 2 cards on one board this time, so why wouldn't the price be the same? And OK, less silicon and PCB, but the materials used and the R&D gone into the cooler design more than makes up for savings.

Personally, I think this card is perfectly priced, arguably even a bargain compared to 680 SLI.