NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Kepler 2 GB

[Dos101]

Originally Posted by N3M3515

GTX 480 & HD6970 are slower than HD7870, yet they are in the charts, so?

They were the high-end cards of previous GPU generations where as the 7870 is not, at least that's my guess for putting them in the charts.

[Crap Daddy]

Originally Posted by Benetanegia

Nice review W1zzard. Lots of work with dynamic clocks and such.

So my thoughts:

Based on my calculations (by specs) and a lot of assumptions (such as efficiency loss) I predicted it would be 25% faster than GTX580 @1080/1200p a long time ago and it is indeed 25% faster. It's really intriguing, to say the least, because of the many factors that I took into account in order to reach that conclusion/guesstimate, but I'm amazed and overly happy with the result, because it means that this is a win for science. (I know it's kinda arrogant after the fact, but I'd really like to hear from all the people that called me crazy, fanboy and whatnot in the threads related to specs, where I made those predictions, but I know most of them were new users and we will never ever hear about them on TPU).

However the most intriguing factor is that the performance lead over the GTX580 is bigger at 2560x1600, and that's something that I'm sure nobody would have predicted. HD7970 being comparatively faster at 1600p is not a surprise though. Also, according to [H] it looks like the performance lead over the HD7970 is also bigger on multi-monitor, which is again a big surprise.

But all things considered, I still think these cards are not really a worthy upgrade until they come close to $400.

I remember very well all this and especially the horror in some posts regarding the 256bit mem interface width and how this gonna suck plus only 2GB... Many said that GK104 will at best equal the GTX580.

But, as much as this is a small engineering marvel I can't help but think what an exceptional GTX660Ti this would be priced around $300 or even a GTX670 at $350.
As I came from the 200 gen and skipped the 400 in favor of 500 I am certain I'll do the same now as I expect to be able to buy a card that'll bring at least 50% increase over my 570 at the same price point.

[TheGuruStud]

Where's the AA in batman? Where's the AF? Scores aren't comparing well with others AT ALL.

I want to add that none of the reviews are even close to each other.
You can randomly assign who wins at metro, batman, dirt, etc. It's a joke. There is no consistency between perf. One will show a few fps difference (between the two cards) and another double digit. WTF?

I'm sick of reviews. They just get worse and worse.

[N3M3515]

Originally Posted by Benetanegia

Nice review W1zzard. Lots of work with dynamic clocks and such.

So my thoughts:

Based on my calculations (by specs) and a lot of assumptions (such as efficiency loss) I predicted it would be 25% faster than GTX580 @1080/1200p a long time ago and it is indeed 25% faster. It's really intriguing, to say the least, because of the many factors that I took into account in order to reach that conclusion/guesstimate, but I'm amazed and overly happy with the result, because it means that this is a win for science. (I know it's kinda arrogant after the fact, but I'd really like to hear from all the people that called me crazy, fanboy and whatnot in the threads related to specs, where I made those predictions, but I know most of them were new users and we will never ever hear about them on TPU).

However the most intriguing factor is that the performance lead over the GTX580 is bigger at 2560x1600, and that's something that I'm sure nobody would have predicted. HD7970 being comparatively faster at 1600p is not a surprise though. Also, according to [H] it looks like the performance lead over the HD7970 is also bigger on multi-monitor, which is again a big surprise.

But all things considered, I still think these cards are not really a worthy upgrade until they come close to $400.

I for one was wrong in my predictions, i thought gtx680 would be like 14% faster, turns out to be just 6%, BUT 6% faster and $50 bucks cheaper, more power efficient, that's a win in my book.

Still i think $450 would be a better price.

[Yellow&Nerdy?]

Stop posting the GTX 680 orders...! Makes me feel so poor.

[MasterInvader]

OK Gtx680 review done, now it´s "purchase" day...

And regarding the 680 "numbers" I´am not going Kepler, it´s a nice card but for that kind of money isn't the "best" choice at the moment.

The 500 Series are quite "cheap" at the moment and I´am not a fan for single GPU.
Right now you can buy a TwinFrozR GTX570 for 229€ or a GTX580 for 319€, and once again I´am going SLI or 3Way depending on the deal´s.

[LAN_deRf_HA]

16% eh? Performance improvements seem to be at a crawl. Between my 15-22% OC gain and 3 GB vram I guess I'm still satisfied with my 580 for now. I just hope they let us have control panel FXAA support on the older cards. That addresses pretty much the only reason (MLAA) I've ever considered switching back to AMD.

[Benetanegia]

Originally Posted by N3M3515

I for one was wrong in my predictions, i thought gtx680 would be like 14% faster, turns out to be just 6%, BUT 6% faster and $50 bucks cheaper, more power efficient, that's a win in my book.

Still i think $450 would be a better price.

Well it's slightly more than that at 1080p, but you are right, in the end the difference between GTX680 vs HD7970 is smaller than I too thought, not by much tho. However the difference with GTX580 is the exact same which means we were probably right and the difference is that HD7970 got some driver improvements while Nvidia cards didn't get them. It did land were predicted, only HD7970 moved a little to the right.

Now regarding drivers I do expect slightly better than normal/usual increases this time around, a one time 5-10% increase sometime in the coming weeks, apart from the usual aggregated 10-20% that comes gradually over the months. The reason is that Kepler uses (semi-)static schedulers vs Fermi that used fully dynamic schedulers. This means that unlike with Fermi, Nvidia will have to do some scheduling on drivers, and to an extent specific to each game, just like AMD has been doing since like forever. This means a bigger difference between best case and worst case scenarios and I think that this behavior is absolutely represented in this review. i.e Battlefield 3 results vs Metro 2033 or AVP results.

Originally Posted by Yellow&Nerdy?

Stop posting the GTX 680 orders...! Makes me feel so poor.

+1

[hrvoje]

Originally Posted by Yellow&Nerdy?

Stop posting the GTX 680 orders...! Makes me feel so poor.

Yeah, and excellent review as always Wiz

[m1dg3t]

Originally Posted by MasterInvader

And regarding the 680 "numbers" I´am not going Kepler, it´s a nice card but for that kind of money isn't the "best" choice at the moment.

Huh? It perform's *slightly* better than ATi 79xx and is cheaper, how does that not make it the best choice ATM

I would gladly pay the ~$100 premium for this card over the 580, definately worth every single improvement! The 680 is what 30% faster right?

[alexsubri]

Wowzers! Good job nVidia ...my prediction was right. But lets see how long it will last because ATI's drivers are still not showing the full potential of the 79xx series.

[MasterInvader]

Originally Posted by m1dg3t

I would gladly pay the ~$100 premium for this card over the 580, definately worth every single improvement! The 680 is what 30% faster right?

Sorry but it´s allot more then "100$"

The retail price in Europe [my country Portugal] is 499€ for a reference Nvidia 680.
I can buy right now a reference 580 for 325€

So the difference is 174€ in US dollar´s is 229$

[Hustler]

Bah..really not interested in this high end shit, I'm not paying $500+ just to play crappy dx9 console ports @1080p.

When are the equivalent 560Ti Kepler cards coming out..?

[chodaboy19]

Great review! Everything was explained so clearly and thoroughly which left me with no questions.

[DarkOCean]

Originally Posted by MasterInvader

Sorry but it´s allot more then "100$"

The retail price in Europe [my country Portugal] is 499€ for a reference Nvidia 680.
I can buy right now a reference 580 for 325€

So the difference is 174€ in US dollar´s is 229$

Noone is thinking to the rest of the world but the US when they taking about prices.

[Delta6326]

Awesome Review W1zz!! I love everything about this card except for the Dynamic clocks and the Load temps for it being less power hungry, but still an awesome card!

W1zz you should add a view counter I always want to see how many people have viewed your awesome reviews!!

[crow1001]

Nvidia really screwed up the overclocking on the 680, I just want to set a clock and let the GPU max out, afraid to say AMD and the 78** cards are the ones for overclocking guys.

[m1dg3t]

Originally Posted by MasterInvader

Sorry but it´s allot more then "100$"

The retail price in Europe [my country Portugal] is 499€ for a reference Nvidia 680.
I can buy right now a reference 580 for 325€

So the difference is 174€ in US dollar´s is 229$

Originally Posted by DarkOCean

Noone is thinking to the rest of the world but the US when they taking about prices.

I was going by the current price's in Canada as that is what applies to me You can spend your $$$ how ever you like

And don't compare what thing's sell for here in NA to EU because they are not direct conversion's, wasn't there a big thread/debate about just that yesterday? lol

[Benetanegia]

I'm looking at TechReport review where they test several throughput numbers and in those GK104 is the most impressive.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22653/6

It's amazing the improvements seen for color fill, tesselation and to a lesser extent texture fillrate. I mean texture fillrate is doubled because TMU amount was doubled, but the perfect scaling is still impressive considering that cache size and RF size didn't increase.

Then color fill also doubled up compared to GTX560 TI with the same amount of ROPs, 32. And it's 30% higher than GTX580 with 48 ROPs. That's impressive.

And finally geometry and tesselation performance which also doubles up (vs GTX580) despite the fact that it has half as many units. It quadruples the GTX560 Ti which has the same ammount. That's insane.

I know that AMD has been achieving those kind of higher fillrates for a long time, so it's not unheard off results, but that does not make it any less impressive: all the things that Nvidia has improved in just 1 generation is mind-blowing. As a geek it's something really hard to overlook.

I don't know what is "holding back" the GTX680, when individually all different performance levels are so great, but the next gen is surely going to be interesting too if they simply find the bottleneck and unleash the power.

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

So this card sounds like its not what everyone expected. Now my question is should I get a 570/580 or wait for the 660?

[MxPhenom 216]

awesome review Wizz. this card won in everything other then like 3 games. Nvidia definitely has a winner on there hands especially for the price of it. Awesome. Definitely getting one of these. Pretty amazing that in some cases, such as battlefield 3, the GTX680 is beating out the HD6990 and GTX590

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by alexsubri

Wowzers! Good job nVidia ...my prediction was right. But lets see how long it will last because ATI's drivers are still not showing the full potential of the 79xx series.

either is the 300.99 drivers for the 680. Both sides will get some improvements with the cards. I have a feeling nvidia will come out with better drivers first.

[DarkOCean]

Originally Posted by CrAsHnBuRnXp

So this card sounds like its not what everyone expected. Now my question is should I get a 570/580 or wait for the 660?

Wait. worst case scenario you will get same performance for same money but lower power consumption and higher oc!?(damn dynamic oc).

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by DarkOCean

Wait. worst case scenario you will get same performance for same money but lower power consumption and higher oc!?(damn dynamic oc).

It still a better card in almost all aspects. performance, efficiency, noise, and heat. I also have seen some benchmarks where surprisingly the GTX680 wins in multi monitor high resolution environments.

[Anath]

I contacted amazon. They should have the cards for sell sometime this week. They wouldnt give me a definite date though