EVGA GTX 680 *** 4GB

DamoTourettes · 23 Mar 2012 at 10:55

...so am I right in thinking that the 4GB of RAM on these suckers might increase framerates at 2560x1600? I game on a 30", and in looking at the benches thus far it looks like the 680 seems to not be as linearly impressive at this res compared to the 7970 - do people think this is due to VRAM limitations, or more to do with architectural issues differentiating the 680 and 7970 specifically at high resolutions?

What about availability? Wonder when these are out?

andybird123 · 23 Mar 2012 at 10:59

According to an employee on the evga forum, 4gb version should be 1 month away, *** and classified 2-3months

andybird123 · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:00

Why does the forum star out f t w ?

DamoTourettes · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:04

andybird123 said:
According to an employee on the evga forum, 4gb version should be 1 month away, *** and classified 2-3months

This is extremely useful. Nice one dude, nice one. :cool:

gigeorge · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:06

Are the evga cards any good, how do they fair against say a asus?!

555BUK · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:09

gigeorge said:
Are the evga cards any good, how do they fair against say a asus?!

Exactly the same hardware, exactly the same warranty, and from what I can find exactly the same accessories in the box.

At the moment the the only difference is the colour of the box and stickers.

DamoTourettes · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:09

10 year warranty which is transferable *per card* as opposed to per person, still honour the warranty if you take the cooler off and watercool it, best software on the market for overclocking/running the 680, worlds biggest Nvidia reseller. I wouldn't buy anything Nvidia from anyone else - EVGA that is.

mothermachine · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:09

Is this 4GB on a single GPU or 2GB per GPU for a dual GPU setup on the one board?

DamoTourettes · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:10

4GB, single GPU

DamoTourettes · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:12

Just wondering if folks (Duff-Man, Rroff, DM - even though he's still trumpeting the red team haha) think the 4GB frame buffer on these suckers might have an effect at high res over the 2GB? Is the 256bit memory bus going to limit bandwidth with which to utilise the extra 2GB VRAM at high resolutions (2560x1600 etc)?

OCPete · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:14

I thought the issue at high res was memory bandwidth.

4GB might not help much?

Maybe due to the 256bit bus? :confused:

OCPete · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:16

DamoTourettes said:
Just wondering if folks (Duff-Man, Rroff, DM - even though he's still trumpeting the red team haha) think the 4GB frame buffer on these suckers might have an effect at high res over the 2GB? Is the 256bit memory bus going to limit bandwidth with which to utilise the extra 2GB VRAM at high resolutions (2560x1600 etc)?

SNAP. You beat me to it!

DamoTourettes · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:17

OCPete said:
I thought the issue at high res was memory bandwidth.

4GB might not help much?

Maybe due to the 256bit bus?

Seems we're saying the same thing - perhaps waiting for "Big Kepler" might be better, with its' 512bit bus...

However it's going to have more GPGPU compute abilities (it'll be the basis of the next Tesla cards) so the performance isn't going to be linearly better than GK104 I'm thinking - in games at least.

Still, be interesting to know what those who are more knowledgeable in such things think..

gigeorge · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:18

DamoTourettes said:
10 year warranty which is transferable *per card* as opposed to per person, still honour the warranty if you take the cooler off and watercool it, best software on the market for overclocking/running the 680, worlds biggest Nvidia reseller. I wouldn't buy anything Nvidia from anyone else - EVGA that is.

The last 3 nvidias ive bought have been asus, didnt realise evga had such an outstanding warranty - might be worth switching over! Cheers for the info

DamoTourettes · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:20

gigeorge said:
The last 3 nvidias ive bought have been asus, didnt realise evga had such an outstanding warranty - might be worth switching over! Cheers for the info

You need to register within 30 days to get the 10 year sucker, but it's pretty good. Without registration I think you get 3 years automatically now, when it was 2 before. Or something like that.

RavenXXX2 · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:21

Seems EVGA have done away with the 10 year warranty for Europe, three year now for cards purchased after 01/01/11

DamoTourettes · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:23

Oh. Still better than the standard 2 with other companies though, right? Or am I completely full of it?

RavenXXX2 · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:24

I would take an EVGA warranty over any others.

Kelt · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:43

What about Zotac? They give a five year warranty. No idea where their RMA base is though.

555BUK · 23 Mar 2012 at 11:51

4GB is really not worth it unless you intend to game at extremely high resolutions with mult-monitors. This will obviously change in 2-3 years time, but ty then the GPU's will be struglling more than lack of VRAM anyway.

Foe 3x 2560x1600 setups, 4GB will make a difference with some games. For anything else, 2GB is fine. Kepler seems to require very little resources for high levels of AA, so it could also be much more VRAM efficient than previous 2GB cards. No reviews I have seen show big falloff's, even at very high resolutions.