2 680s or 1 690?

setter · 7 May 2012 at 02:59

Yup, the stock benchmarks Azza posted earlier are very impressive, theyre very slightly below my sli'd 470's on a very heavy 800mhz core clock. Seen a few users on here killing x58 motherboards with high clocked fermi cards, mainly gtx 470's.

Crezzlin · 7 May 2012 at 03:08

2 7970s on a single screen or 690 on a triple screen setup. AMD suck for drivers on high Res multi screens..

1kiwi · 7 May 2012 at 03:18

I think the real question in this thread now is 2 X 670's or 1 X 690.

Mal X · 7 May 2012 at 09:47

i'd love two 7970s but unfortunately i dont trust the drivers... because when you do the research, it's Crossfire that's screwed

Mal X · 7 May 2012 at 09:50

kiwi1 said:
I think the real question in this thread now is 2 X 670's or 1 X 690.

deffo 2 x 670s...... 690 is a waste of time, it doesn't have enough Vram to make it future proof..... the 690 would have been the one to go for if it had 3 to 4 gb Vram per card..... it might be ok though, but you just cant tell what's around the corner

andybird123 · 7 May 2012 at 10:00

Mal X said:
i'd love two 7970s but unfortunately i dont trust the drivers... because when you do the research, it's Crossfire that's screwed

I like the way you keep talking about "research" on every thread when what you actually mean is "I googled and found some forums posts that I have no way of checking if they are true or not"

you crack me right up

chipachap · 7 May 2012 at 10:08

shaunno said:
that card has 4gb of VRAM so 8gb in total and 4gb is usable

Sorry I had a 690 link open already I thought that's what he posted. If you have the room and extra cash to fork out for 4GB 680's then that's what I'd get. A lot of new games come out that are only initially ready for single cards and you could be waiting ages for a fix for SLI. I'm not sure you can disable one chip on a dual-GPU card, someone else will have to fill you in.

chipachap · 7 May 2012 at 10:10

andybird123 said:
I like the way you keep talking about "research" on every thread when what you actually mean is "I googled and found some forums posts that I have no way of checking if they are true or not"

you crack me right up

+21928473276365463299732

Tattysnuc · 7 May 2012 at 10:11

If you just want PERFORMANCE

As an owner of dual GTX 295's I'd say go for the faster individual cards, but 4gb ones. They're still at launch pricing so wait while - buy one now, and one later

Performance might be higher for a single 680 card vs 690, but I game @ 1080P so the power is wasted - so I use them now for folding.

You can push (overclock) 2 680's further than you can a 690.

If you're price sensitive (and who isn't in these times!), then dual 670's looks the way to go.

spankingtexan · 7 May 2012 at 12:12

chipachap said:
Sorry I had a 690 link open already I thought that's what he posted. If you have the room and extra cash to fork out for 4GB 680's then that's what I'd get. A lot of new games come out that are only initially ready for single cards and you could be waiting ages for a fix for SLI. I'm not sure you can disable one chip on a dual-GPU card, someone else will have to fill you in.

^this, would be interested to know if you could disable sli on dual cards anyone? i am considering 2 680's myself and being able to just run one card when needed is a must.

Gregster · 7 May 2012 at 12:31

Mal X said:
deffo 2 x 670s...... 690 is a waste of time, it doesn't have enough Vram to make it future proof..... the 690 would have been the one to go for if it had 3 to 4 gb Vram per card..... it might be ok though, but you just cant tell what's around the corner

Mal X said:
mine is not installed yet but i'll keep you posted, because i have to see if my new rig works first, so i'm sending it into the shop soon, i'm not sure if it's wired up correctly/ or if the CPU is dead after i've lapped it.... i've messed around with it quite a lot! ... i'll get the experts to fix all the niggles first otherwise this will drive me crazy, plus i need them to transfer all my Steam files over from my old rig

OC seems to be about 1.3V...GPU 1280mhz.....Mem 1860mhz, but i doubt i'll need it as high as this.

i researched this card quite a lot, if it has bad coil whine you can cure it by painting the coils/ capacitors with gloss varnish, i used to do this for a living... you can easily varnish the whole card it doesn't halm it at all, just dont get it into the sockets etc or on the GPU.

you can spill it onto the rear face of the card, let it run around the rear area and then let it drain off, just dont use the card for a day, let it dry out totally, this will cure the whine.

i'm very impressed with the fan blades, they look even better than my Xigmateks, very shiny finish to them

Advice from a man who has experience....

cmndr_andi · 7 May 2012 at 13:14

spankingtexan said:
^this, would be interested to know if you could disable sli on dual cards anyone? i am considering 2 680's myself and being able to just run one card when needed is a must.

Yes, you can disable SLI within the Nvidia control panel.

Mal X · 7 May 2012 at 13:24

gregster said:
Advice from a man who has experience....

this is a well known question mark over the 690 and the 680 too, ( the lack of Vram) if you want to bitch at me like a silly child do it via ``Trust``, not on the forum

Cleeecooo · 7 May 2012 at 13:55

Mal X said:
( the lack of Vram)

not really. GPU power>VRAM

At 1080p especially

Mojo · 7 May 2012 at 14:00

kiwi1 said:
Don't blame you given these benchmarks. 670 totally spanks the 7950!

Take these preview articles with a pinch of salt, because from the looks of thise benchies Nvidia are releasing a card that is just as good as the 680 for a good £100 less, which I sincerely doubt they are going to do!

psychodil · 7 May 2012 at 14:17

kiwi1 said:
Don't blame you given these benchmarks. 670 totally spanks the 7950!

Perhaps at stock, but myself and most others here are more concerned with overclocked performance vs overclocked performance, which would be much closer. Remember the 7950 can over clock by roughly 50%.

Gregster · 7 May 2012 at 14:39

Mal X said:
this is a well known question mark over the 690 and the 680 too, ( the lack of Vram) if you want to bitch at me like a silly child do it via ``Trust``, not on the forum

Well known? I must have missed all this then as even multi monitor set ups are doing nicely with 2GB of vram.

Tattysnuc · 7 May 2012 at 15:22

You can disable SLI in the NVidia control panel to effectively return 2 single cards.

Just done it on my GTX 295

Rusty0611 · 7 May 2012 at 16:44

gregster said:
Advice from a man who has experience....

gregster said:
Well known? I must have missed all this then as even multi monitor set ups are doing nicely with 2GB of vram.

+1. Mal it's honestly fine to post rubbish. There's others that do it far worse but please stop posting advice to people when you haven't got a clue.

Crezzlin · 7 May 2012 at 17:15

I would go for a 680 4GIG then get a 2nd card in the future, ive had 6970tri 6990 & now 7970 xfire all setups gave me problems on a 30" or 3x27" and 30" displays, ive just used a 680 on loan and its perfect

just i need the vram so getting some 4gig cards as the 690 only has 2gig per gpu it will bottle neck me..

Dont get me wrong the 7970 is amazing on it own but drivers let it down in multi card and screen setups. :s