EVGA GTX 680 *** 4GB

[DamoTourettes]

...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?

 

[DamoTourettes]

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.

 

[DamoTourettes]

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.

 

[DamoTourettes]

4GB, single GPU

 

[DamoTourettes]

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)?

 

[DamoTourettes]

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..

 

[DamoTourettes]

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.

 

[DamoTourettes]

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

 

[DamoTourettes]

Back on topic...

Very, very interesting article here. It appears that memory bandwidth itself is the limiting factor at very high resolutions/multi monitor setups, where the gap between the GTX 680 and the 7970 all but diminishes, particularly in highly overclocked scenarios.

I'm still waiting to see what the benches are on the 4GB cards, but if bus bandwidth is the limiting factor, it seems tacking an extra 2GB of VRAM onto it is kind of insignificant if there's a bottleneck using it, right?

 

[DamoTourettes]

Duff-man? DM? Rroff? You guys seem to know your onions - any comment on bus bandwidth versus more VRAM contributing to higher frame rates at higher res?