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gtx 680 or gtx 690

gregster said:
We seem to be in "Groundhog Day" with talk of VRAM. Rusty and many others have proved that 2GB is enough and GPU power is hit before VRAM is. Cleeecooo linked to a website saying how 4GB is only usefull for tri sli and this makes perfect sense.

3GB is more of a luxury than a neccesity.
Click to expand...

Summed up very nicely.
 
I'm still going to butt in with being a special case in the sense of Oblivion/Skyrim modding. A well modded skyrim can last years, just like Oblivion did.

Is getting a 680 4GB worth it right now to me? Yes, absolutely. Because I can just wait until prices plummet to SLI in order to keep up. (power wise, not strcitly VRAM blah blah)
 
Tephnos said:
I'm still going to butt in with being a special case in the sense of Oblivion/Skyrim modding. A well modded skyrim can last years, just like Oblivion did.

Is getting a 680 4GB worth it right now to me? Yes, absolutely. Because I can just wait until prices plummet to SLI in order to keep up. (power wise, not strcitly VRAM blah blah)
Click to expand...

Makes sense if you are a big fan of Skyrim and intend on playing it for a few years. All the add ons soon start eating into VRAM as proven by Tommy. They are not optimised as well as could be but if you have 3 or 4 GB to play with, that is even better.

Also as you say with the 4GB, you have the option of SLI for more future proofing.
 
Taken from oc.net

Also it's not about whether it's Nvidia vs AMD but more about VRAM regardless of brand and if VRAM intensive games actually take from FPS on single 1920x1200 resolution or less when in maxed game settings with all eye candy turned on. We all know that the larger the resolution the more VRAM does become king and I believe we all concur with that as it's required being spread across three screens. No argument there.

So the debate sparked by OP's words that his finding micro stutter in SLI or Crossfire for sake of argument on 1.2GB set up, seemed to have sparked some debate. His findings are valid to him, his choice of words to describe it not entirely factual to all users with less VRAM.

I've found I'm in the 45-50FPS area on BF3 Ultra 4xMSAA and AB has shown me 1.425GB VRAM usage in 16vs16 multiplayer. BF3 if I'm not mistake has not addressed the well known memory leak bug ( I could be wrong ) and that might be why it's using what it can eat yet not effecting performance on GPU's that have enough processing power to plow through the VRAM hump.

Now on the other side of the coin what we know from VRAM holds true that more VRAM should in theory yield higher FPS. Seems the 1920x1200 resolution monitor set ups are not as dependent of the VRAM with sufficient processing power and creates this quandary of debate.

VRAM as we all know is where the active instruction reside to store information to be rendered. The larger the capacity of the VRAM the more info it can retain at a given time to retain info for the processor to read and steps through these instructions. These operations are needed to perform calculations to render complex display functions, and when all the calculations needed to display a "frame" of data are complete then the data is sent out to the display. The more instruction the VRAM can hold the quicker the CPU can help process these instructions.

CPU / GPU combinations should also be taken into consideration as to why we see the variances from person to persons experience playing the same game with same VRAM.

Personally I'm slowing changing my opinion. I believe that having more VRAM doesn't hurt and slowing siding with going with more VRAM as I foresee games being more VRAM hungry coming up within the next year in order to play maxed. As of yet I wouldn't suggest to anyone with 1.2GB to throw away your cards in the trash just yet if your doing fine. Those with lesser GPU's or VRAM can still have playable frame rates but will need to turn down settings.
 
Yeah, I think what I could do is grab a 4GB Galaxy (or whatever the UK name is). Same price as the SC from EVGA, but doesn't have a baby PCB.

If I need to SLI I'll just have to grab a ref 670 and put it below the galaxy so it doesn't blast it with hot air or something.

I heard the temps on the SC are pretty crappy, and so is the noise. Doesn't happen with the 680 classified, but that one has a proper length PCB and a huge ref fan.
 
Sorry to bring this up again, but I want to ask a question that really bothers me, but I have no knowledge and research doesn't give me the answers. I pray someone has been through this before and will be able to give advise.

I decided to make steady upgrade. I go EVGA only for a while, they charge more but I get what I want in the end.
Right now I am looking at two GTX 680 card models from EVGA:

The difference is in clock speeds (minor) and first card has backplate.
This is where I have 2 questions:
  1. I will be keeping my old motherboard Asus Sabertooth x58 (ASUS SABERTOOTH X58, I know it has PCI 2nd gen, but can't get everything straight away I'll leave with it for a bit) for the next month or two, but I am afraid sticking cards in a SLI as fan from top card will be very close to the back of the bottom card (ib the middle slot). It can be me having fears for no reason, but what do you think people?
  2. Or should I just forget about my worries and shove in one GTX 690 (EVGA GeForce GTX 690 Signature 4096MB PCI-Express GDDR5 Graphics Card)? I like the T-shirt :)

I forgot to mention that I am not good overclocker I guess I will be sticking with "out of shop clocks", so card's potential to be overclocked is like 3-rd leg for me :)

I will be moving these cards later to this motherboard:
EVGA X79 SLI Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
It's not a problem, isn't it?
 
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^There is a problem with NVIDIA cards and X79 mobos. You need a registry hack to be able to run NVIDIA cards at PCIE3.0. Google it mate

But once done, you'll be fine

I'd go for the 680 mate - no game will max out the 690! BF3 even copes
 
BaDBoY_uK said:
^There is a problem with NVIDIA cards and X79 mobos. You need a registry hack to be able to run NVIDIA cards at PCIE3.0. Google it mate
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for warning me, I was doing research on any possible problems but somehow completely missed it.

It doesn't give me any confidence in Sandy bridge x79 mobos :(
I just read a few threads on Asus and EVGA forums and still in a little bit of shock :rolleyes:
 
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