** Official 680 review thread **

[Sycho]

Hardware Heaven Review: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...kepler-graphics-card-review-introduction.html

 

[dave_beast]

This is more like it

 

[Krono5]

What resolution is that on?

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What resolution is that on?

1920X1080.

 

[Krono5]

Yeah thats what I was thinking. The overclocks could be a little higher but that seems about right. Pretty much neck and neck with the 680 just pipping the 7970 and I imagine it'll be reversed at 2560*1440.

 

[Sin_Chase]

Very little difference with GPU Boost Off, but how did they disable it?

 

[MoRT489]

Pointless. There will be about 5% in it if you're lucky mate.

Neither the 7970 or 680 use up all of the available bandwidth on PCIE 2, let alone 3.

If neither uses the available bandwidth on PCIE 2, why would there be a 5% difference

 

[Purgatory]

Is it me or is this a total joke of a review ? The figures are way off to me from other reviews.. Is this person getting a back hand payment from AMD or just a silly fanboy with fake results ?. Non of his benchmarks add up to the rest I have seen, even his unoverclocked results look off to me and the overclocked ones are unreal. The GTX 580 results are way off compared to other reviews and from personal benchmarks I have done myself.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-gtx-680-2gb-overclocking-review-win-some-lose-some/15322-1.html


I give up with these reviews some are so biased it's unreal... Anyway 680 or 7970 is off the buy list till they make a single GPU card that can run 2560 x 1600 at good frame rates (Without SLI or Pray-fire).. Tired of both AMD and Nvidia and their silly ways recently. Nvidia claimed the 680 would run this demo "Unreal Engine 3: Official Samaritan Demo" on a single 680 but it took 3 x 580's to run it before. Huhh ?? The 680 is not 3 times faster than a 580... Seriously these companies need to quit the rubbish and stop playing their customers as fools. Did Nvidia really have the real GTX 680 back then and not renamed a mid range card as a 680 and sold it on to us all as really this was the 680 we had in mind blaa blaa ?

Link below showing what I mean.

http://uk.geforce.com/whats-new/art...running-on-next-generation-nvidia-kepler-gpu/


At this rate I will drop dead of old age before they release a 4k resoloution gaming graphics card with a single GPU that can play pacman at that resolution. (Im 39 btw if you are wondering).

 

[McBain]

From Hardware Heaven;

"we hope that retailers don't take advantage of demand as they did at AMDs last major launch"

Wishful thinking.

 

[biuro74]

Seriously these companies need to quit the rubbish and stop playing their customers as fools.

I agree, but my old, personal diagnosis is they (nVidia at least) should have been fire marketing fools who act to the detriment of their own company. Pest control needed

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

This entire generation is a rip off. If the 7970 was about £300 like it should be I would have bought one in an instant. If the GTX 680 was about £250, again, I would have bought that in an instant. Slapping on a 50% increase in MSRP is not the right move to get you sales.

They have priced this generation as if they have stuck to 40nm and have had to double the die size over their previous flagship GPUs to extract the performance. Ridiculous.

 

[mmj_uk]

What I don't understand with this argument is that if the 680 is indeed a "mid range" part - pricing aside (just for a second) - surely it's worse for AMD that nvidia's "mid range" part outperforms their "top end" part.

I mean who really cares all that much even if it was originally proposed to be a mid range part? What difference does it make to the performance it gives in your machine. I take issue only with the stigma of a mid ranged card being attached to the 680s. Fair enough though - value for money if it was originally scheduled to be a mid range part is not great but for me it's the performance it offers in its relative position in the pricing framework which matters.

I don't particularly care for playing devils advocate (Andy!) and I have no loyalty to either brand.

Spot on, the fact is if GTX680 is a 'mid range' part then so is 7970 (even more so because it's slower).

Are NVidia evil to rebrand an intended mid range card as their flagship and slap a £200 premium onto the price tag? perhaps... but AMD are really no better releasing a card that is not a significant improvement from the last generation and charging the same premium for it.

Those people slandering GTX680 as mid range seem to be letting AMD off the hook for a similarly performing/priced card simply because 7970 is the best AMD could do.

 

[1kiwi]

Has anyone seen any benchmarks on BF3 @ 2560X1600 comparing the 680 OCed to 7970 OC. From the reviews I have looked at, the 680 beats the 7970 at 1920X1080 when both cards are overclocked.

I'll be able to post my own benchmarks tomorrow in anycase.

 

[1kiwi]

Are NVidia evil to rebrand an intended mid range card as their flagship and slap a £200 premium onto the price tag?

They are a company, it's not about being 'evil'. If they couldn't compete with AMD with their mid range offering then things would be quite different.

 

[elrasho]

Very little difference with GPU Boost Off, but how did they disable it?

From Toms Hardware: "But because you can’t disable GPU Boost like you might with Intel’s Turbo Boost, you have to operate within the technology’s parameters."

 

[555BUK]

If we ignore the pricing, and just consider the hardware on it's owm merits.

NVidia gets equal or more performance out of a smaller GPU, using a smaller memory bus, on a smaller and cheaper PCB. From an architectural point of view (transistor for transistor amd memory bandwidth comparison), NVidia's card is a big step ahead of AMD. Kepler is a better product than Tahiti.

 

[555BUK]

What is the big fuss about turbo boost? I don't see it being turned off within Intel and AMD processors to provide a fair comparison for base performance. If a feature is available and it works, use it. I'm pretty sure AMD's next gen cards will contain a similar feature, and I am also pretty sure that someone at AMD has already asked the question "why didn't we do it first?".

 

[elrasho]

What is the big fuss about turbo boost? I don't see it being turned off within Intel and AMD processors to provide a fair comparison for base performance. If a feature is available and it works, use it. I'm pretty sure AMD's next gen cards will contain a similar feature, and I am also pretty sure that someone at AMD has already asked the question "why didn't we do it first?".

Yes but it would be nice to know how you can turn GPU Boost off though

 

[RavenXXX2]

The boost makes little impact in games looking at the anandtech results with it basically turned off v stock

Finally, while we’ll go into full detail on overclocked performance in a bit, we wanted to quickly showcase the impact GPU Boost, both on regular performance and on overclocking. First up, we ran all of our benchmarks at 2560 with the power target for GPU boost set to -16%, which reduces the power target to roughly 142W. While GPU Boost cannot be disabled outright, this was enough to ensure that it almost never activated.

 

[Borsch]

It is like Turbo Boost with Intel CPUs. If the card is under load and can boost the clock speed without surpassing the TDP, it will.

Turbo boost only OCs to 3.7GHz (from default 3.3), Manual OC of 4.5 Ghz for 2500K is most common.

In comparison, 680 can not be manually OCed to more than twice of its turbo boost.