The first "proper" Kepler news Fri 17th Feb?

[DamoTourettes]

The only thing that has changed is having time for info to settle but i'm finding myself more interested in the 680 now. It will be very tempting to get one if it overclocks as well as the 7970 but the pricing is a little scary.

But I just don't want to buy one, then a few weeks later the prices drop because the price gouging is over and the 7970's have dropped. Then ~6 months later the real 680 and full line up comes out and prices hit rock bottom on the one I have so I take a bigger hit to upgrade again...

I'm waiting for GK110. Gibbo's said there isn't another top end GPU this year that NV are releasing, but to me the GK104 is a mid range card that's a great overachiever. Here's hoping GK110 comes out in August.

 

[xtremedetailz]

I'm waiting for GK110. Gibbo's said there isn't another top end GPU this year that NV are releasing, but to me the GK104 is a mid range card that's a great overachiever. Here's hoping GK110 comes out in August.

Gibbo would say that to sell more gtx680's

 

[Ghøst]

Over two years a high end graphics card works out at just over 4 quid a week which is about the same cost as a XBOX live account, a weekly supermarket pizza or a few bottles of beer.

It's not really that bad when you look at it like that.

People who upgrade every 6 months each time a new card is launched are just crazy in my opinion.

 

[MichaelM]

I'm waiting for GK110. Gibbo's said there isn't another top end GPU this year that NV are releasing, but to me the GK104 is a mid range card that's a great overachiever. Here's hoping GK110 comes out in August.

If GK104 is an almost gutted gaming card and GK110 is a GPGPU, that's fine but they need to let us know that at the 680 launch.

 

[Ghøst]

If GK104 is an almost gutted gaming card and GK110 is a GPGPU, that's fine but they need to let us know that at the 680 launch.

They're (NVIDIA) never going to launch a new card and at the same time tell you it's ok but might be worth waiting for their next product which will probably be 30% better again.


It's just not going to happen.

 

[sk3lph]

Based on the info in this thread, I'm going to grit my teeth and wait, build up my finances a bit and then go for a mega upgrade involving the GK110 and Ivy Bridge.

At the moment, I can't really justify the upgrade as my current system doesn't struggle with anything.

I suspect most people will be getting the new 680 because they want it, not because they need it, although I'm looking forward to it's reception from everyone.

 

[Mal X]

they're releasing a top end card in may, i think, i read it today..... it's to compete with the 7990, so it'll cost over 800 quid it's their next GTX 590.....

 

[elrasho]

Based on the info in this thread, I'm going to grit my teeth and wait, build up my finances a bit and then go for a mega upgrade involving the GK110 and Ivy Bridge.

At the moment, I can't really justify the upgrade as my current system doesn't struggle with anything.

I suspect most people will be getting the new 680 because they want it, not because they need it, although I'm looking forward to it's reception from everyone.

I have CF5850s which I think are similar in performance to your 470 SLIs. Im getting GTX680 because I've had enough of dodgy nVidia drivers and random times my games not using CF. Spend too many hours trying to resolve these issues, I want to go back to single cards again.

 

[Ghøst]

Based on the info in this thread, I'm going to grit my teeth and wait, build up my finances a bit and then go for a mega upgrade involving the GK110 and Ivy Bridge.

At the moment, I can't really justify the upgrade as my current system doesn't struggle with anything.

I suspect most people will be getting the new 680 because they want it, not because they need it, although I'm looking forward to it's reception from everyone.

I'm going for a 680 as at the moment I've got a 20 quid HD5450 it's fine for booting into windows, surfing the web & watching movies but it would fall in a heap if I tried to play any games on it.

 

[sk3lph]

I have CF5850s which I think are similar in performance to your 470 SLIs. Im getting GTX680 because I've had enough of dodgy nVidia drivers and random times my games not using CF. Spend too many hours trying to resolve these issues, I want to go back to single cards again.

You presumably mean "dodgy AMD drivers" - another reason I'm waiting is that the 480's I've got have not given me any trouble at all (touch wood). It's pretty much been a flawless experience - so I wouldn't want to risk spoiling that unless there was a big incentive to do so like the arrival of the GK110 .

 

[drunkenmaster]

Don't assume that the 680gtx is half as fast as a what will likely be a 780gtx. Look at the 7870 vs 7970, you've got a LOT more features added in so what is a much bigger die size doesn't equate to that much more performance.

No different to the 6970 vs 6870, 560ti to 580gtx(to a lesser degree), and it looks maybe like 680/780gtx, with this time around the "660ti" having a lot more compute stuff cut out to save die space.

The GK110 will no doubt be faster, but not as much as people think, if its 2000 shaders, which seems more likely or the possible 2300ish people maybe think, its not likely to be much more than 25-30% faster than a 680gtx.... at 1080p, at higher res where the 680gtx is clearly going to lose ground the difference will be far higher, compute will be massively faster.

 

[sk3lph]

I'm going for a 680 as at the moment I've got a 20 quid HD5450 it's fine for booting into windows, surfing the web & watching movies but it would fall in a heap if I tried to play any games on it.

Fair do's - there will be exceptions to my comment above - you're as well going for the best if you can - let us know what you think of it with some piccies, benchmarks etc.

Hope you enjoy it

 

[Ghøst]

Fair do's - there will be exceptions to my comment above - you're as well going for the best if you can - let us know what you think of it with some piccies, benchmarks etc.

Hope you enjoy it

Cheers, I'll be waiting for about a month after release day just to make sure there's no massive problems with it which suddenly come to light, hopefully take the edge of the pricing and / or have a better selection of models.

I'm fairly certain it'll be decent card that'll play all games really well, that's all I'm after now till 1600p becomes more widely adopted.

 

[Rroff]

I have CF5850s which I think are similar in performance to your 470 SLIs. Im getting GTX680 because I've had enough of dodgy nVidia drivers and random times my games not using CF. Spend too many hours trying to resolve these issues, I want to go back to single cards again.

GTX470 SLI averages about 20% faster out the box and overclocks like crazy (30-40% overclocks are common every day stable on reference cooling and upto 48% overclock possible 24x7 stable on aftermarket cooling) its one of the most under-estimated GPU setups of late.

 

[DamoTourettes]

Based on the info in this thread, I'm going to grit my teeth and wait, build up my finances a bit and then go for a mega upgrade involving the GK110 and Ivy Bridge.

At the moment, I can't really justify the upgrade as my current system doesn't struggle with anything.

I suspect most people will be getting the new 680 because they want it, not because they need it, although I'm looking forward to it's reception from everyone.

I basically need something that will play BF3 maxed out at 60fps+ on a 30" monitor. Unfortunately it appears the GTX 680 (in it's 2GB guise anyway) doesn't do this, so I'm waiting for at least the 4GB model or if even it can't do it, GK110 later in the year, with a 512k bus and 4GB VRAM minimum.

 

[sk3lph]

Cheers, I'll be waiting for about a month after release day just to make sure there's no massive problems with it which suddenly come to light, hopefully take the edge of the pricing and / or have a better selection of models.

I'm fairly certain it'll be decent card that'll play all games really well, that's all I'm after now till 1600p becomes more widely adopted.

Sensible - I'm sure the people that waited to see what the 590 was like were glad they did.

The rest of your rig looks well specced, presumably you're running a HD5450 because your original card went pop - or did you sell it to get a good return in anticiption of the 680 launch?

 

[sk3lph]

I basically need something that will play BF3 maxed out at 60fps+ on a 30" monitor. Unfortunately it appears the GTX 680 (in it's 2GB guise anyway) doesn't do this, so I'm waiting for at least the 4GB model or if even it can't do it, GK110 later in the year, with a 512k bus and 4GB VRAM minimum.

The 480 SLI setup I've got runs BF3 great on a 30" monitor - might be worth thinking about considering the deal OCKUK are doing right now - although I appreciate the 480 does have it's issues with regard to heat and power requirements.

 

[Rroff]

Don't assume that the 680gtx is half as fast as a what will likely be a 780gtx. Look at the 7870 vs 7970, you've got a LOT more features added in so what is a much bigger die size doesn't equate to that much more performance.

No different to the 6970 vs 6870, 560ti to 580gtx(to a lesser degree), and it looks maybe like 680/780gtx, with this time around the "660ti" having a lot more compute stuff cut out to save die space.

The GK110 will no doubt be faster, but not as much as people think, if its 2000 shaders, which seems more likely or the possible 2300ish people maybe think, its not likely to be much more than 25-30% faster than a 680gtx.... at 1080p, at higher res where the 680gtx is clearly going to lose ground the difference will be far higher, compute will be massively faster.

I think it will be a fairly decent performance step up (probably in the region of 50-60%) - somewhat negated by the 680 being clock boosted quite a bit further than the top GK104 card was originally intended to be. From what I can make out the GTX580 replacement was always intended to be the GTX780 rather than 680, my original source hinted at a timeframe that would put the GTX780 launch around about July but I think its more likely we will see a dual GPU card before that and the proper high end later in the year.

 

[Duff-Man]

Don't assume that the 680gtx is half as fast as a what will likely be a 780gtx.

... One of those rare times when I have to agree with Mr Drunkenmaster

GK110 will be a compute-monster. It will also out-perform GK104 in terms of raw performance. However I expect it to be significantly poorer in terms of performance per Watt, performance per mm^2, and also in terms of transistor density. We've seen time and again (from both manufacturers now) that carrying heavy GPGPU features comes with a price in terms of the efficiency metrics.

If it is a 2304-shader part, i.e. a 50% bump over the GK104, then I would expect somewhere in the region of ~30-40% improvement in performance, with much greater than 50% increase in power consumption, and perhaps an 80% increase in die size. If it does have a 512-bit memory interface (which would certainly be very attractive for the HPC market) then we could perhaps see a much bigger improvement at very high resolutions (2560x1600 and triple-screen resolutions), perhaps over and above the 50%.

I don't see it approaching double the performance of the GTX680 in any realistic gaming applications.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Looking at those leaked benches the GTX680 is a win overall, I don't understand why people are complaining about the £420 price considering its faster (in most cases) than a 7970. I want to know how noisy it is, stock fans are always pants

Because the card was supposed to be a GTX660 that people could have bought for well under £300...? Also, because of the poor performance of 7970 (not saying it in the sense of it is a poor performing card, but it hasn't advanced enough away from GTX580 performance), Nvidia tucked away the original planned GTX680, and pushed the GTX660 up to become a GTX680 instead and charging a price to match?