GeForce GTX 680 review [Guru3D.com]

[Guru3D News]

We review the GeForce GTX 680 as expected and highly anticipated. Today the GeForce 680 sees the light and has been born a product that has had many discussions and has seen many rumors. It's time to...

More...

[h0d]

I was anticipating a big fail but, after all this card own 0.0 ... should I sell my two 7970 and buy two 680 instead ? xD

[VultureX]

Nice card!
I would've expected it to do better in some titles (i.e. metro2033), though

And

GK104 is the name of the 28 nm build chip that is based on Kepler, and dare I say it? It was never intended to be the high-end product. For that NVIDIA would have named it GK110, personally I still think the GK110 will see the light at a later stage in time, likely end of the year.

I guess they'll dub it the 780GTX later. Who knows what they're holding back now, because AMD can't beat this competition?!

[Kaktus]

This card is a beats.. Well done to the green team..

[Anarion]

Awesome!

[DarkKnightDude]

Good card, but I'm somewhat disappointed.

I guess the 8800 jump days are over.

[slickric21]

Hmm just finished reading the Guru3d review.

Nice card all in all and great perf for the price.

Wins in most game, but interestingly loses in heavy dx11 games like Metro2033 & AvP.

However the real killer for me is the stonkingly good BF3 performance, where quite frankly it stomps all over the 7970 !!
That is bad news for my wallet.

Of all the reviews i've read, have to say Techpowerup has the best one.
Look at the nice Oc'g performance of the card aswell

[Xzibit]

fixed

[Passion Fruit]

I hate the way they do this. If this was meant to be the mid range product then why not just release it as such.

Releasing a better performing high end product soon after would completely scare AMD and get a lot of their customers over to the mid range parts also... Delaying the high end and naming this in it's place is just illogical, except of course they're charging £450 for a so called "mid range" part.

[IPlayNaked]

Originally Posted by Passion Fruit

I hate the way they do this. If this was meant to be the mid range product then why not just release it as such.

Releasing a better performing high end product soon after would completely scare AMD and get a lot of their customers over to the mid range parts also... Delaying the high end and naming this in it's place is just illogical, except of course they're charging £450 for a so called "mid range" part.

It's not mid-range, it never was mid-range. Nvidia's good, but they're not that good.

They've simply beat AMD at their own game this time, they've released a part that isn't a monster, it's not trying to be a behemoth. They cut down what wasn't necessary for performance, reigned in power consumption and size, and are probably going to give a mindblowing dual-gpu 690 for everyone to enjoy.

[Major Melchett]

Originally Posted by Passion Fruit

I hate the way they do this. If this was meant to be the mid range product then why not just release it as such.

Releasing a better performing high end product soon after would completely scare AMD and get a lot of their customers over to the mid range parts also... Delaying the high end and naming this in it's place is just illogical, except of course they're charging £450 for a so called "mid range" part.

Simple, they didn't have to because they saw it was faster that the other sides high end in most games.

Why release your midrange card as midrange when you can just hold off on the high end card and call the midrange one high end. They're after money and as much as i hate the fact they're doing it, it's very good business sence.

Edit.
Now i'm just waiting for Scan to do what they did with the GTX480 after the GTX580 came out, sell them for under £200 (my 480 cost £185 new ).

PS.
Hilbert, what's the mounting like on the card?, does it look likely to support coolers that fit the 480/580 mountings (i really love my Shaman cooler).

[Passion Fruit]

Originally Posted by Major Melchett

and as much as i hate the fact they're doing it, it's very good business sence.

Is it? Release both within a close time of eachother, attract AMD's midrange customers with a card that performs better than their high end card, and then the enthusiasts buy the high end even more powerful line up?

Personally i think that makes more sense than releasing a mid range as high end. At least then your catering for both brackets with competitive products simultaneously

[Redemption80]

Originally Posted by Passion Fruit

Is it? Release both within a close time of eachother, attract AMD's midrange customers with a card that performs better than their high end card, and then the enthusiasts buy the high end even more powerful line up?

Personally i think that makes more sense than releasing a mid range as high end. At least then your catering for both brackets with competitive products simultaneously

Or release all the best GK104 chips at a high end price as the GTX680, the ones that don’t do as well as GTX670, and when you’ve sold lots of those two at a tidy profit, as well as having tweaked GK110 to perfection, release that as the new high end chip.

[Stukov]

This is their flagship GPU, period. It is designed to be their best GPU performer for the price/performance. If it was midrange they would simply call it 670.

The GK110 is a different GPU, and while it maybe faster, it is supposedly designed for compute, which causes it to be a lot larger, more power hungry, and being expensive. It will be marginally faster, but not likely for the cost. Probably will make good money as a GPGPU though.

At least from everything I've seen that look's like Nvidia's gameplan.

[Supertribble]

Originally Posted by Stukov

This is their flagship GPU, period. It is designed to be their best GPU performer for the price/performance. If it was midrange they would simply call it 670.

The GK110 is a different GPU, and while it maybe faster, it is supposedly designed for compute, which causes it to be a lot larger, more power hungry, and being expensive. It will be marginally faster, but not likely for the cost. Probably will make good money as a GPGPU though.

At least from everything I've seen that look's like Nvidia's gameplan.

It probably started out as the 670 but Nvidia increased the clock speed and put it out as the 680. Nvidia don't release their high-end parts with a 256-bit bus. They've had a look at at the competition and realised they could get away with selling the 680 at a premium. People wanting the fastest will buy the 680 now but will have to upgrade again before the year is out. I like having the fastest but am not upgrading twice in 8 months.

[Aura89]

Originally Posted by Passion Fruit

I hate the way they do this. If this was meant to be the mid range product then why not just release it as such.

Releasing a better performing high end product soon after would completely scare AMD and get a lot of their customers over to the mid range parts also... Delaying the high end and naming this in it's place is just illogical, except of course they're charging £450 for a so called "mid range" part.

Except...you know...for the fact that...they'll make more money this way?

Perfectly understandable to release a lower-cost card for more money when your competition allows it, though i would rather this be a mid-range card and have the high end card released, it makes perfect sense why they wouldn't. AMD/ATI really screwed this one up

[xtremegamer]

Great Great review "Hilbert".............

[Supertribble]

I'm actualy a bit disappointed with the performance under heavy DX11 stuff. It loses out to the 7970 under Metro and is about the same with Crysis 2. The 680 is absolutely a mid-range card being sold as a high-end product so it's worth remembering how impressive an achievement Kepler seems to be, but personally I'm going to wait for the real deal in GK100.

[Corrupt^]

Originally Posted by Supertribble

I'm actualy a bit disappointed with the performance under heavy DX11 stuff. It loses out to the 7970 under Metro and is about the same with Crysis 2. The 680 is absolutely a mid-range card being sold as a high-end product so it's worth remembering how impressive an achievement Kepler seems to be, but personally I'm going to wait for the real deal in GK100.

That's what I'm gonna do. Still not worth the cash over my 470GTX which does 900 on the core.

[Void]

Originally Posted by Supertribble

I'm actualy a bit disappointed with the performance under heavy DX11 stuff. It loses out to the 7970 under Metro and is about the same with Crysis 2. The 680 is absolutely a mid-range card being sold as a high-end product so it's worth remembering how impressive an achievement Kepler seems to be, but personally I'm going to wait for the real deal in GK100.

Metro is old as Bad Company 2 which the 7970 loses by 28fps under DX11, it got stomped.

BF3 is much newer than Metro and under dx11 the 7970 again got stomped.

In DX11 3dMark11 the 7970 gets humilated by this Msi 680, it gets crushed by 2000 points.

should i go on? or should we nitpick 2-4fps difference in Metro and forget about the ones that really matter.

[goofy]

Originally Posted by Void

Metro is old as Bad Company 2 which the 7970 loses by 28fps under DX11, it got stomped.

BF3 is much newer than Metro and under dx11 the 7970 again got stomped.

In DX11 3dMark11 the 7970 gets humilated by this Msi 680, it gets crushed by 2000 points.

should i go on? or should we nitpick 2-4fps difference in Metro and forget about the ones that really matter.

Yes, but these cards have 2 or 3gb of Vram for using reso's like 5760x1080 w 8x msaa and on that front the 7970 smiles friendly at the green's leaving them behind the next moment. Troubles of the gf cards are caused by their ever cheaper mem solutions getting stomped in the final.

And then.....the mighty mr. ghz edition shows up and makes clear once and for alll how to run 3 displays properly hehe...btw I play Sniper Elite V2 on 3 displays with only 1 hd6xxx card at 45 fps most of the time (without aa but that's not a problem at this resolution).

It's really better than at 1080p. The biggest difference in gaming experience since the intrduction of the pentium processor or the commodore64 lol. Thank you AMD

[ganganputput]

Wonderful review, with the overclocking features and voltages enabled, this card should fly.

Im just wondering, for the card to reach 1300-1400 core clocks, its definitely possible but would you think it will be necessary to have the gpu reactor onboard? most likely so i would believe.

running 2 lightnings in SLI would be perfect, but if any one wanna go 3 way SLI or even 4 WAy sli, the gpu reactor and its pcb will definitely hit the other cards..
i run the 670 4gb evga sc in 4 way sli driving 3 27" screens at 7680x1440 and i know what the gaps are like between cards. from the pics, even the lightning's backplate seems further from the pcb compared to the evga 760 backplate-pcb gap.

the only way I can see this happen is with custom full waterblocks for the MSI lightning, which I doubt may be made unless the cards sales are really humongous.

lets hope they release the full waterblocks soonest , before the gk110 is released..

[Redemption80]

AVP has always been heavily AMD biased as it was them who paid for it, just like Lost Planet 2 and Hawx2 is when it comes to looking at it on AMD hardware, I don’t always pay much attention.

Metro2033 is an Nvidia game, so that is a shock, maybe a driver issue, or it could be like Dirt 2/3 where it started off as an AMD game, but over time Nvidia cards ended up quicker.

Great review anyway, and fantastic overclock, just needs a better cooler by the sounds of things, so glad I’m sitting this out for now.

[RoadKillNL]

Such Low Wattage and Such great performance is a Winner on it's own.

There is no doubt i will be replacing my 580 with this. I would wait for a 4GB Version but i got the feeling 2GB will be enough. Tho that's what i thought with 1,5GB aswell.

I can wait for a little while. I need a good Aftermarket Cooler for it anyways.

[BLEH!]

How does it compare OCed to a 7970 OCed though?