Mid ranged card released at high end prices because it performs better than AMD. So in effect it is now high end.
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.
Ordered! Countdown until I'm complaining that I was too impatient to wait for the 4GB model: Commencing now...
Thanks for the good review. I have to say im impressed, nvidia have done they're homework and released a great card. Clock for clock would be interesting but then again where nvidia won it was a blowout. I still reckon nvidia will release the GK110 this year and if amd doesnt have anything up they're sleeve (or whats left of they're sleeve probably more of a burnt singlet) ill be in the mix for an upgrade.
Good news Arctic Accelero Xtreme III http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/detail/index/sArticle/554/sCategory/2182 From this image shown on the Arctic Site i got the feeling there will be a Non-Stacked PCI-E Version of the 680. * Please ensure your graphic card does not come with a double deck power socket.
And where's the high end card ? From what i can read in reviews people expect it by the end of this year. Fall at best. By the end of this year ATI will be readying for new cards. From what i can see the 680 is a high end product priced at a high end price. It's the best card on the market but it's not "unbeatable" as the 7970 can beat it here and there. If i had to buy a card today and would be willing to spend 500$ i would buy this one. It's an efficient and really good product. But if i was a owner of a 580 (or 7950, 7970, 7870oc) i would definately not upgrade and would wait. But i'm not willing to pay 500$. I'm willing to pay 250-300$ CAD (like i did for my current card). And if this is really the mid range offering by nVidia then i'm really disappointed cause it means neither ATI nor nVidia will offer something interesting and worthy of an upgrade in this particular price range for this year.
That's odd, because the 480 was GF100 and the 580 was GF110. So...Kinda telling me...It's a different generation. This card, this GTX 680, given its naming schemes, both of them, very clearly is not a "mid-range" card. If anyone bothers to look at the previous generation, you can obviously see, that the 5xx series, the second Fermi iteration, was launched as GF110. Exactly like they're going to do now. Sometime later in the year, or next year, they'll launch the 780, GF110, just like they did with Fermi.
NICE REVIEW HILBERT, finally the cards reviewed are shown also naked . Back to topix: Nice card and very well done Nvidia. The performance is ON and the power numbers are very good. Now I want 7970 at <300 EUR so I can buy 2 of them :nerd::nerd:.
Surprised by the power consumption on load (though AMD wins idle), even though I don't see consistent numbers across reviews. It does trade wins with AMD on a few games, but overall it does a good job. The price is about right if you ask me, I felt the 7970 was only a 400-450 card, looks as though it is finally put in the position where it should have launched at. Overall I would purchase this card in a blind test due to the speed/power consumption, however, I personally wouldn't buy Nvidia because of their business practices.
Really doesn't bother me how people take it, I'm assuming it is because of the GK/GPU roadmaps, the GK104 title, the 256-bit memory interface and the comment at the end of the article. Let's just pretend I say high-end and move on.
From what I've heard, its rumored to not be as good at compute (the GK110 will do that) as the 7970. So basically AMD/Nvidia switched places.
It's often performing even slightly better than I expected, except for the silly memory bus bottleneck in some demanding games which indicate future performance as well (Crysis 2007/Metro from 2010 already!!!). I'm amazed how it often holds up against the 7970 in triple monitor setups in some of the other reviews out there.