NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Once again we have reached the end of another GPU launch article and once again we have a lot of data to digest, so let’s get to it.
For the last few generations AMD has always put up a good fight and always managed to spoil NVIDIA in some manner, be it by beating NVIDIA to market by months like we saw with the 5000 series, or significantly undercutting NVIDIA and forcing them into a bloody price war as we saw with the 4000 series. This time AMD once again spoiled NVIDIA by releasing the Radeon HD 7970 nearly 3 months early, but as always, at the end of the day it’s NVIDIA who once again takes the performance crown for the highest performing single-GPU card.
What makes this launch particularly interesting if not amusing though is how we’ve ended up here. Since Cypress and Fermi NVIDIA and AMD have effectively swapped positions. It’s now AMD who has produced a higher TDP video card that is strong in both compute and gaming, while NVIDIA has produced the lower TDP and weaker compute part that is similar to the Radeon HD 5870 right down to the display outputs. In some sense it’s a reaction by both companies to what they think the other did well in the last generation, but it’s also evidence of the fact that AMD and NVIDIA’s architectures are slowly becoming more similar.
In any case, this has ended up being a launch not quite like any other. With GTX 280, GTX 480, and GTX 580 we discussed how thanks to NVIDIA’s big die strategy they had superior performance, but also higher power consumption and a higher cost. To that extent this is a very different launch – the GTX 680 is faster, less power hungry, and quieter than the Radeon HD 7970. NVIDIA has landed the technical trifecta, and to top it off they’ve priced it comfortably below the competition.
Looking at the bigger picture, I think ultimately we still haven’t moved very far on the price/performance curve compared to where we’ve gone in past generations, and on that basis this is one of the smaller generational jumps we've seen for a GTX x80 product, or for that matter one of the smaller leads NVIDIA has had over AMD's top card. But even with NVIDIA’s conservative pricing we’re finally seeing 28nm translate into more performance for less, which of course is really what we're interested in. To that end, based on GK104’s die size I’m left wondering where GTX 680 is going to be sitting by the end of the year as 28nm production improves, as there’s clearly a lot of potential for price cuts in the future.
But in the meantime, in the here and now, this is by far the easiest recommendation we’ve been able to make for an NVIDIA flagship video card. NVIDIA’s drive for efficiency has paid off handsomely, and as a result they have once again captured the single-GPU performance crown.
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ET - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Impressive combination of performance and power draw. AMD will have to adjust pricing.This looks promising for the lower end cards (which are of more interest to me). AMD's 77x0 cards have been somewhat disappointing, and I'll be looking forward to see what NVIDIA can offer in that price bracket and also the 78x0 competition.
rahvin - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
With 28nm limited (in part because of the TSMC shutdown of the line) we won't see price reductions, the parts are going to be too limited for that to happen unfortunately, that is unless AMD stockpiled tons of chips before the TSMC shutdown. What we might see is AMD releasing drivers or new cards that stop underclocking their chips to keep the TDP so low. From what I've read in the reviews AMD has underclocked their cards significantly and could issue drivers tomorrow that boosts performance 30% but at the sacrifice of increased power consumption.The 680 appears to be a very nice card, but they tossed the compute performance out the window to accomplish it, the 580 smokes the 680 in most of the compute benchmarks. I find that disappointing personally and won't be upgrading as from my perspective it's not much of an upgrade against a 580. Shoot, show me a game that strains the 580, with every game produced a console port that is designed for DX9 I'm not sure why anyone bothers upgrading.
Janooo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Ryan, why you did not include OC79XX as you did with OC GTX460 when 68XX were launched?Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Because you guys have made it abundantly clear that you don't want us doing that.http://www.anandtech.com/show/3988/the-use-of-evga...
Janooo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
"We were honestly afraid that if we didn't include at least a representative of the factory overclocked GTX 460s that we would get accused of being too favorable to AMD. As always, this is your site - you ultimately end up deciding how we do things around here. So I'm asking all of you to chime in with your thoughts - how would you like to handle these types of situations in the future?"Anand is asking what to do. The article form the link is not a proof of that. What are you talking about?
chizow - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I think he's referring to the 620 comments worth of nerdrage more than the article.prophet001 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
bad nerdrage is bad :(Janooo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I see.Still 680 overclocks/boosts on the fly and 7970 has set clock.
It's hard to compare them.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
If you keep the 680 cool it goes faster - so a good way would be to crank the 680's fan to 100% and watch it further trounce the 7970, right ?Janooo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
That's the thing. I am not sure 680 can clock higher than 7970. If we do the same for both cards 7970 might end up faster card.