NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMetro 2033
Paired with Crysis as our second behemoth FPS is Metro: 2033. Metro gives up Crysis’ lush tropics and frozen wastelands for an underground experience, but even underground it can be quite brutal on GPUs, which is why it’s also our new benchmark of choice for looking at power/temperature/noise during a game. If its sequel due this year is anywhere near as GPU intensive then a single GPU may not be enough to run the game with every quality feature turned up.
Thankfully for NVIDIA Metro is much, much better than Crysis for the GTX 680. The GTX 680 still trails the 7970 by a few percent at 2560, but it’s now clearly ahead of the 7950. Performance relative to the GTX 580 is far better, with the GTX 680 leading by 34%. In our experience Metro is very shader heavy, and this would appear to be confirmation of that as the GTX 680 has far greater shader resources than GTX 580.
What’s particularly interesting here though is that the GTX 680 has nearly caught up with the GTX 590. NVIDIA’s SLI scaling for Metro isn’t particularly fantastic, but it’s still quite a leap compared to the GTX 580. Consequently this is the first sign that the GTX 680 can compete with the GTX 590, which would be quite an accomplishment.
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blppt - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Wondering if you guys could also add a benchmark for one the current crop of 1ghz core 7970s that are available now (if you've tested any). Otherwise, great review.tipoo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
With everything being said by Nvidia, I thought this would be a Geforce 8k series class jump, while its really nothing close to that and trades blows with AMDs 3 month old card. GCN definitely had headroom so I can see lower priced, higher clocked AMD cards coming out soon to combat this. Still, I'm glad this will bring things down to sane prices.MarkusN - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Well to be honest, this wasn't supposed to be Nvidias successor to the GTX 580 anyway. This graphics card replaced the GTX 560 Ti, not the GTX 580. GK 110 will replace the GTX 580, even if you can argue that the GTX 680 is now their high-end card, it's just a replacement for the GTX 560 Ti so I can just dream about the performance of the GTX 780 or whatever they're going to call it. ;)tipoo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I didn't know that, thanks. Ugh, even more confusing naming schemes.Articuno - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
If this is supposed to replace the 560 Ti then why does it cost $500 and why was it released before the low-end parts instead of before the high-end parts?MarkusN - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
It costs that much because Nvidia realized that it outperforms/trades blows with the HD 7970 and saw an opportunity to make some extra cash, which basically sucks for us consumers. There are those that say that the GTX 680 is cheaper and better than the HD 7970 and think it costs just the right amount, but as usual it's us, the customers, that are getting the shaft again. This card should've been around $300-350 in my opinion, no matter if it beats the HD 7970.coldpower27 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Nah, they aren't obligated to give more then what the market will bear, no sense in starting a price war when they can have much fatter margins, it beats the 7970 already it's just enough.Now the ball is in AMD's court let's see if they can drop prices to compete $450 would be a nice start, but $400 is necessary to actually cause significant competition.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
This whole thing is so nutso but everyone is saying it.Let's take a thoughtful sane view...
The GTX580 flagship was just $500, and a week or two ago it was $469 or so.
In what world, in what release, in the past let's say ten years even, has either card company released their new product with $170 or $200 off their standard flagship price when it was standing near $500 right before the release ?
The answer is it has never, ever happened, not even close, not once.
With the GTX580 at $450, there's no way a card 40% faster is going to be dropped in at $300, no matter what rumor Charlie Demejerin at Semi0-Accurate has made up from thin air up as an attack on Nvidia, a very smart one for not too bright people it seems.
Please, feel free to tell me what flagship has ever dropped in cutting nearly $200 off the current flagship price ?
Any of you ?!?
Lepton87 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Because nVidia decided to screw its costumer and nickle and dime them. That's why. All because 7970 underperformed and nv could get away with it.JarredWalton - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Or: Because NVIDIA and AMD and Intel are all businesses, and when you launch a hot new product and lots of people are excited to get one, you sell at a price premium for as long as you can. Then supply equals demand and then exceeds demand and that's when you start dropping prices. 7970 didn't underperform; people just expected/wanted more. Realistically, we're getting to the point where doubling performance with a process shrink isn't going to happen, and even 50% improvements are rare. 7970 and 680 are a reflection of that fact.