NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Prior to the launch of our new benchmark suite, we wanted to include The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is easily the most popular RPG of 2011. However as any Skyrim player can tell you, Skyrim’s performance is CPU-bound to a ridiculous degree. With the release of the 1.4 patch and the high resolution texture pack this has finally been relieved to the point where GPUs once again matter, particularly when we’re working with high resolutions and less than high-end GPUs. As such, we're now including it in our test suite.
Skyrim presents us with an interesting scenario. At anything less than 2560 we’re CPU limited well before we’re GPU limited, and yet even though we’re CPU limited NVIDIA manages to take a clear lead while the 680 still finds room to push to the top. For whatever the reason NVIDIA would appear to have significantly less driver overhead here, or at the very least a CPU limited Skyrim interacts with NVIDIA’s drivers better than it does AMD’s.
In any case 2560 does move away from being CPU limited, but it’s not entirely clear whether the difference we’re seeing here is solely due to GPU performance, or if we’re still CPU limited in some fashion. Regardless of the reason the GTX 680 has a 10% lead on the 7970 here.
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mm2587 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Well I guess we can expect AMD to slash price $50 across the top of their line to fall back into competition. Competion is always good for us consumers.While theres no arguing gtx680 looks like a great card I am a bit dissapointed this generation didn't push the boundries further on both the red and the green side. Hopefully gk100/gk110 is still brewing and we will still see a massive performance increase on the top end of the market this generation.
Unfortunatly I predict the gk100 is either scrapped or will be launched as a gtx 780 a year from now.
MarkusN - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
As far as I know, GK100 got scrapped due to issues but the GK110 is still cooking. ;)CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Competition isn't "the same price with lesser features and lesser performance". I suppose with hardcore fanboys it is, but were talking about reality, and reality dictates the amd card needs to be at least $50 less than the 680..Lepton87 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=...So they are basically even at 2560 4xMSAA yet anand doesn't hesitate to call GTX680 indisputable king of the heel. It's strange because 7950 is at least the same amount faster than 580 yet he only implicitly said that it is faster than 580.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...review-27.h...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-revi...
http://translate.google.ca/translate...itt_einleit...
judging from those results OC7970 is at least as fast if not faster than OC680. Wonder why they didn't directly compare oc numbers, probably this wasn't in nvidia reviewiers guide. Also it's not any better in tandem
http://www.sweclockers.com/recension...li/18#pageh...
Sabresiberian - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Someone needs to learn how to read charts.What, did you post a bunch of links and think no one was going to check them out?
I'll quote one of your sources, HardwareCanucks:
"After years of releasing inefficient, large and expensive GPUs, NVIDIA's GK104 core - and by association the GTX 680 - is not only smaller and less power hungry than Tahiti but it also outperforms the best AMD can offer by a substantial amount. "
Personally, I don't much care who comes out on top today, what I want is the battle for leadership to continue, for AMD and Nvidia to truly compete with each other, and not fall into some game of appearances.
"Big Kepler" should really establish how much better it is than Tahiti, though I wouldn't be surprised if some AMD fanboys will still turn the charts upside down and backwards to try to make Tahiti the leader - just as they are doing now. Of course, the 7990 dual GPU board will be out by then, and they will claim AMD has the best architecture based on it performing better than Big Kepler (assuming it does).
I don't know what AMD has planned, but I hope they come out with something right after Kepler (September? Too long, Nvidia, too long!) that is new, that will re-establish them. Of course, then there's Maxwell for next year . . .
;)
jigglywiggly - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
it's slower in crysis, it's slowerSabresiberian - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Yeah? What if it's faster in Crysis 2?http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-68...
(While I get why using a venerable bench that Crysis provides gives us a performance base we're more familiar with, the marks for Crysis 2 show why an older model may not be such a good idea. Clearly, the GTX 680 beats out the Radeon 7970 in most DX9 benchmarks, and ALL DX11 Crysis 2 benches.)
So, your troll doesn't just fail, it epic fails.
SlyNine - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
My problem is the tests are run without AA. I'd rather seen some results with AA as I suspect that would cause the 680GTX to trade blows with the 7970.On the other hand 1920x1200 with 2x AA is AA enough for me.
HighTech4US - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
In the review all the slides are missing.For example: instead of a slide what is seen is this: [efficiency slide] or this [scheduler]
HighTech4US - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
OK, looks like it just got fixed