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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SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Wait the boost speed is 1110 vs 1005 right? So 10% faster in shader performance, which will = about 5% in benchmarking performance in the best case.Nothing to see here move along.
Janooo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Well, 7970@1.1GHz beats plain 680.SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Who cares, I wan't to know what the card comes shipped as. Thats what matters, anything extra you get out of that is exactly that, extra. What comes out of the box, thats what they are promising.BoFox - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Wait, you mean that HD 7970 needs to be overclocked by more than 20% in order to beat plain 680?How about overclocking that 680 by 15% like most review sites show is possible?
Then the 7970 would need to be overclocked by an impossible 35% in order to beat a 680 overclocked by 15%.
That was a nice try, Janooo!
Janooo - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
It seems you missed the point.Whatever speed 680 has 7970 can match it. These cards are equal in this regard.
When they have the same clock speed then it looks like 7970 is faster.
Look for AMD to release a faster card soon.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
We will have to subtract some mhz from the 7970 for having a larger core with more die space to make it fair, so transistor for transistor Kepler wins big.CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Plus were going to have to subtract more from The Heatie because it cheats on ram size too.Thanks Janooo you have great ideas.
BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
Ok, if I go by your analogy and say that overclocking GTX 580 to the same speed as HD 6970 (880 MHz) makes both cards "equal in this regard."When they have the same clock speed then it looks like GTX 580 is faster.
Look for Nvidia to release a faster card soon ultilizing that 8-pin PCI-E connector on the PCB (which it did not need in order to beat HD 7970 overclocked or not).
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
680 has made 1,900mhz and makes well over 1,280 ouit of box reference...SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Why, thats how it is setup stock. That is how EVERY SINGLE CARD will come.