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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Exodite - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I'm a bit confused regarding the multi-display output options, which is a shame as the ability to drive more than two displays at once is something that'll once again make Nvidia interesting for me personally.I regularly run two separate DVI displays for my desktop/work and a HDMI-attached TV for mainly media and some couch surfing.
Will this setup work without issues with the GTX 680?
What kind of power level will it put the card in?
On my Radeon 6950 it bumps idle clocks significantly as soon as I enable multiple displays and I don't consider it an issue, I'm just curious about what the implications are for the GTX 680.
Thanks for an awesome review, as usual!
blanarahul - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Check techpowerup's review!SlitheryDee - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
This is great news. AMD's going to have fight nvidia in the pricing arena. There's going to be some great cards going for really cheap by this holiday season. Yay competition!CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Woo hooooooooooo ! :-)kallogan - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Good gpu but it's not a killer beast like it was announced...silverblue - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I never expected it to be "as fast as three 580s in SLi" but it's still a very impressive piece of kit.I'm wondering how much performance is yet to come for both Keplar and Tahiti with driver updates, especially the latter.
ccjuju - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I can't wait for this card to come out so I can buy a discounted 580 instead.TerdFerguson - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
"Battlefield 3 may be the most interesting game in our benchmark suite for a single reason: it’s the first AAA DX10+ game. It’s been 5 years since the launch of the first DX10 GPUs, and 3 whole process node shrinks later we’re finally to the point where games are using DX10’s functionality as a baseline rather than an addition."What, Just Cause 2 didn't count?
bhima - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Bah, I wanted to see Anand review TXAA and NVIDIA's adaptive V-sync features.Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
As you can probably tell, we're a bit behind schedule. We will be discussing both TXAA and adaptive v-sync, though for TXAA we won't technically be reviewing it since it's not available yet.