NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTCivilization V
Our final game, Civilization 5, gives us an interesting look at things that other RTSes cannot match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry, driver command lists for reducing CPU overhead, and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
Remember when NVIDIA used to sweep AMD in Civ V? Times have certainly changed in the last year, that’s for sure. It only seems appropriate that we’re ending on what’s largely a tie. At 2560 the GTX 680 does have a 4% lead over the 7970, however the 7970 reclaims it’s lead at the last possible moment at 1920. At this point we’ve seen the full spectrum of results, from the GTX 680 losing badly to winning handily, and everything in between.
On a final note, it’s interesting to see that the GTX 680 really only manages to improve on the GTX 580’s performance at 2560. At 1920 the lead is only 8%, and at 1680 we’re just CPU limited. Haswell can’t get here soon enough.
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XiZeL - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Here is a questionhow many screens can i connect at once on this?
silverblue - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Good question. I've seen mentions of four at once, three in 3D, but I'm not sure.noeldillabough - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
I'd also really like to know the answer to this. Also, where to buy? Everywhere seems to have a "out of stock"Ryan Smith - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
It supports 4 screens, though Surround mode (SLS) is limited to 3 screens and then the 4th is a separate surface.Slayer68 - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
As far as spanning goes it's 3 of the SAME screens. Might be able to use all 4 ports in non spanned mode for the desktop but not sure why you'd do that for gaming since it would only show up on 1 monitor.Pessimism - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Nvidia knowingly sold defective products to multiple large vendors over a lengthy course of time. Never honor them with your money. The CEO has never publicly acknowledged or apologized for this mistake.CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
AMD ati in the gaming console space as well.I guess you get to enjoy VIA chrome with your held back punishment dollars.
Don't buy HP as their defective heatsinks were the cause.
Your console vendor choices are also cut down no xboxes.
BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
LOL!!! That was funny!Yeah, and don't buy AMD because they lied about the Bulldozer transistor number! Dave Baumann recently posted over at B3D with the exact words that it's "just a marketing number".
silverblue - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
I was under the impression that PR just got the number wrong...Soldier1969 - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Clerly beats AMD's best. I'll take 2 plsase to replace my 2 580s 3gb versions. Pure ownage at my 2560 x 1600 res. Nice read thanks.