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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
404 Comments
View All Comments
maximumGPU - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
"The benchmarks are tight in front of your faces!"and judging by your conclusion it seems you didn't even read them..
Skiddywinks - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
"The benchmarks are tight in front of your faces! "No s***, Sherlock.
"The 680 is tied with the 7950, which surpasses it by a little, and the 7970 is the leader. "
Clearly the benchmarks in front of my face are different to the ones in front of your face.
BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
I know, that's why I'm telling him that Anandtech Forum is a perfect place for him!BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
Then you'll love Anandtech Forums!! It's the perfect place for you! They'll love you over there!CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
It's absolutely amazing isn't it.SR81 - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
HardOCP has surround benches on both the 680 and 7970, surprisingly the lower bandwidth/VRAM card wins even with 4XMSAA and FXAA enabled at 5760x1200 (ex.Skyrim: 680 = 58.6, 7970 = 45.4)When Anand updates this review with surround benches it will leave no doubt which card is the absolute king. I think the articles title is rightfully deserved once testing is done :)
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
Yep, saw it like 2 days ago, the ram arguments have been foolish once you crank eye candy high enough (on weak ram cards) both comps frame rates are too low to matter.dtolios - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
I know the AMD vs. Nvidia war is a hot topic in Anandtech - just like any other tech forum/review site etc - but one of the really hard applications for modern GPUs is production rendering acceleration.There are multiple instances were you can see reviewers trying to compare different GPUs, different architectures, SLI combinations (or just multiple GPU) combinations etc while using GPU accelerated renderers, a professional application that is relying more and more on "game" oriented boards instead of Quadro / FireGL versions (unless vram limitations get in the way).
Testing on applications like Octane Rendered, Vray 2 GPU, iRay etc, would be a nice addition to your tests - not only because those are hard to find and easily more intensive than "just gaming", but also because few sites have access to such an extensive line of hardware to pull a realistic comparison, including multiple GPUs, different generations, scalability with multiple cards etc. The only "comparison tables" you can easily find, are from people sharing their personal observation on their blog or forum - under not that repeatable conditions etc...
For some apps, Open CL could be nice to keep on the AMD vs. nVidia "hype" going on, but sadly for some of us, most of these renderers are either exclusively CUDA based, or run better on it, so it would be nice to actually do core comparisons even within the nVidia line: you see, in rendering applications, getting better scalability with multiple cards, or removing 30min out of your 2hour rendering workflow is way more important than gaining 5% FPS advantage over the other card.
You do include 3DS or similar productivity comparisons in your CPU reviews, so it only make sense to include it for your GPUs too.
poordirtfarmer2 - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
I agree wholeheartedly! I’d love to pick the best “gaming” card for also doing pro work. Although just an amateur, I actually find myself spending more time editing and rendering videos than I do playing games.AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
When 2560x1600 4xAA results in way under 60fps, IMHO it's not a very useful benchmark. Any user would go to 2xAA or no AA, to get 60fps. So who really cares how these cards compare at a setting that's never used.