NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Its popularity aside, 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. Not surprisingly BF3 is one of the best looking games in our suite, but as with past Battlefield games that beauty comes with a high performance cost
NVIDIA’s cards have always done well at Battlefield 3, which puts the Radeon HD 7900 series in a bad position from the beginning. Short of the GTX 680’s massive lead in the Portal 2 bonus round, this is the single biggest victory for the GTX 680 over the 7970, beating AMD’s best by 28% at 2560, and by continually higher amounts at lower resolutions. Based on our experience with BF3 I’d hesitate to call the 680 fully fluid at 2560 as large firefights can significantly tear into performance relative to Thunder Run, but if it’s not fully fluid then it’s going to be very, very close.
What’s also interesting here is that once again the GTX 680 is doing very well compared to the dual-GPU cards. The GTX 590 and 6990 never pull away from the GTX 680, and at 1920 with FXAA the GTX 680 finally squeaks by and takes the top of the chart. Performance relative to the GTX 580 is also once again good for that matter, with the GTX 680 beating its predecessor by 48% at almost every resolution.
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SlyNine - Sunday, March 25, 2012 - link
Well, the driver themself can take more CPU power to run. But with a quad core CPU the thought is laughable. Back in the single CPU/core days it was actually an issue. And before DX9 (or 10) Drivers were only capable of accessing single cores I believe.SlyNine - Sunday, March 25, 2012 - link
Then look for an overclocked review. Anandtech is always going to do an out of the box for the first review.This is what they(amd/nvidia) are promising you, nothing more.
papapapapapapapababy - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
USELESS !YESSS OMFG i cant wait to play the latest crappy kinect port with this!.... at 600.000.000 FPS and in 3-D! GTFO GUYS! REALLY....
just put this ridiculously large, ugly, noisy, silly, and overpriced, toxic waste where it belongs: faaar away from me, ( sensible user) inside one bulky OnLive cloud server. (and pushing avatar 2 graphics, no HDps2 ports)
henrikfm - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
Most monitors have 60Hz refresh rate, you can't benefit from higher frame rates because only 60 frames are drawn.By looking at the benchmarks and considering a resolution of 1920, the latest cards fail in 3 games to deliver at least 60fps: Crysis, Metro and BF3. In the first two games the HD7970 beats de GTX680, only loses in BF3 where nVidia has a clear advantage (in my opinion AMD has to work in drivers for BF3).
So, the GTX680 is faster when the speed really doesn't matter because you're already around 100fps. The guys who are running multiple monitors and higher resolutions will have also money to buy multiple GPU setups, and that is another story.
Still the GTX680 is a better card, but for $500 I would expect a card to deliver at least 60fps at 1920 for a 2008 released videogame like Crysis. Neither nVidia nor AMD can do that with a single GPU, it's disappointing.
gramboh - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
I'll agree about Metro because there is a sequel (Last Light) coming out in Q1-2013 which will presumably be similar in the graphics department.Crysis is irrelevant other than for benchmarking, who still plays it? Single player campaign is entertaining for the eye candy once through (in 2008).
BF3 is the game that matters because of the MP component, people will be playing it for years to come. AMD really really has to improve performance on the 7950/7970 in BF3, I won't even consider buying it (vs. the 680) unless they can make up some significant ground.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
I just have to do it, sorry.You forgot Shogun 2 total war, the hardest game in this bench set, that Nvidia wins in all 3 resolutions.
You also forgot average frames are not low frames, so you need far above 60 fps average before you don't dip below 60 fps.
Furthermore, all the eye candy is not cranked, driving the average and dips even lower when it is.
You got nothing right.
b3nzint - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
back in 7970 review, its got cool stuffs tech. like PRT, MST hubm, DDMA and bla bla bla. why gtx680 dont have sh** like that. pardon my english. its like this thing is built only for 1 purpose only and thats a success. thanksmpx - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
This new Nvidia card supposedly has an architecture that burdens CPU with scheduling etc. It may mean that it requires a faster CPU than ATI cards to reach similar performance. And since fast CPUs are expansive it may mean it's actually more expansive.BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
The key word in your first sentence is "supposedly".I see no evidence of this. It actually does far better in Starcraft 2, a game that already burdens the CPU. It also excels in Skyrim, while still doing just fine in Civilization V, which are also the most CPU-intensive games out there.
BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
In SC2 which is a very CPU-dependent game, the card still does amazingly well against the rest of others. The same also goes for Skyrim, beating the red team by a whopping percentage.