NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead. It’s no longer the toughest game in our benchmark suite, but it’s still a technically complex game that has proven to be a very consistent benchmark. Thus even four years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” While we’re closer than ever, full Enthusiast settings at a 60fps is still beyond the grasp of a single-GPU card.
While Crysis was a strong game for the GTX 580, the same cannot be said of the GTX 680. NVIDIA is off to a very poor start here, with the Radeon HD 7970 easily outperforming the GTX 680, and even the 7950 is tied or nearly tied with the GTX 680 depending on the resolution. On the bright side the GTX 680 does manage to outperform the GTX 580, but only by a relatively meager 17%.
Given the large gap in theoretical performance between the GTX 680 and GTX 580, as it turns out we’ve run into one of the few scenarios where the GTX 680 doesn’t improve on the GTX 580: memory bandwidth. In our overclocking results we discovered that a core overclock had almost no impact on Crysis, whereas a memory overclock improved performance by 8%, almost exactly as much as the memory overclock itself. When it comes to the latest generation of cards it appears that Crysis loves memory bandwidth, and this is something the Radeon HD 7900 series has in spades but the GTX 680 does not. Thankfully for NVIDIA not every game is like Crysis.
The minimum framerate situation is even worse for NVIDIA here, with the GTX 680 clearly falling behind the 7950, and improving on the GTX 580 by only 10%. At its worst Crysis is absolutely devouring memory bandwidth here, and that leaves the GTX 680 underprepared.
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SlyNine - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
lol, you're way of the mark.My point wasn't that the 680GTX isn't faster, it's however that it does stand up well against the 680GTX in performance.
As far as compute goes, I'm not sure I understand your premise. Frankly I think it's an invalid inference. I said kills it. If that somehow implies it means it losses in the other compute tests, I'm not sure how you got there. Again invalid inference of the data.
Galidou - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
You didn't get the point of what he meant. Yes AMD is loosing but mostly in games that already run 60+fps. The games AMD wins is where it's still not maxed out yet(below 60 fps).Which maybe means if some big demanding games come out, the winning/loosing shceme might go back and forth. But right now, not much games out there will push those gpus unless you got very high resolutions and right now, I think 90% of gamers have 1080p and lower which still runs super smooth with 95% of graphical options enables on a 150$ GPU...
Still gotta say that this GTX 680 is really good for a flagship and the first one that's not uber huge and noisy and hot...
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Shogun 2 TOTAL WAR, in this bench set is THE HARDEST GAME, not metro2033 and not crysis warhead.Sorry feller but ignoring that gets you guys the big fib you want.
Sorry.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
SHOGUN 2 680 wins in top rez.from article " Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite"
OH WELL guess it's the metro2033 and crysis game engines cause the hardest game Nvidia 680 wins.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
No you're WRONG. 1. 608 wins 1 bench in Merto2033, and ties within bench error on the other two resolutions.The hardest game as stated by the reviewer (since you never read) is Shogun2 total war, and Nvidia makes a clean sweep at all resolutions there.
In fact the Nvidia card wins everything but Crysis here, ties on Metro, and smokes everything else.
If Metro isn't a tie, take a look at the tie Ryan has for Civ5 and get back to me... !
(hint: Nvidia wins by far more in Civ5)
So--- let's see, one game with wierd benching old benching and AMD favored benchmark (dumping the waterfall bench that Nvidia won on all the time) >(Crysis)
One "tie" metro2033, then Nvidsia sweeps the rest of them. many by gigantic frame rate victories.
Other places show Nvidia winning metro2003 by a lot. (pureoverclock for one)
....
No I'm not the one fudging, spinning and worse. You guys are. You lost, lost bad, man up.
b3nzint - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
gt680 got more clocks, way higher memory bandwidth than 7970 thats why it got lower power load and price. but i think we can only compare 2 things if they have the "same" engine like drag race cars. both of them made a big leap from previous tech. and thats a win for us.btw, who comes out first ..amd. i say amd win period. so next time maybe they must release next gen gpu on the same time.
b3nzint - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
sorry what i meant was gtx 680 has lower memory, so it gain lower power.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Or so a memory overclock unleashes it and it screams even further away at the tops of the charts...dlitem - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Actual street prices can be different:At least here on the eastern shores of Atlantic ocean German retailers are selling 7970's starting 460-470 eur including taxes with cards on stock and GTX680's are starting 499eur with taxes...
TheRealArdrid - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Sigh, are people really relying on that weak argument again? It's the same thing people said when Intel starting trouncing AMD: it's not fair because Intel has Turbo Boost.