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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
404 Comments
View All Comments
unphased - Saturday, July 28, 2012 - link
I'm using Precision X to OC my Gigabyte GTX 670 and I've got the Mem clock offset at +550Mhz. In the chart log it continues to run at 3557Mhz even while I am not playing any games.Is this normal? I even switched off Aero to check and it hasn't changed.
Gastec - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
I know I'm nobody, not like you americans who are always "somebody" or "something" but I can't just sit here and read and not react. It's enough that I have to put up with them on YouTube, why do you condone them here as well? I'm refering to the likes of Wreckage and CeriseCogburn users that are obviously payed individuals to do negative publicity, here in favor of nVidia. Is that something acceptable here? Am I too old or not "in tone" with the working of the Internet or what?Gastec - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
Having white american genetic traits that allow you to be a convincing how-to-become-rich-and-successful book and TV religion seller migh be a praized quality in your american lands but in my lands we know one thing, and one thing only: that 60 fps is what we want in our games, be them old or new. I don't care if the card can do 120 fps, 10 more than the 110 fps that the other brand can do. That's irrelevant. My monitor works at 60 Hz. If one card can do 55 fps MIN/100 fps MAX, I'll take it over the other one that can do 40 fps MIN/120 fps MAX anyday. So why don't you think about that and convince me to buy your card. With pictures of course.BrotherofCats - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link
I have had nothing but trouble with this card from the start. It crashes a dozen times a day, mostly when I am playing a video, but sometimes when I am using my word processor or Excel. Mostly it freezes the screen for about a minute, then come back with a pop up box that states my driver crashed and has recovered. About twice a day it does a complete crash, the two peripheral screens going white and the central screen gray, and I have to hard boot my computer to get it working again. Have asked for help on the Nvidea forums and facebook page, and none of their solutions, clean install of the driver, or using an earlier driver has worked. Saw on the facebook page that other people are having the same problem. Will probably have to scrap this expensive turkey and get something cheaper that works. Not recommended at all.