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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george1976 - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
Excuse me sir but I think you've been reading the wrong article.Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Just a heads up guys, we're a bit behind schedule and are still adding images and tables, so hold on.casteve - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
whew - thought my coffee hadn't kicked in :)Granseth - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Hi, liked the review but are missing a few things, though I expect them to be reviewed at a later time in a new article. Like the improved multi-screen support, SLI, overclocking and things like that.But I would like to know more about this turbo as well. What I am courious about is if it will boost minimum framerate as well as average framerate, or if the GPU is so taxed when it hits minimum framerate that it won't have anything extra to offer up to its turbo.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Minimum framerates. -16% power target on the left, stock on the right.Crysis Min: 21.4...21.9
Dirt3 Min: 73.4....77.1
So to answer your question, it depends on the game.
Jamahl - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Just a comment on the power draw - I wonder if you could test the 680 and 7970 in a different game, say for example Batman of BF3. The reason for this is due to the 7970 winning in Metro, while losing in most of the others and I wonder if there is something going on regarding power draw.CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
See the GTX 680 win in Metro 2033 all the way on up 1920 and 2560 resolutions >http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-...
What's different is AAA is used, as well as the Sandy E runs stock at 3,300 and is not overclocked.
What appears to be a big problem for AMD cards is they have been offloading work to the cpu much more than the Nvidia cards, and even more so in CF v SLI, so when you don't have a monster CPU with a monster overclock to boot the AMD cards lose even worse.
SlyNine - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Anandtech uses AAA for Metro.You need to look agian, the difference is no DOF and hothardware is running at lower settings.
you, fail.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Oh I didn't fail, I showed the 680 winning in the game that is claimed it loses in.That's a WIN for me, period.
SlyNine - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link
Ok so your 500$ video card can win at lower settings than the 459$ videocard.