NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Bethesda's epic sword & magic game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is our RPG of choice for benchmarking. It's altogether a good CPU benchmark thanks to its complex scripting and AI, but it also can end up pushing a large number of fairly complex models and effects at once, especially with the addition of the high resolution texture pack.
Unfortunately for AMD, Crossfire isn’t just broken with Batman, as it’s also broken here. If they could scale they’d be CPU limited like the GTX 600 series, but instead we’re getting negative performance. Furthermore at 2560 that’s a very choppy 58.8fps for the 7970CF.
In any case, even though we’re CPU limited it’s interesting to see that the GTX 690 still can’t quite catch the GTX 680 SLI. At 2560 it trails by 2%, which is on the edge of experimental variability.
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Correct, we're using the Steam version. I reloaded it as of last week.bpwnes - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
...but will it blend?Luscious - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I'll take three, thanks!!!tipoo - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Send me 10 grand and I'll send you three of the nitrogen enriched versions.Makaveli - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Is this a review for the 7970 CF or 690 lolFor a $1000 card that is not a very good showing. i'm thinking that 2GB limit per gpu is really starting to hurt them not to mention the 256bit memory bus.
shin0bi272 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
That's what I was thinking. Imagine what they could have done if they'd of expanded the bus to 384bit per gpu... such a sad showing.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
There are plenty of 4BG 680 reviews out there that certainly disprove your thinking, and lack of knowledge.silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
This card has 2GB per GPU, not 4. Also, the lack of memory (!) will limit performance before the memory bus does. Compared to previous NVIDIA products, the 680 has far faster memory which mitigates having a narrower bus.shin0bi272 - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
I guess we'll see when the gk110 arrives this summerCeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
There is no limit with the 2G of memory, but none of you have looked at teh dozens of reviews and hundreds of blogs proofs, so you will keep babbling stupid things, forever, it appears.