NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTStarcraft II
Our next game is Starcraft II, Blizzard’s 2010 RTS megahit. Much like Portal 2 it’s a DX9 game designed to run on a wide range of hardware so performance is quite peppy with most high-end cards, but it can still challenge a GPU when it needs to.
We mainly throw in SC2 here for consistency. Since it doesn’t support the wide aspect ratios necessary for multi-monitor setups it’s not very challenging for our dual-GPU setups. The 7970CF ends up being the loser here at only 131.9fps at 2560, while the GTX 600 series setups are at 148fps. Though it’s interesting to note that the GTX 690 does very well here compared to the GTX 680 SLI, with the GTX 690 reaching 100% of the performance of the GTX 680 SLI.
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Death666Angel - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
The few reviews I've seen have 4GB GTX 680 card between 5% and 10% faster at high resolutions (starting at 2560x1440 to 7860x1600). Adding, on top of that some more memory bandwidth would have been the gaming card most people expected from nVidia.As it stands, the GTX 680 is good, but also very expensive (I can have t he 7970 for 65€ less). The GTX 690 is a good product for people who want SLI but don't have the space, PSU, SLI enabled mainboard or want 4 GPUs.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
Sure, link us to a single review that shows us that. Won't be HardOcp nor any as popular, as every review has shown the exact opposite.kallogan - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Where are the middle range gpus ?Wait. Nvidia don't release them cause they can't provide enough quantities.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
They're being held back like the "real 680" top nVidia core, because nVidia is making more money selling the prior launches and the new 2nd tier now top dog cards.It's a conspiracy of profit and win.
silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Yes, because making a small number of full size Kepler cores is obviously going to make them more money than a large number of less complex Kepler cores. *rolleyes*NVIDIA, assuming they had the ability to get them manufactured in large enough quantities, would make far more profit off a 660 or 670 than they ever would off a 680.
silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
(I mean making far more profit off the 660/670 series than the 680 series, not specific cards nor the profit per card)CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - link
A lot of prior gen stock moving, take a look you're on the internet, not that hard to do, wonder why you people are always so clueless.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - link
For instance the entire lot of 7870's and 7850's on the egg are outsold by a single GTX680 by EVGA - confirmed purchasers reviews.So it appears nVidia knows what it's doing in a greatly superior manner than your tiny mind spewing whatever comes to it in a few moments of raging rebuttal whilst you try to "point out what's obvious" - yet is incorrect.
zcat - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Ditto.Every time my Anandtech feed updates, the first thing I'm hoping to see is reviews for the more-reasonably priced, and less power-hoggy GTX 640 (w/GDDR5) and GTX 660 Ti. If we see a review, then at least we know it'll show up at retail very soon after.
All I want for xmas is a mid-range NVidia card with a higher idle wattage to maximum performance ration than AMD (because NVidia > AMD wrt drivers, esp under linux).
zcat - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
correction: idle Watts <= 10 && max performance >= AMD.