NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 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.
As with Total War: Shogun 2 we’re reaching the point where we’re CPU limited. Even at 2560 we’re clearly capping out at around 95fps, and at 1920 our results just get outright weird to the point where we may be seeing the first and only evidence of the overhead from NVIDIA’s move to static scheduling on Kepler.
In any case, even though we’re approaching a CPU bottleneck the GTX 690 still does well enough for itself here versus both AMD and NVIDIA. We’re looking at a 5% lead at 2560 over the 7970CF, while performance reaches 99% of the GTX 680 SLI.
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bobsmith1492 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It's not that rare; I got a fairly inexpensive 24" 1920x1200 HP monitor from Newegg a year ago. There weren't many options but it was there and it's great.a5cent - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
You are right that the average Joe doesn't have a 1920x1200 monitor, but this is an enthusiast web-site! Not a single enthusiast I know owns a 1080 display. 1920x1200 monitors aren't hard to find, but you will need to spend a tad more.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
Nope, 242 vs 16 is availability, you lose miserably. You all didn't suddenly have one along with your "friends" you suddenly acquired and have memorized their monitor sizes instantly as well.ROFL - the lies are innumerable at this point.
UltraTech79 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
They make up about 10% stock. I wouldn't call that very rare. Newegg and other places have a couple dozen+ to choose from.Maybe YOU dont buy very much.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - link
Closer to 5% than it is to 10%, and they cost a lot more for all the moaning penny pinchers who've suddenly become flush.Digimonkey - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It's either 1920x1200 @ 60hz, or 1920x1080 @ 120hz. I prefer smoother gameplay over 120 pixels. Also I know quite a few gamers that like using their TV for their PC gaming, so this would also be limited to 1080p.CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
No one here is limited, they all said, so no one uses their big screens, they all want it @ 1200P now because amd loses not so badly there...ROFL
Dracusis - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I'm be more worried about AMD's performance going down in certain games due to Crossfire than something as trival as this. As a 4870X2 owner I can tell you this is not at all uncommon for AMD. I still have to disable 1 GPU in most games, including BF3, because AMDs drivers for any card more than 12 months old are just terrible. As you can see even the 6990 is being beat by a 6970 in games as modern as Skyrim - their drivers are just full of fail.Galidou - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
A much higher percentage?!? that's 7% more... nothing extraordinary...Let's just say a higher percentage, when you say much, it makes us beleive Nvidia's paying you.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
10% you might be able to ignore, 17% you cannot. It's much higher, it changes several of the games here as to who wins in the article in the accumulated benches.It's a big difference.