NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTCompute Performance
For our look at compute performance this is going to be a brief look. Our OpenGL AES and DirectCompute Fluid Simulation benchmarks simply don’t scale with multiple GPUs, so we’ll skip though (though the data is still available in Bench).
Our first compute benchmark comes from Civilization V, which uses DirectCompute to decompress textures on the fly. Civ V includes a sub-benchmark that exclusively tests the speed of their texture decompression algorithm by repeatedly decompressing the textures required for one of the game’s leader scenes. Note that this is a DX11 DirectCompute benchmark.
Given the nature of the benchmark, it’s not surprising that we see a performance regression here with some setups. The nature of this benchmark is that it doesn’t split across multiple GPUs well, though that doesn’t stop AMD and NVIDIA from tying. This doesn’t impact real game performance as we’ve seen, but it’s a good reminder of the potential pitfalls of multi-GPU configurations. Though AMD does deserve some credit here for gaining on their single GPU performance, pushing their lead even higher.
Our other compute benchmark is SmallLuxGPU, the GPU ray tracing branch of the open source LuxRender renderer. We’re now using a development build from the version 2.0 branch, and we’ve moved on to a more complex scene that hopefully will provide a greater challenge to our GPUs.
Unlike the Civ V compute benchmark, SLG scales very well with multiple GPUs, nearly doubling in performance. Unfortunately for NVIDIA GK104 shows its colors here as a compute-weak GPU, and even with two of them we’re nowhere close to one 7970, let alone the monster that is two. If you’re looking at doing serious GPGPU compute work, you should be looking at Fermi, Tahiti, or the future Big Kepler.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
200 Comments
View All Comments
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.