NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Its popularity aside, Battlefield 3 may be the most interesting game in our benchmark suite for a single reason: it’s the first AAA DX10+ game. It’s been 5 years since the launch of the first DX10 GPUs, and 3 whole process node shrinks later we’re finally to the point where games are using DX10’s functionality as a baseline rather than an addition. Not surprisingly BF3 is one of the best looking games in our suite, but as with past Battlefield games that beauty comes with a high performance cost.
Battlefield 3 has been NVIDIA’s crown jewel; a widely played multiplayer game with a clear lead for NVIDIA hardware. And with multi-GPU thrown into the picture that doesn’t change, leading to the GTX 690 once again taking a very clear lead here over the 7970CF at all resolutions. With that said, we see something very interesting at 5760, with NVIDIA’s lead shrinking by quite a bit. What was a 21% lead at 2560 is only a 10% at 5760. So far we haven’t seen any strong evidence of NVIDIA being VRAM limited with only 2GB of VRAM and while this isn’t strong evidence that the situation has changed is does warrant consideration. If anything is going to be VRAM limited after all it’s BF3.
Meanwhile compared to the GTX 680 SLI the GTX 690 is doing okay here. It’s only achieving 93% of the GTX 680 SLI’s performance at 2560, but for some reason pulls ahead at 5760, covering that to 96% of the performance of the dual video card setup.
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CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
I'm certain they would pay none of you since not a single one can be honest nor has a single argument to counter my points.You're all down to name calling trolls - and you all have to face the facts now, that your clueless ignorance left out of your minds for some time.
Have fun buying your cheap 1080P panels and slow and cheapo amd cards - LOL
Oh sorry, you all now buy premium flat panels...
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
No actually I expected a lot more from the people here.I expected a big thank you, or a thanks for the information we'll keep that in mind and it helps our purchasing decisions.
Instead we got a flood of raging new monitor owners and haters and name callers.
Next time just thanking me for providing very pertinent information would be the right thing to do, but at this point I don't expect any of you to ever do the right thing.
UltraTech79 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Never seen a triple screen setup before?tipoo - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I'm curious why the 680 and 690 trail AMD cards in Crysis and Metro, seeing as those seem to be the most GPU intensive games, while they win in most other tests. Would it be shading performance or something else?My mind is pretty blow that we have cards that can run Crysis and Metro at 5760x1200 at very comfortable framerates now, that's insane. But barring that resolution or 2560 for some games, I'm sure most of us don't see appeal here, it will be sold in a very very small niche. For normal monitor resolutions, I doubt games in large quantities will get much more demanding until we have new consoles out.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Oh, wow, they also are so biased toward amd they removed the actual most demanding game, Shogun 2, Total War, because I kept pointing out how the Nvidia 680's swept that game across the board - so now it's gone !ROFL
(before you attack me I note the anand reviewer stated S2TW is the most demanding, it's right in the reviews here - but not this one.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Um, it's there. Page 8.Sabresiberian - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
LOL.Cerise, epic fail!
;)
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Oh I see it was added because the patch broke the Nvidia cards - but in amd's favor again, the tester kept the breaking patch in, instead of providing results.Wow, more amd bias.
Glad my epic fails are so productive. :-)
U still mad ? Or madder and raging out of control?
silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
So, if they failed to add it, it'd have been AMD bias, but considering they DID add it... it's AMD bias.And you're the one talking about rage, trollboi?
Had you just merely mentioned that the patch doesn't provide favourable results for NVIDIA cards, Ryan might have been tempted to reinstall the game and retest. Well, he might have - can't speak for the guy. Doubt he will now, though.
tipoo - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
So back on non-trolling topic...?