NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTTotal War: Shogun 2
Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite (on higher end hardware at least).
Unfortunately for NVIDIA they’re in a bit of a bind with Shogun 2. The March 22nd patch effectively broke Kepler performance under certain situations. GTX 680 performance has been nearly halved due to that patch; what was 33fps at 2560 is now 18fps. As near as we can tell this is a problem with the game – Shogun 2 wouldn’t know what the GTX 680 is and suddenly doesn’t know what to do with it – but the end result is that GTX 680/690 users are in trouble here.
As it stands 2560 is utterly broken – perhaps due to MSAA or shadowing – but our results at 5760 and 1920, which use the Very High profile, have not dropped due to the patch and as aresult we have at least some confidence in them. To that end while NVIDIA’s multi-GPU scaling is quite good at 5760 at 95%, not only does AMD have a lead over the GTX 680 with a single 7970, but Crossfire scaling is nearly perfect. Furthermore the GTX 690 once more has trouble boosting here, leading to a 7% deficit compared to the GTX 680 SLI. As a result the GTX 690 only reaches 85% of the performance of the 7970CF here. Things look better at 1920, but besides being a rather low resolution for the GTX 690 we’re also CPU limited by that point.
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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...?