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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
200 Comments
View All Comments
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
It's a very pertinent topic because despite the protestations the vast majority of readers are likely to have a 1080p monitor, and apparently they all have amnesia as well since this came up in a very, very recent article - one of the last few on the video cards - where it was even pointed out by Anand himself that one should extrapolate the fps data with the 11% pixel difference, something every last one of you either never read or completely forgot or conveniently omitted.Unfortunately Anand isn't correct, period. He should know it, but of course has to have an answer for the complainers - so he gave one.
What should be clear, even by just looking at the 1920X benches here is that below that resolutin and above it don't always jibe with it - and personally I've noticed nVidia has issues with 1600X1200.
So, all the hundreds of readers with 1080p monitors can thank me deep down in their hearts, as they now know Nvidia is supreme at that resolution, by 17%+ on average, more so than at 1200p, and thus "saving money" on an amd card using this sites 1920 1200p stats is for many, incorrect.
Makaveli - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
no one is mad or raging I think most are just amused at your stupidity! and sad attempt at trolling.Trololol
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
Yet my point is absolutely prescient and helpful to anyone whom isn't a raging fanboy fool.Doesn't appear you've risen above that category.
InsaneScientist - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
And yet they specifically called out the fact that the patch broke performance on nVidia cards, went out of their way to state what performance was like before the patch (which is clearly better than any of the other cards), and finally stated that they're pretty sure that the game is at fault, not nVidia or their drivers...Yeah, they really must have it out for nVidia... *sigh*
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
Except in the 680 tests all you fools ignored S2TW, which I had to repeatedly point out was the hardest game in the bunch, not Crysis or M2033 - over and over again I had to tell all the fools blabbering, and now suddenly the game is "broken". ROFL - it's beyond amazing.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
Oh look it's not broken, TPU can handle it with nearly 100% single card SLI scaling with the 690http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_...
Gee I guess it was "harder" here.
blackened23 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
you appear to be using an old version of Batman without the latest patch.blackened23 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/340746/batman...You are using an outdated version, the newest version released in March enhances both SLI and CF performance.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
We're on the latest version. I triple checked.blackened23 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Are you using the Steam version? Your results differ from that of HardOCP, hardwareheaven, and hardwarecanucks. They get scaling you don't. Your version should be dated March 2012, thats when the patch was released.