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 - 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.