NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTDiRT 3
For racing games our racer of choice continues to be DiRT, which is now in its 3rd iteration. Codemasters uses the same EGO engine between its DiRT, F1, and GRID series, so the performance of EGO has been relevant for a number of racing games over the years.
First it loses, then it ties, and then it starts to win.
After a very poor start in Crysis NVIDIA has finally taken a clear lead in a game. DiRT 3 has historically favored NVIDIA’s video cards so this isn’t wholly surprising, but it’s our first proof that the GTX 680 can beat the 7970, with the GTX 680 taking a respectable 6% lead at 2560. Interestingly enough the lead increases as we drop down in resolution, which is something we have also seen with past Radeon and GeForce cards. It looks like Fermi’s trait of dropping off in performance more rapidly with resolution than GCN has carried over to the GTX 680.
In any case, compared to the GTX 580 this is another good showing for the GTX 680. The 680’s lead on the 580 is a rather consistent 36-38%.
The minimum framerates reflect what we’ve seen with the averages; the GTX 680 has a slight lead on the 7970 at 2560, while it beats the GTX 580 by over 30%.
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Exodite - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I'm a bit confused regarding the multi-display output options, which is a shame as the ability to drive more than two displays at once is something that'll once again make Nvidia interesting for me personally.I regularly run two separate DVI displays for my desktop/work and a HDMI-attached TV for mainly media and some couch surfing.
Will this setup work without issues with the GTX 680?
What kind of power level will it put the card in?
On my Radeon 6950 it bumps idle clocks significantly as soon as I enable multiple displays and I don't consider it an issue, I'm just curious about what the implications are for the GTX 680.
Thanks for an awesome review, as usual!
blanarahul - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Check techpowerup's review!SlitheryDee - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
This is great news. AMD's going to have fight nvidia in the pricing arena. There's going to be some great cards going for really cheap by this holiday season. Yay competition!CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Woo hooooooooooo ! :-)kallogan - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Good gpu but it's not a killer beast like it was announced...silverblue - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I never expected it to be "as fast as three 580s in SLi" but it's still a very impressive piece of kit.I'm wondering how much performance is yet to come for both Keplar and Tahiti with driver updates, especially the latter.
ccjuju - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I can't wait for this card to come out so I can buy a discounted 580 instead.TerdFerguson - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
"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."What, Just Cause 2 didn't count?
bhima - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Bah, I wanted to see Anand review TXAA and NVIDIA's adaptive V-sync features.Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
As you can probably tell, we're a bit behind schedule. We will be discussing both TXAA and adaptive v-sync, though for TXAA we won't technically be reviewing it since it's not available yet.