NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTCivilization V
Our final game, Civilization 5, gives us an interesting look at things that other RTSes cannot match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry, driver command lists for reducing CPU overhead, and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
Remember when NVIDIA used to sweep AMD in Civ V? Times have certainly changed in the last year, that’s for sure. It only seems appropriate that we’re ending on what’s largely a tie. At 2560 the GTX 680 does have a 4% lead over the 7970, however the 7970 reclaims it’s lead at the last possible moment at 1920. At this point we’ve seen the full spectrum of results, from the GTX 680 losing badly to winning handily, and everything in between.
On a final note, it’s interesting to see that the GTX 680 really only manages to improve on the GTX 580’s performance at 2560. At 1920 the lead is only 8%, and at 1680 we’re just CPU limited. Haswell can’t get here soon enough.
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CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Yes I don't see any former generations beating it. I think he has the hysteria downpat. ( the full GTX core rumored and confirmed is what's driving these people crazy, as well as the it will be $299 680 before AMD flopped out their $570 beaten card).So to an extent this will be the ongoing complaint - far be it from them to not demand the new card undercutting nearly every high end left on the shelves anywhere.
If that happened they could moan the 500+mm squared twice as fast monster chip is fail at $700 or $600 or $500 and unfair.
GTX570's were $350 days ago now they are $250
GTX580 is $359 at egg not $500
GTX460 is $110
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There's a whole lot of focus on one top card from each company and a whole lot of ignoring the rest of reality, which it appears to me at least on Nvidia's behalf is a gigantic price slash no one has reported yet.
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I don't understand why so silent, other than, massive bias, but there it is.
marc1000 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Did I miss it or it wasn't mentioned? What version of DX is this card running please? I ask this because AMD is at 11.1 and there is some hype on Windows 8 being 11.1 too. It's a minor upgrade from 11 but we must consider this on buying decisions too.marc1000 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
yep, no word on DX version in more than 1 site. is this a DX10 card???? why nvidia doesn't let you talk about it?one thing AMD has always done is keep current with DX versions, and this caused them some performance penalties in almost every generation of cards. I remember when HD 5000 family launched that is was slower than HD 4000 in a "per core" fashion.
it seems like Nvidia is dropping on compatibility in order to win at performance. This is not too bad, but it is a little disapointing.
Klimax - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
According to czech site PcTuning (page http://pctuning.tyden.cz/hardware/graficke-karty/2... it is DirectX 11.1.marc1000 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
is it? well, lets hope it really is. but why they are not marketing this?Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I can confirm it is DX11.1 (the page regarding that isn't up yet). NVIDIA isn't talking about DX11.1 much which is why you don't see it mentioned a lot. Given that the only major consumer feature will be S3D support (which benefits AMD more than NV), as you can imagine they're not exactly rushing to tell everyone.BurnItDwn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
For 1080P and less, this card is really quite impressive, but it leaves a lot to be desired in the 2560x1600 category.I'd be curious to see triple headed performance figures ... (Nvidia can do something similar to Eyefinity right?)
Sabresiberian - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Mmm for my purposes, the GTX 680 outperforms the Radeon 7970 enough to be a better buy (certainly if it actually costs less).Look at BF3 results and Skyrim results @2560x1600 (I actually run at 2560x1440, or on my other computer 1920x1200 at 85Hz) to see what is most important to me. Certainly, other games don't show the kind of performance increase you would want, but as in most hardware reviews, making the kind of statement you did without qualification means making an inaccurate one.
;)
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
The the hardocp - in triple surround/eyefinity comp the 680 wins.It's a bad day for AMD and reviewers they lost that too
Now the reviewers will have to crank up 4 monitors and ruin a game and surf to see if they can squeeze out an amd win..
Spunjji - Sunday, March 25, 2012 - link
Can you stop posting, please? Your particular brand of repugnant obnoxiousness is making me nauseous.