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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XiZeL - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Here is a questionhow many screens can i connect at once on this?
silverblue - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Good question. I've seen mentions of four at once, three in 3D, but I'm not sure.noeldillabough - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
I'd also really like to know the answer to this. Also, where to buy? Everywhere seems to have a "out of stock"Ryan Smith - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
It supports 4 screens, though Surround mode (SLS) is limited to 3 screens and then the 4th is a separate surface.Slayer68 - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
As far as spanning goes it's 3 of the SAME screens. Might be able to use all 4 ports in non spanned mode for the desktop but not sure why you'd do that for gaming since it would only show up on 1 monitor.Pessimism - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Nvidia knowingly sold defective products to multiple large vendors over a lengthy course of time. Never honor them with your money. The CEO has never publicly acknowledged or apologized for this mistake.CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
AMD ati in the gaming console space as well.I guess you get to enjoy VIA chrome with your held back punishment dollars.
Don't buy HP as their defective heatsinks were the cause.
Your console vendor choices are also cut down no xboxes.
BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
LOL!!! That was funny!Yeah, and don't buy AMD because they lied about the Bulldozer transistor number! Dave Baumann recently posted over at B3D with the exact words that it's "just a marketing number".
silverblue - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
I was under the impression that PR just got the number wrong...Soldier1969 - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Clerly beats AMD's best. I'll take 2 plsase to replace my 2 580s 3gb versions. Pure ownage at my 2560 x 1600 res. Nice read thanks.