NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead. It’s no longer the toughest game in our benchmark suite, but it’s still a technically complex game that has proven to be a very consistent benchmark. Thus even four years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” While we’re closer than ever, full Enthusiast settings at a 60fps is still beyond the grasp of a single-GPU card.
While Crysis was a strong game for the GTX 580, the same cannot be said of the GTX 680. NVIDIA is off to a very poor start here, with the Radeon HD 7970 easily outperforming the GTX 680, and even the 7950 is tied or nearly tied with the GTX 680 depending on the resolution. On the bright side the GTX 680 does manage to outperform the GTX 580, but only by a relatively meager 17%.
Given the large gap in theoretical performance between the GTX 680 and GTX 580, as it turns out we’ve run into one of the few scenarios where the GTX 680 doesn’t improve on the GTX 580: memory bandwidth. In our overclocking results we discovered that a core overclock had almost no impact on Crysis, whereas a memory overclock improved performance by 8%, almost exactly as much as the memory overclock itself. When it comes to the latest generation of cards it appears that Crysis loves memory bandwidth, and this is something the Radeon HD 7900 series has in spades but the GTX 680 does not. Thankfully for NVIDIA not every game is like Crysis.
The minimum framerate situation is even worse for NVIDIA here, with the GTX 680 clearly falling behind the 7950, and improving on the GTX 580 by only 10%. At its worst Crysis is absolutely devouring memory bandwidth here, and that leaves the GTX 680 underprepared.
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coldpower27 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Well, it's possible, but for financial reasons they won't do so.If they had created a 28nm product with similar thermals as the GTX 580 as well as similar die size you would indeed see a massive increase in performance..
However this generation nVidia wanted to improve on all aspects to some degree so as such not as much can go into performance.
We have an massive improvement in die area, a mile improvement in performance and a decent improvement in energy consumption and considerable improvement in energy efficiency. A very well balanced product.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
The GTX580 is $470, so who believes Nvidia was dropping a killer card in at $299 like Charlie D the red fan lie disseminator said in his rumor starting post ?His lie has worked magic on all minds.
silverblue - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
The 680 shouldn't be $300 any more than the 580 should be $470.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Spinning so hard you're agreeing while drilling yourself into a dark hole.SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Agreed, back when the 9700pro came out we seen the first signs of this. The cards began needing external power adapters. The HSF's started growing to get those 4x increases.It was only a matter of time until they hit a wall with that method, and here we are.
johnpombrio - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Rumor is that BIG Kepler will be named GTX685 and be out in August.Philbar71 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
"it takes a 16% lead over the GTX 7970 here"Whats a GTX 7970????
prophet001 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
hahai saw that too... must have been a late night last night. we can let it slide :)
N4g4rok - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
It's pretty impressive. I'd like to see what it will cost from one of the retail sites. I'm not necessarily regretting the 7950 i got, but that nice little FPS bump you get from the 680 is nothing to turn your nose up at.Jorgisven - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
"Overall GTX 580 is targeted at a power envelope somewhere between GTX 560 Ti and GTX 580, though it’s closer to the former than the latter." Is this a typo (580 instead of the intended 680)? Or am I just not understanding this correctly?