NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Its popularity aside, 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. Not surprisingly BF3 is one of the best looking games in our suite, but as with past Battlefield games that beauty comes with a high performance cost
NVIDIA’s cards have always done well at Battlefield 3, which puts the Radeon HD 7900 series in a bad position from the beginning. Short of the GTX 680’s massive lead in the Portal 2 bonus round, this is the single biggest victory for the GTX 680 over the 7970, beating AMD’s best by 28% at 2560, and by continually higher amounts at lower resolutions. Based on our experience with BF3 I’d hesitate to call the 680 fully fluid at 2560 as large firefights can significantly tear into performance relative to Thunder Run, but if it’s not fully fluid then it’s going to be very, very close.
What’s also interesting here is that once again the GTX 680 is doing very well compared to the dual-GPU cards. The GTX 590 and 6990 never pull away from the GTX 680, and at 1920 with FXAA the GTX 680 finally squeaks by and takes the top of the chart. Performance relative to the GTX 580 is also once again good for that matter, with the GTX 680 beating its predecessor by 48% at almost every resolution.
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SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Wait the boost speed is 1110 vs 1005 right? So 10% faster in shader performance, which will = about 5% in benchmarking performance in the best case.Nothing to see here move along.
Janooo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Well, 7970@1.1GHz beats plain 680.SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Who cares, I wan't to know what the card comes shipped as. Thats what matters, anything extra you get out of that is exactly that, extra. What comes out of the box, thats what they are promising.BoFox - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Wait, you mean that HD 7970 needs to be overclocked by more than 20% in order to beat plain 680?How about overclocking that 680 by 15% like most review sites show is possible?
Then the 7970 would need to be overclocked by an impossible 35% in order to beat a 680 overclocked by 15%.
That was a nice try, Janooo!
Janooo - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
It seems you missed the point.Whatever speed 680 has 7970 can match it. These cards are equal in this regard.
When they have the same clock speed then it looks like 7970 is faster.
Look for AMD to release a faster card soon.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
We will have to subtract some mhz from the 7970 for having a larger core with more die space to make it fair, so transistor for transistor Kepler wins big.CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Plus were going to have to subtract more from The Heatie because it cheats on ram size too.Thanks Janooo you have great ideas.
BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
Ok, if I go by your analogy and say that overclocking GTX 580 to the same speed as HD 6970 (880 MHz) makes both cards "equal in this regard."When they have the same clock speed then it looks like GTX 580 is faster.
Look for Nvidia to release a faster card soon ultilizing that 8-pin PCI-E connector on the PCB (which it did not need in order to beat HD 7970 overclocked or not).
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
680 has made 1,900mhz and makes well over 1,280 ouit of box reference...SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Why, thats how it is setup stock. That is how EVERY SINGLE CARD will come.