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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Jamahl - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
And you were all too willing to do so without evening-up the initial crime. Don't insult our intelligence Ryan.SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
You need to open your mind alittle bit. It's easy to see what would happen in Anand did something that actually limited out of the box performance.Why are you even suggesting they do such a thing. This is how the card ships, and thats how you will be getting it.
Maybe they should lower the memory clock on AMD cards to make it fair. Or wait, their are different number of shaders. Maybe Anand should somehow limit that.
It just doesn't make any sense.
MattM_Super - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Yeah you can't please all the people even some of the time when it comes to GPU reviews. This seems like a through enough review of the card as it comes out of the box. Overclocking is also important, but considering the hassle, increase in temps and noise, and possible voiding of the warranty, it seems unreasonable to demand that the OC scores be treated as more important than the stock scores.Scott314159 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Any chance of running FAH on the 680... it will only take a few minutes and would give us folders a view into its relative performance compared to the outgoing 580 (and the Radeons).I'm looking to buy a new card in the short term and FAH performance is a factor.
Thanks in advance!
Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Tried it. It wouldn't run.cudanator - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
C'mon guys, why isn't there a single CUDA-Test? And don't say "cause AMD doesn't support it" :P For me most interesting would be the CUDA-Speed compared to other nVidia-Models.Wreckage - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Not to mention PhysX. Sadly there are a lot of features AMD does not support and so they don't get benchmarked often enough. h.264 encoding is another one.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
On other sites they turn on full PhysX in Batman on the 680 and keep it off on the 7970, and the 680 still wins.LOL
If you watched the release video they show PhysX now has dynamic on the fly unique in game destruction that is not repeatable - things break apart with unique shatters and cracks. I say "it's a bout time!" to that.
My 7970 needs to go fast, in facts it's almost gone as we speak. No way am I taking the shortbus.
SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Umm, the GNC (7xxxHD) has a fixed function H.264 encoder. Afaik the 680GTX doesn't even have a fixed function h.264 encoder. So I'm pretty sure it would mop the floor with cuda H.264 encoding.Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
We have the data, although it's not exactly a great test (a lot of CUDA applications have no idea what to do with Kepler right now). It will be up later today.