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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
404 Comments
View All Comments
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.