NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTTotal War: Shogun 2
Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite (on higher end hardware at least).
With Shogun 2 the GTX 680 sees its first decisive win at last. At the all-punishing resolution of 2560 the GTX 680 not only becomes the first single-GPU card to crack 30fps, but it takes a 16% lead over the 7970 here. Even at a more practical resolution and setting of 1920 the GTX 680 still leads by 15%. Meanwhile the GTX 580 fares even worse here, with the GTX 680 leading by 51% at 2560 and a whopping 63% at 1920. Even the GTX 590 can only barely beat the GTX 680 at 2560, only to lose at 1920.
At this point we’re not sure what it is about the GTX 680 that improves on the GTX 580 by so much. Shogun 2 does use a lot of VRAM, and while the greater amount of VRAM on the GTX 680 alone wouldn’t seem to explain this, the fact that most of that memory is consumed by textures just might. We may be seeing the benefit of the much greater number of texture units GTX 680 has.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
404 Comments
View All Comments
chizow - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Did not see OC results listed anywhere, will they be added to this article or an addendum/supplement later?Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
It will be added to this article. We may also do a separate pipeline article, but everything will be added here for future reference.SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Adaptive v-sync, is that like tripple buffering? never heard of it but it sounds interesting.iwod - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
In those high res test it seems it is seriously limited by bandwidth. If you could get 7Ghz GDDR5 or MemoryCube i guess it would have performed MUCH better.I think we finally got back to basic. What GPU is all about. Graphics. We have been spending too much time doing GPGPU which only benefits a VERY small percentage of the consumer market.
PeteRoy - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Unfortunately there is no game that can benefit from the power this card has to give.We are in 2012 and the PC gaming graphic level is stuck in the year 2007 with Crysis as the last game to push the limits of video cards.
Since 2006 when the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 took over the gaming industry all games are made for these consoles therefore all games have the graphic technology of DirectX 9.
Battlefield 3 in the end of 2011 still doesn't look as good as Crysis from 2007.
Sabresiberian - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
YOU have no use for this card because you are clearly playing Tetris at 1024x768. Other people have much higher resolutions and play much more demanding games.Some of them even - GASP! - run more than one monitor. Imagine that.
;)
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I agree. The 7970 isn't doing it for me @ 19x12 w SB@4800x4. MOAR.SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Crysis 2 will full DX11 plus texture pack tottaly tears my 5870 a new one. unless these cards are now pumping out 3x the FPS than the performance is needed.Ahnilated - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I waited all this time hoping the GTX680's would be an awesome card to upgrade from my GTX480's that I run in SLI. Well I am very disappointed now. I guess I continue waiting.Pessimism - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Do not forget that NVIDIA knowingly and willingly peddled defective chips to multiple large vendors. The real question is whether they have mastered the art of producing chips that will remain bonded to the product they are powering, and whether they will turn to slag once reaching normal operating temperatures.