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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XiZeL - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Here is a questionhow many screens can i connect at once on this?
silverblue - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Good question. I've seen mentions of four at once, three in 3D, but I'm not sure.noeldillabough - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
I'd also really like to know the answer to this. Also, where to buy? Everywhere seems to have a "out of stock"Ryan Smith - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
It supports 4 screens, though Surround mode (SLS) is limited to 3 screens and then the 4th is a separate surface.Slayer68 - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
As far as spanning goes it's 3 of the SAME screens. Might be able to use all 4 ports in non spanned mode for the desktop but not sure why you'd do that for gaming since it would only show up on 1 monitor.Pessimism - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Nvidia knowingly sold defective products to multiple large vendors over a lengthy course of time. Never honor them with your money. The CEO has never publicly acknowledged or apologized for this mistake.CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
AMD ati in the gaming console space as well.I guess you get to enjoy VIA chrome with your held back punishment dollars.
Don't buy HP as their defective heatsinks were the cause.
Your console vendor choices are also cut down no xboxes.
BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
LOL!!! That was funny!Yeah, and don't buy AMD because they lied about the Bulldozer transistor number! Dave Baumann recently posted over at B3D with the exact words that it's "just a marketing number".
silverblue - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
I was under the impression that PR just got the number wrong...Soldier1969 - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Clerly beats AMD's best. I'll take 2 plsase to replace my 2 580s 3gb versions. Pure ownage at my 2560 x 1600 res. Nice read thanks.