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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maximumGPU - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
"The benchmarks are tight in front of your faces!"and judging by your conclusion it seems you didn't even read them..
Skiddywinks - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
"The benchmarks are tight in front of your faces! "No s***, Sherlock.
"The 680 is tied with the 7950, which surpasses it by a little, and the 7970 is the leader. "
Clearly the benchmarks in front of my face are different to the ones in front of your face.
BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
I know, that's why I'm telling him that Anandtech Forum is a perfect place for him!BoFox - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
Then you'll love Anandtech Forums!! It's the perfect place for you! They'll love you over there!CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
It's absolutely amazing isn't it.SR81 - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
HardOCP has surround benches on both the 680 and 7970, surprisingly the lower bandwidth/VRAM card wins even with 4XMSAA and FXAA enabled at 5760x1200 (ex.Skyrim: 680 = 58.6, 7970 = 45.4)When Anand updates this review with surround benches it will leave no doubt which card is the absolute king. I think the articles title is rightfully deserved once testing is done :)
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
Yep, saw it like 2 days ago, the ram arguments have been foolish once you crank eye candy high enough (on weak ram cards) both comps frame rates are too low to matter.dtolios - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
I know the AMD vs. Nvidia war is a hot topic in Anandtech - just like any other tech forum/review site etc - but one of the really hard applications for modern GPUs is production rendering acceleration.There are multiple instances were you can see reviewers trying to compare different GPUs, different architectures, SLI combinations (or just multiple GPU) combinations etc while using GPU accelerated renderers, a professional application that is relying more and more on "game" oriented boards instead of Quadro / FireGL versions (unless vram limitations get in the way).
Testing on applications like Octane Rendered, Vray 2 GPU, iRay etc, would be a nice addition to your tests - not only because those are hard to find and easily more intensive than "just gaming", but also because few sites have access to such an extensive line of hardware to pull a realistic comparison, including multiple GPUs, different generations, scalability with multiple cards etc. The only "comparison tables" you can easily find, are from people sharing their personal observation on their blog or forum - under not that repeatable conditions etc...
For some apps, Open CL could be nice to keep on the AMD vs. nVidia "hype" going on, but sadly for some of us, most of these renderers are either exclusively CUDA based, or run better on it, so it would be nice to actually do core comparisons even within the nVidia line: you see, in rendering applications, getting better scalability with multiple cards, or removing 30min out of your 2hour rendering workflow is way more important than gaining 5% FPS advantage over the other card.
You do include 3DS or similar productivity comparisons in your CPU reviews, so it only make sense to include it for your GPUs too.
poordirtfarmer2 - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
I agree wholeheartedly! I’d love to pick the best “gaming” card for also doing pro work. Although just an amateur, I actually find myself spending more time editing and rendering videos than I do playing games.AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
When 2560x1600 4xAA results in way under 60fps, IMHO it's not a very useful benchmark. Any user would go to 2xAA or no AA, to get 60fps. So who really cares how these cards compare at a setting that's never used.