NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Once again we have reached the end of another GPU launch article and once again we have a lot of data to digest, so let’s get to it.
For the last few generations AMD has always put up a good fight and always managed to spoil NVIDIA in some manner, be it by beating NVIDIA to market by months like we saw with the 5000 series, or significantly undercutting NVIDIA and forcing them into a bloody price war as we saw with the 4000 series. This time AMD once again spoiled NVIDIA by releasing the Radeon HD 7970 nearly 3 months early, but as always, at the end of the day it’s NVIDIA who once again takes the performance crown for the highest performing single-GPU card.
What makes this launch particularly interesting if not amusing though is how we’ve ended up here. Since Cypress and Fermi NVIDIA and AMD have effectively swapped positions. It’s now AMD who has produced a higher TDP video card that is strong in both compute and gaming, while NVIDIA has produced the lower TDP and weaker compute part that is similar to the Radeon HD 5870 right down to the display outputs. In some sense it’s a reaction by both companies to what they think the other did well in the last generation, but it’s also evidence of the fact that AMD and NVIDIA’s architectures are slowly becoming more similar.
In any case, this has ended up being a launch not quite like any other. With GTX 280, GTX 480, and GTX 580 we discussed how thanks to NVIDIA’s big die strategy they had superior performance, but also higher power consumption and a higher cost. To that extent this is a very different launch – the GTX 680 is faster, less power hungry, and quieter than the Radeon HD 7970. NVIDIA has landed the technical trifecta, and to top it off they’ve priced it comfortably below the competition.
Looking at the bigger picture, I think ultimately we still haven’t moved very far on the price/performance curve compared to where we’ve gone in past generations, and on that basis this is one of the smaller generational jumps we've seen for a GTX x80 product, or for that matter one of the smaller leads NVIDIA has had over AMD's top card. But even with NVIDIA’s conservative pricing we’re finally seeing 28nm translate into more performance for less, which of course is really what we're interested in. To that end, based on GK104’s die size I’m left wondering where GTX 680 is going to be sitting by the end of the year as 28nm production improves, as there’s clearly a lot of potential for price cuts in the future.
But in the meantime, in the here and now, this is by far the easiest recommendation we’ve been able to make for an NVIDIA flagship video card. NVIDIA’s drive for efficiency has paid off handsomely, and as a result they have once again captured the single-GPU performance crown.
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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.