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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SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
While I love BF3, it's not the only game that matters, but it is the only example of the 680 beating the 7970 at frame rates that matter. However the 7970 is catching up as the res goes up. If we add 2 monitors does the 680 still win ?BTW Crysis and Metro 2033 FPS matters to me. Do you think the GPU world revolves around you and what you want? You are not the center of the Videocard world.
Eugene86 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
No, the GPU world doesn't revolve around me but as I already said, nobody but you and a handful of other people actually care about the Crysis and Metro benchmarks because almost nobody plays those games anymore.In my example, Battlefield 3 is a current game that is actually played by people so those benchmarks are useful.
The only reason why Crysis and Metro are used are because they are benchmark games that stress the video cards to their limits. This is nice for bragging rights but completely useless in the real world.
Nvidia and AMD both release video cards that are aimed to please their main market, which is gamers who play on a single monitor at 1080p.
SlyNine - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
So what are you baseing this on? can you give me any sources?I'm not buying a 600$ video card for just one game.
Plus like I said, as the settings go up, they seem to converge. I can't help but wonder if the 7970 would overtake the 680 at some point before we hit 30fps.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Then look at SHOGUN 2 total war in this very article man.Wow, s many of you are so controlled and so mindless on things...
" 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 "
680 takes the top in that game man.
Galidou - Sunday, March 25, 2012 - link
''Nvidia and AMD both release video cards that are aimed to please their main market, which is gamers who play on a single monitor at 1080p''Well then it means that gamers can be more than pleased with a radeon 6870 at 140$ that runs everything with 95% graphical options enabled or a gtx 560ti(not the 448 cores version) for around 200$ which performs a little better than the 6870 and still does the trick in everygame at 1080p.
Prices taken from the bay as no regular 560ti was available on newegg for price comparison.
Oh... and for the 5% graphical options you can't turn on, you'll only notice when you go on a sunday walk in your games, but doing so will have you dead in a second if you play online against other players...
b3nzint - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
i play metro, cysis a lot, amazing graphic! but thats not "real world" to me. maybe if i play bf3 im in real world?CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Shogun 2 total war, the most demanding game in the benches- did you read ?Nvidia GTX680 sweeps the entire resolution set beating the slower 7970 that cannot handle modern demanding games as well,.
akse - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Seems impossible to do such a feat!!! Considering they launched it months later than the competitor!arjuna1 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Correct??You call +10 fps difference at best, on certain situations, a domination??
The only good thing this will bring is prices down, the rest is truly unremarkable, for both companies.
See you in the 8xxx/7xxx series.
Wreckage - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Maybe I was a bit hasty. I did forget to mention that it hard launched with working drivers and working h.264 encoding, also quiet under load. Impressive++