NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMetro 2033
Paired with Crysis as our second behemoth FPS is Metro: 2033. Metro gives up Crysis’ lush tropics and frozen wastelands for an underground experience, but even underground it can be quite brutal on GPUs, which is why it’s also our new benchmark of choice for looking at power/temperature/noise during a game. If its sequel due this year is anywhere near as GPU intensive then a single GPU may not be enough to run the game with every quality feature turned up.
Thankfully for NVIDIA Metro is much, much better than Crysis for the GTX 680. The GTX 680 still trails the 7970 by a few percent at 2560, but it’s now clearly ahead of the 7950. Performance relative to the GTX 580 is far better, with the GTX 680 leading by 34%. In our experience Metro is very shader heavy, and this would appear to be confirmation of that as the GTX 680 has far greater shader resources than GTX 580.
What’s particularly interesting here though is that the GTX 680 has nearly caught up with the GTX 590. NVIDIA’s SLI scaling for Metro isn’t particularly fantastic, but it’s still quite a leap compared to the GTX 580. Consequently this is the first sign that the GTX 680 can compete with the GTX 590, which would be quite an accomplishment.
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Makaveli - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
what are you ranting about wreckage NV would have done the same thing if they released their card first!Gouging its customers don't make me laugh. If the price is too high for you don't buy it.
AMD didn't put a gun to anyone head.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
Nvidia released it's last 4 flagship cards at $499, yes that's correct, and this one is that.Not sure what imaginary world you live in, but it's one that does not include the common facts at hand.
In other words, AMD already knew far beforehand the $499 flagship Nvidia card price was coming, and so did everyone else who paid attention.
consolePoS - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I said haha busted you dickhead goddamnconsolePoS - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
woops thought my well thought out comment had been removed, oh well whilst I'm already commenting heres another: "Wreckage is a complete benson and an all around arse-bandit"slayernine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Actually it looks to me like the 680 is hugely disappointing, losing to the 7970 and even the 7950 in some tests.Try reading the article....
Hauk - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Wreckage first again! LMAO..pandemonium - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
I'm confused...are we reading the same article? The 7970 and 680 swap top positions for the most powerful single GPU in several different ways.Where is this, "This cards beats AMD on EVERY level! Price, performance, features, power..... every level"?
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
We always, since game engines favor one style core over another, have a reasonable average of the games chosen to be tested as indicator of "performance".Every common and popular website testing has that "performance" chalked up the GTX680 winning.
you can't argue price
you can't argue features
you can't argue power
--
20% slower overall
$80 more expensive
no on the fly OC, no dyna vsync, no physx- no unique destrcution, no TXAA
loses on watts per frame
--
Yes we are looking at the same review but your bias has your brain dreaming up other things ?
IceDread - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
No it does not.SLI scaling is really bad as is surround.
http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/15196-geforce...
Check the graphs.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 24, 2012 - link
I guess SWE clockers are amateurs or have some shoulder chip..http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-sli-...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7970-cross...
Nvidia 101 FPS
AMD 89 FPS