NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTOverclocking
With the GTX 590 NVIDIA found themselves with a bit of a PR problem. Hardcore overclockers had managed to send their GTX 590s to a flaming death, which made the GTX 590 look bad and required that NVIDIA lock down all voltage control so that no one else could repeat the feat. The GTX 590 was a solid card at stock, but NVIDIA never designed it for overvolting, and indeed I’m not sure you could even say it was designed for overclocking since it was already running at a 365W TDP.
Since that incident NVIDIA has taken a much harder stance on overvolting, which we first saw with the GTX 680. The reference GTX 680 could not be overvolted, with voltage options limited to whatever voltage the top GPU boost bin used (typically 1.175v). This principle will be continuing with the GTX 690; there will not be any overvolting options.
However this is not to say that the GTX 690 isn’t built for overclocking. The GTX 680 still has some overclocking potential thanks to some purposeful use of design headroom, and the GTX 690 is going to be the same story. In fact it’s much the same story as with AMD’s Radeon HD 5970 and 6990, both of which shipped in configurations that kept power consumption at standard levels while also offering modes that unlocked overclocking potential in exchange for greater power consumption (e.g. AWSUM). As we’ve previously mentioned the GTX 690 is designed to be able to handle up to 375W even though it ships in a 300W configuration, and that 75W is our overclocking headroom.
NVIDIA will be exposing the GTX 690’s overclocking options through a combination of power targets and clock offsets, just as with the GTX 680. This in turn means that the GTX 690 effectively has two overclocking modes:
- Power target overclocking. By just raising the power target (max +35%) you can increase how often the GTX 690 can boost and how frequently it can hit its max boost bin. By adjusting the power target performance will only increase in games/applications that are being held back by NVIDIA’s power limiter, but in return this is easy mode overclocking as all of the GPU boost bins are already qualified for stability. In other words, this is the GTX 690’s higher performance, higher power 375W mode.
- Power target + offset overclocking. By using clock offsets it’s possible to further raise the performance of the GTX 690, and to do so across all games and applications. The lack of overvolting support means that there isn’t a ton of headroom for the offset, but as it stands NVIDIA’s clocks are conservative for power purposes and Kepler is clearly capable of more than 915MHz/1019MHz. This of course will require testing for stability, and it should be noted that because NVIDIA’s GPU boost bins already go so high over the base clock that it won’t take much to be boosting into 1.2GHz+.
NVIDIA’s goal with the GTX 690 was not just to reach GTX 680 SLI performance, but also match the GTX 680’s overclocking capabilities. We’ll get to our full results in our overclocking performance section, but for the time being we’ll leave it at this: we hit 1040MHz base, 1183MHz boost, and 7GHz memory on our GTX 690; even without overvolting it’s a capable overclocker.
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InsaneScientist - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
Or don't...It's 2 days later, and you've been active in the comments up through today. Why'd you ignore this one, Cerise?
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
Because you idiots aren't worth the time and last review the same silverblue stalker demanded the links to prove my points and he got them, and then never replied.It's clear what providing proof does for you people, look at the sudden 100% ownership of 1920x1200 monitors..
ROFL
If you want me to waste my time, show a single bit of truth telling on my point on the first page.
Let's see if you pass the test.
I'll wait for your reply - you've got a week or so.
KompuKare - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It is indeed sad. AMD comes up with really good hardware features like eyefinity but then never polishes up the drivers properly. Looking some of crossfire results is sad too: in Crysis and BF3 CF scalling is better than SLI (unsure but I think the trifire and quadfire results for those games are even more in AMD's favour), but in Skyrim it seems that CF is totally broken.Of course compared to Intel, AMD's drivers are near perfect but with a bit more work they could be better than Nvidia's too rather than being mostly at 95% or so.
Tellingly, JHH did once say that Nvidia were a software company which was a strange thing for a hardware manufacturer to say. But this also seems to mean that they forgotten the most basic primary thing which all chip designers should know: how to design hardware which works. Yes I'm talking about bumpgate.
See despite all I said about AMD's drivers, I will never buy Nvidia hardware again after my personal experience of their poor QA. My 8800GT, my brother's 8800GT, this 8400M MXM I had, plus number of laptops plus one nForce motherboard: they all had one thing in common, poorly made chips made by BigGreen and they all died way before they were obsolete.
Oh, and as pointed out in the Anand VC&G forums earlier today:
"Well, Nvidia has the title of the worst driver bug in history at this point-
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/w...hics-card/7... "
killing cards with a driver is a record.
Filiprino - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Yep, that's true. They killed cards with a driver. They should implement hardware auto shutdown, like CPUs. As for the nForce, I had one motherboard, the best nForce they made: nForce 2 for AMD Athlon. The rest of mobo chipsets were bullshit, including nForce 680.The QA I don't think is NVIDIA's fault but videocard manufacturers.
KompuKare - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
No, 100% Nvidia's fault. Although maybe QA isn't the right word. I was referring to Nvidia using the wrong solder underfil for a few million chips (the exact number is unknown): they were mainly mobile parts and Nvidia had to put $250 million aside to settle a class action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series#Prob...
Although that wiki article is rather lenient towards Nvidia since that bit about fan speeds is red herring: more accurately it was Nvidia which spec'ed their chips to a certain temperature and designs which run way below that will have put less stress on the solder but to say it was poor OEM and AIB design which lead to the problem is not correct. Anyway, the proper expose was by Charlie D. in the Inquirer and later SemiAccurate
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
But in fact it was a bad heatsink design, thank HP, and view the thousands of heatsink repairs, including the "add a copper penny" method to reduce the giant gap between the HS and the NV chip.Charlie was wrong, a liar, again, as usual.
KompuKare - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
Don't be silly. While HP's DV6000s were the most notorious failures and that was due to HP's poorly designed heatsink / cooling bumpgate also saw Dells, Apples and others:http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/09/29/suit...
http://www.nvidiadefect.com/nvidia-settlement-t874...
The problem was real, continues to be real and also affects G92 desktop parts and certain nForce chipsets like the 7150.
Yes, the penny shim trick will fix it for a while but if you actually were to read up on technicians forums who fix laptops, that plus reflows are only a temporary fix because the actual chips are flawed. Re-balling with new, better solder is a better solution but not many offer those fixes since it involves 100s of tiny solder balls per chip.
Before blindly leaping to Nvidia's defence like a fanboy, please do some research!
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
Before blindly taking the big lie from years ago repeated above to attack nvidia for no reason at all other than all you have is years old misinformation, then wail on about it, while telling someone else some more lies about it, check your own immense bias and lack of knowledge, since I had to point out the truth for you to find, and you forgot DV9000, dv2000 and dell systems with poor HS design, let alone apple amd console video chip failings, and the fact that payment was made and restitution was delivered, which you also did not mention, because of your fanboy problems, obviously in amd's favor.Ashkal - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
In price comparison in Final words you are not referring with AMD products. I think AMD is better in price performance ratio.prophet001 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I agree