NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTCivilization V
Our final game, Civilization 5, gives us an interesting look at things that other RTSes cannot match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry, driver command lists for reducing CPU overhead, and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
As with Total War: Shogun 2 we’re reaching the point where we’re CPU limited. Even at 2560 we’re clearly capping out at around 95fps, and at 1920 our results just get outright weird to the point where we may be seeing the first and only evidence of the overhead from NVIDIA’s move to static scheduling on Kepler.
In any case, even though we’re approaching a CPU bottleneck the GTX 690 still does well enough for itself here versus both AMD and NVIDIA. We’re looking at a 5% lead at 2560 over the 7970CF, while performance reaches 99% of the GTX 680 SLI.
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paul878 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Nvidia is getting very good at building Vaporware.paul878 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Nvidia is getting very good and making Vaporware.krumme - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Is 6000 pcx. within the first month fx. a paper launch in your view?As selling numbers in that size, does nothing for the economy directly, what do you think is the strategic choices behind putting it on "sale" now?
How do you think marketing at NV thinks about how they can tailor perception from the reviewers on what is perciewed as a paper launch?
Do NV marketing present themselves as one of your kind, having the same background, understanding your dilemmas and problems?
mac2j - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Wonder what the 7990 will look like next month. AMD clearly waited on purpose to see how the 690 was going to perform. They easily could have released a dual 7970 card already or at the very least sent specs to card manufacturers but they haven't.We know they left a lot of headroom on the 7970 - some people have even suggested we'll get a 7980 at some point - wonder if now we'll get 2 x fully clocked 7970s on the same card ... will be interesting to see how they deal with that power consumption at load though.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
With 2x7970 @ STOCK they are already 175 watts over the 690's power draw.Good luck with that "headroom".
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
amd is late to the race, they never showed up this time, and when they do, they will lose, think housefires.Beenthere - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Really? There are some sick people in this world. ;)Nfarce - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
No, unlike OWS protesters, there are some successful people in this world who get off their butts and work hard enough to be able to afford a $1,000 GPU (or in my case 2 GTX 680 $530 GPUs).anactoraaron - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
"Thus even four years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer when it comes to setups using a pair of high-end 28nm GPUs is “you better damn well believe it.”":D
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
No they actually cannot. 1920X, even the cf 7970 or 690 need help with lowered settings, as in many of the games. Can't even keep up with the 1920X monitors resolution refresh rate, set at a low 60.Sorry, more fantasies another for you perhaps. :)