NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTCompute Performance
For our look at compute performance this is going to be a brief look. Our OpenGL AES and DirectCompute Fluid Simulation benchmarks simply don’t scale with multiple GPUs, so we’ll skip though (though the data is still available in Bench).
Our first compute benchmark comes from Civilization V, which uses DirectCompute to decompress textures on the fly. Civ V includes a sub-benchmark that exclusively tests the speed of their texture decompression algorithm by repeatedly decompressing the textures required for one of the game’s leader scenes. Note that this is a DX11 DirectCompute benchmark.
Given the nature of the benchmark, it’s not surprising that we see a performance regression here with some setups. The nature of this benchmark is that it doesn’t split across multiple GPUs well, though that doesn’t stop AMD and NVIDIA from tying. This doesn’t impact real game performance as we’ve seen, but it’s a good reminder of the potential pitfalls of multi-GPU configurations. Though AMD does deserve some credit here for gaining on their single GPU performance, pushing their lead even higher.
Our other compute benchmark is SmallLuxGPU, the GPU ray tracing branch of the open source LuxRender renderer. We’re now using a development build from the version 2.0 branch, and we’ve moved on to a more complex scene that hopefully will provide a greater challenge to our GPUs.
Unlike the Civ V compute benchmark, SLG scales very well with multiple GPUs, nearly doubling in performance. Unfortunately for NVIDIA GK104 shows its colors here as a compute-weak GPU, and even with two of them we’re nowhere close to one 7970, let alone the monster that is two. If you’re looking at doing serious GPGPU compute work, you should be looking at Fermi, Tahiti, or the future Big Kepler.
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CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Keep laughing, this card cannot solid v-sync 60 at that "tiny panel" with only 4xaa in the amd fans revived favorite game crysis.Can't do it at 1920X guy.
I guess you guys all like turning down your tiny cheap cards settings all the time, even with your cheapo panels?
I mean this one can't even keep up at 1920X, gotta turn down the in game settings, keep the CP tweaked and eased off, etc.
What's wrong with you guys ?
What don't you get ?
nathanddrews - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Currently the only native 120Hz displays (true 120Hz input, not 60Hz frame doubling) are 1920x1080. If you want VSYNC @ 120Hz, then you need to be able to hit at least 120fps @ 1080p. Even the GTX690 fails to do that at maximum quality settings on some games...CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It can't do 60 v-sync at 1920 in crysis, and that's only on 4xaa.These people don't own a single high end card, that's for sure, or something is wrong with their brains.
nathanddrews - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
You must be talking about minimum fps, because on Page 5 the GTX690 is clearly averaging 85fps @1080p.Tom's Hardware (love 'em or hate 'em) has benchmarks with AA enabled and disabled. Maximum quality with AA disabled seems to be the best way to get 120fps in nearly every game @ 1080p with this card.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
You must be ignoring v-sync and stutter with frames that drop below 60, and forget 120 frames a sec.Just turn down the eye candy... on the 3 year old console ports, that are "holding us back"... at 1920X resolutions.
Those are the facts, combined with the moaning about ported console games.
Ignore those facts and you can rant and wide eye spew like others - now not only is there enough money for $500 card(s)/$1000dual, there's extra money for high end monitors when the current 1920X pukes out even the 690 and CF 7970 - on the old console port games.
Whatever, everyone can continue to bloviate that these cards destroy 1920X, until they look at the held back settings benches and actually engage their brains for once.
hechacker1 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Well not if you want to do consistent 120FPS gaming. Then you need all the horsepower you can get.Hell my 6970 struggles to maintain 120FPS, and thus makes the game choppy, even though it's only dipping to 80fps or so.
So now that I have a 120FPS monitor, it's incredibly easy to see stutters in game performance.
Time for an upgrade (1080p btw).
Sabresiberian - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Actually, they use the 5760x1200 because most of us Anandtech readers prefer the 1920x1200 monitors, not because they are trying to play favorites.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Those monitors are very rare. Of course none of you have even one.Traciatim - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
My monitor runs 1920x1200, and I specifically went out of my way to get 16:10 instead of 16:9. You fail.CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
Yes you went out of your way, why did you have to they are so common, I'm sure you did.In any case, since they are so rare the bias is still present here as shown.