NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Its popularity aside, Battlefield 3 may be the most interesting game in our benchmark suite for a single reason: it’s the first AAA DX10+ game. It’s been 5 years since the launch of the first DX10 GPUs, and 3 whole process node shrinks later we’re finally to the point where games are using DX10’s functionality as a baseline rather than an addition. Not surprisingly BF3 is one of the best looking games in our suite, but as with past Battlefield games that beauty comes with a high performance cost.
Battlefield 3 has been NVIDIA’s crown jewel; a widely played multiplayer game with a clear lead for NVIDIA hardware. And with multi-GPU thrown into the picture that doesn’t change, leading to the GTX 690 once again taking a very clear lead here over the 7970CF at all resolutions. With that said, we see something very interesting at 5760, with NVIDIA’s lead shrinking by quite a bit. What was a 21% lead at 2560 is only a 10% at 5760. So far we haven’t seen any strong evidence of NVIDIA being VRAM limited with only 2GB of VRAM and while this isn’t strong evidence that the situation has changed is does warrant consideration. If anything is going to be VRAM limited after all it’s BF3.
Meanwhile compared to the GTX 680 SLI the GTX 690 is doing okay here. It’s only achieving 93% of the GTX 680 SLI’s performance at 2560, but for some reason pulls ahead at 5760, covering that to 96% of the performance of the dual video card setup.
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bobsmith1492 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It's not that rare; I got a fairly inexpensive 24" 1920x1200 HP monitor from Newegg a year ago. There weren't many options but it was there and it's great.a5cent - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
You are right that the average Joe doesn't have a 1920x1200 monitor, but this is an enthusiast web-site! Not a single enthusiast I know owns a 1080 display. 1920x1200 monitors aren't hard to find, but you will need to spend a tad more.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
Nope, 242 vs 16 is availability, you lose miserably. You all didn't suddenly have one along with your "friends" you suddenly acquired and have memorized their monitor sizes instantly as well.ROFL - the lies are innumerable at this point.
UltraTech79 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
They make up about 10% stock. I wouldn't call that very rare. Newegg and other places have a couple dozen+ to choose from.Maybe YOU dont buy very much.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - link
Closer to 5% than it is to 10%, and they cost a lot more for all the moaning penny pinchers who've suddenly become flush.Digimonkey - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It's either 1920x1200 @ 60hz, or 1920x1080 @ 120hz. I prefer smoother gameplay over 120 pixels. Also I know quite a few gamers that like using their TV for their PC gaming, so this would also be limited to 1080p.CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
No one here is limited, they all said, so no one uses their big screens, they all want it @ 1200P now because amd loses not so badly there...ROFL
Dracusis - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I'm be more worried about AMD's performance going down in certain games due to Crossfire than something as trival as this. As a 4870X2 owner I can tell you this is not at all uncommon for AMD. I still have to disable 1 GPU in most games, including BF3, because AMDs drivers for any card more than 12 months old are just terrible. As you can see even the 6990 is being beat by a 6970 in games as modern as Skyrim - their drivers are just full of fail.Galidou - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
A much higher percentage?!? that's 7% more... nothing extraordinary...Let's just say a higher percentage, when you say much, it makes us beleive Nvidia's paying you.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
10% you might be able to ignore, 17% you cannot. It's much higher, it changes several of the games here as to who wins in the article in the accumulated benches.It's a big difference.