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
Except that nVidia wins in the article and all of the accumulated benches here, even at 1920x1200 (which this card would be a complete waste on...), so what exactly are you complaining about?It's bias if they say that the AMD cards are better when they're not, but in the benchmarks and in the conclusions (here and elsewhere), nVidia is consistently ahead, so any claims of bias are completely groundless...
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - link
Read my first post instead of asking or having already read it attack like you just did and continue to be a jerk who cares, right ?You obviously are all seriously upset about the little facts I gave in my very first post. You're all going bonkers over it, and you all know I'm correct, that's what really bothers all of you.
Continue to be bothered, you cannot help it, that's for sure.
Sabresiberian - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It's certainly not crazy, I'd certainly run 3 1920x1200 monitors over 3 1920x1080s.;)
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I guess all of you got very upset that my point was made, you're looking at a biased for amd set of benchmarks. I'm sure most of you are very happy about that, but angered it has been effectively pointed out.Makaveli - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
The only thing were are upset about is your being a tool!And what point? you haven't shown a shread of evidence to back up this bias claim only whats floating around in your head!
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
Go look at the link you missed since you cannot read and only attack and call names.james.jwb - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I always love these guys who behave like this.On the one hand, if they are trolling just for the reaction, it's fascinating. What kind of weird creature lies behind the internet persona? In most cases, we all know it must be a sad figure of a person with all sorts of interesting personality problems.
But on the flip side, if this person actually means and believes what they say is some sort of honest analysis, it's just as fascinating. What kind of thick bastard must then lurk behind the keyboard in question?
It boggles the mind :)
silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Reminds me of SiliconDoc. That particular numpty got banned as far as I remember.Galidou - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I think that these creatures are Nvidia's fanboy, they react always the same way. CeriseCogburn remember me one of them a little while ago, can't remember his name. He was convinced that the 7970 pricing was the worst thing to ever happen to humanity since the birth of Justin Bieber, or at least, it looked alot like that. Sure the price wasn't attractive, but there's some limit you must not cross to stay in the real world.So as weird a creature they can be, I believe they are a result of Nvidia's funding them to spread insanity in forums speaking of video cards. They can't be natural things after all, they just don't make sense. Their closed mind is second to none. Or else, they could only have the possibility to type insanities and a filter to read the replies to stop some information entering their brain.
Parhel - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
Do you really think ATI and nVidia would pay these weird, sad, little trolls to piss off readers every time one of their products is reviewed? It's an embarassment and a distraction. No, I think they would pay someone like that NOT to talk about their products if they could. I'm sure that employees do write comments on product reviews, but guys like this are bad for business. Nobody wants someone like that on their side. If I were nVidia, I'd pay that guy to become an AMD fan!!!