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 - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
I'm certain they would pay none of you since not a single one can be honest nor has a single argument to counter my points.You're all down to name calling trolls - and you all have to face the facts now, that your clueless ignorance left out of your minds for some time.
Have fun buying your cheap 1080P panels and slow and cheapo amd cards - LOL
Oh sorry, you all now buy premium flat panels...
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
No actually I expected a lot more from the people here.I expected a big thank you, or a thanks for the information we'll keep that in mind and it helps our purchasing decisions.
Instead we got a flood of raging new monitor owners and haters and name callers.
Next time just thanking me for providing very pertinent information would be the right thing to do, but at this point I don't expect any of you to ever do the right thing.
UltraTech79 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Never seen a triple screen setup before?tipoo - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I'm curious why the 680 and 690 trail AMD cards in Crysis and Metro, seeing as those seem to be the most GPU intensive games, while they win in most other tests. Would it be shading performance or something else?My mind is pretty blow that we have cards that can run Crysis and Metro at 5760x1200 at very comfortable framerates now, that's insane. But barring that resolution or 2560 for some games, I'm sure most of us don't see appeal here, it will be sold in a very very small niche. For normal monitor resolutions, I doubt games in large quantities will get much more demanding until we have new consoles out.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Oh, wow, they also are so biased toward amd they removed the actual most demanding game, Shogun 2, Total War, because I kept pointing out how the Nvidia 680's swept that game across the board - so now it's gone !ROFL
(before you attack me I note the anand reviewer stated S2TW is the most demanding, it's right in the reviews here - but not this one.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Um, it's there. Page 8.Sabresiberian - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
LOL.Cerise, epic fail!
;)
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Oh I see it was added because the patch broke the Nvidia cards - but in amd's favor again, the tester kept the breaking patch in, instead of providing results.Wow, more amd bias.
Glad my epic fails are so productive. :-)
U still mad ? Or madder and raging out of control?
silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
So, if they failed to add it, it'd have been AMD bias, but considering they DID add it... it's AMD bias.And you're the one talking about rage, trollboi?
Had you just merely mentioned that the patch doesn't provide favourable results for NVIDIA cards, Ryan might have been tempted to reinstall the game and retest. Well, he might have - can't speak for the guy. Doubt he will now, though.
tipoo - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
So back on non-trolling topic...?