NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review

The gap between the release of AMD’s 7970 and the new release of the new GTX 680 has allowed the NVIDIA to pull out on top as having the fastest graphics card available. I don’t know if this was their marketing strategy or what but I have to hand it to NVIDIA for making it out on top, but for how long? NVIDIA was lucky enough to beat the HD 7970 but not by much. This is still known as the fastest GPU on the market but with the rumored release of the 7990 around the corner NVIDIA might be in for some real competition. 

GTX 680 Specs:

• Core Clock: 1006 MHz
• Stream Processors: 1536 Processor Cores
• Effective Memory Clock: 6000 MHz
• DirectX 11
• Open GL 4.2
• 1x HDMI
• 1x Standard DisplayPort
• 1x Single link DVI
• 1x Dual Link DVI
• 3D vision ready
• SLI ready
• 2 x 6 Pin power connectors
• Card Dimensions 10" x 4.36"
• Dual Slot Card
• Minimum 550 Watt PSU

NVIDIA and AMD both are in a 28nm fabrication process. The GTX 680 compared to the older yet still powerful GTX 580 has 500 million more transistors in its core, this is the highest amount of transistors packed into a single GPU to date. This also leads people to assume that the GTX 680 draws a lot less power. This is true because of the fact that GTX 680 draws only 195w under full load while the GTX 580 draws 244w and the HD 7970 sits at about 230w. NVIDIA claims that the performance/wattage is doubled that of the GTX 580. This is on account of the fact that the GTX 680 uses three times as many CUDA cores as the GTX 580, but they're clocked at a lower speed.

This picture was taken from the techradar website to show you the architecture involved with this new card.

Boosting is Good

All the Kepler cards that will be appearing from now on will be featuring a new technology called "GPU boost", a somewhat familiar design to that of Intel’s Turbo Boost technology in their second generation processors.

"GPU Boost" technology boosts the core clock on account of how much power an application is consuming. This can be done every 100ms, essentially every other frame the GPU has a choice to alter clock and voltage settings to accommodate and adjust for any drops in frame rates.

Tom Petersen says “GPU Boost is like overclocking’s little buddy… our GTX is a monster overclocker.”

The added boost in the GTX 680’s clock speed is what gives it the advantage over the HD 7970. This is what really helps this stand as the number one card on the market.

Added Features

The new Kepler card uses an inward facing power connector that's stacked on top of each other. This allows for slight improvement in cable management and looks.

TXAA, a new form of anti-aliasing has been introduced among the various things that make this card perform so well. TXAA allows games to be played without as many jagged edges, while also not impacting frame rates either. This is a great improvement over the standard AA modes that improve the looks of the game but affect the GPU's performance drastically

Another new feature is Adaptive V-Sync, this automatically disables V-sync when the frame rate drops below the monitor’s refresh rate, and turns V-sync back on once performance reaches 60fps. This allows the elimination of image tearing that standard V-sync delivers when frame rates are above 60fps, but none of the bad performance you get when fps drops bellow 60.

Whats cool about the GTX 680 is that it can also support up to four monitors, three with one auxiliary. You can also play in 3D surround as well. A slight drop in frame rates will be present unless cards are set up in a two or three way SLI configuration.

Benchmark Results

Now we are going to look at some benchmark results involving the GTX 680, GTX 580 and the HD 7970. We are also going to look at results from ASUS’s benchmarking results to get a different perspective on the cards performance.

Directx 11 Tessellation Performance

Heaven 2.5	FPS: Higher is better
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680	30.8
AMD Radeon HD 7970	28.3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580	21.7

Directx11 Gaming Performance

Crysis 2	FPS: Higher is better
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680	36
AMD Radeon HD 7970	37
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580	30

Dirt 3	FPS: Higher is better
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680	80
AMD Radeon HD 7970	58
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580	50

As you can see from these benchmark results, the GTX 680 outperforms the GTX 580 exponentially. We only see a slight increase in FPS when comparing this to the HD 7970. This may change in the near future when NVIDIA releases updated drivers for the card that will most likely boost its performance. 

Asus has put together some benchmarks of the GTX 680 running Alien vs. Predator and the Crysis 2 Bench tool. Both benchmarks were run at 2560 x 1440 resolutions on a single card.

System Specs:

Asus P9X79 Deluxe

Intel i7 3930k

Patriot 1866 Quad channel

Antec 1000w PSU

AvP Benchmark Specs

Resolution: 2560 x 1440

Texture Quality: 2

Shadow Quality: 3

Anisotropic Filtering: 16

SSAO: OFF

V-sync: OFF

Dx11 Tessellation: ON

Dx11 Advanced Shadows: ON

Dx11 MSA Samples: 1

Alien vs. Predator achieved an average of about 60 frames per second with the number of frames being 6241 and the average frame time at 16.8 ms.

Crysis 2 Benchtool Specs

Ultra-OFF

Resolution: 2560 x 1440

2x AA

Crysis 2 achieved an average frame rate of 44.4 and a minimum of 18.5.

Conclusion:

Overall this card preforms really well compared to most cards on the market. Along with its added bonus features, this is a definite buy for the PC enthusiast who wants the best out of his system. A steep $500 price point has been placed on this card so it’s a hard decision to make when dealing with which graphics card you should choose.  This is a great card indeed but don’t jump the gun on this one when we have word that a beast is revealing itself very soon. However if you're one of those hard core NVIDIA fans or just like a good solid graphics card to settle down with for a while, then this card is a must have for you.

Pros:

Lower power draw

High base clock

28nm processing

Overclocking

Cons:

More like a GTX 670

Considered Mid-Ranged

Verdict
Performance	9
Value	8
Quality	9
Features	9
Accessories	8.5
Final Score	8.75