# ASUS GeForce GTX 680 SLI



## W1zzard (Mar 23, 2012)

Yesterday NVIDIA introduced their new groundbreaking GeForce GTX 680, which was very well received. Today we bring you testing of a $1000 dual card SLI setup. We also use the latest WHQL driver to provide up-to-date performance numbers.

*Show full review*


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## borden5 (Mar 23, 2012)

crysis 2 68 fps at max resolution, yes it can run crysis xD


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## Lionheart (Mar 23, 2012)

Can't wait for aftermarket coolers for these cards, I'm looking at you MSI


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## nonkX3 (Mar 23, 2012)

oH my God...oH my God...oH my God...oH my God...oH my God...oH my God...oH my God...oH my God...


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## Dimi (Mar 23, 2012)

EVGA GTX 680 at 451 euro here, i think i will order fast!

I'm still stuck with a 1680x1050 res screen though, is it worth upgrading to a 1080p screen? Say a Samsung S27A750D 3D Led monitor.


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## Disparia (Mar 23, 2012)

"Earlier today I finally ordered three 1080p monitors to add multi-monitor gaming performance numbers to our reviews."

Nice.


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## Imhoteps (Mar 23, 2012)

6th!!!
Thx W1zz!


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## m1dg3t (Mar 23, 2012)

Another great review W1zz  but first paragraph: 

"NVIDIA launched its newest, most advanced GPU, the GeForce GTX 680, on March 22. The card wiped the floor with other single-GPU cards, but there's a lot more to it than its performance"

Wiped the floor?  Really? Faster than 7970 yes in most case's but by very slight margin's


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## DaC (Mar 23, 2012)

Nice move bringing multi monitors setup to the review, it's pretty clear now that future video cards and sli/crossfire of them won't make any sense for anything under 2500x1600.
It really upsets me the fact that the good old Crysis 1 is still a bar above from all other titles in graphics quality..... it has been a long long time for almost no evolution since then even though new tech being available...


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## HisSvt2 (Mar 23, 2012)

I'm pretty impressed esp since this is with day one drivers we know that future drivers will increase there performance. I wish AMD would get with the program they have dropped the driver ball so much that i swapped cards with my daughter since the drivers have fallen off.


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## HossHuge (Mar 23, 2012)

Thanks for going to the multi monitor setup, W1zz....

IMO, once you go Eyefinity/Nvidia Surround, you will never go back to a single monitor.


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## Kreij (Mar 23, 2012)

Nice scaling at 2560x1600.

Will be interesting to see how a pair of 7970s fair against a pair of 680s since the 680 seems to drop off a little at the 2560x1600 resolution compare to the 7970.


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## Anath (Mar 23, 2012)

Kreij said:


> Nice scaling at 2560x1600.
> 
> Will be interesting to see how a pair of 7970s fair against a pair of 680s since the 680 seems to drop off a little at the 2560x1600 resolution compare to the 7970.



Great review as always w1zzard. This is the only complaint i have for the sli reviews. I want to see how other sli and crossfire setups fair against the one being reviewed. For example I would like ot have seen a 580 sli and 7970 xfire setup thrown in there.


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## 63jax (Mar 23, 2012)

loool, surely didn't wipe the floor with 7970 but true, is a bit faster. not an amd fanboy i have a 560ti.


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## dj-electric (Mar 23, 2012)

Should have been compered to HD7970 CFX thought 
thanks w1z.


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## Delta6326 (Mar 23, 2012)

Scaling seems not as good as I was hoping for till you get to 1600P. Still awesome Wish they had something similar to ZeroCore. Most likely drivers will help the scaling even more.
Beats 7970 CFX

GTX 680 Sli / 7970 CFX / 7950 CFX


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## OneCool (Mar 23, 2012)

MAN!! If AMD would drop the price of the 7870 to $225-260ish it would over plain and simple.


Oh and the SLI 680 numbers look too


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Mar 23, 2012)

Now I just need to find someone with an Asus card in stock.


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## bear jesus (Mar 23, 2012)

The fact that you have bought 3 screens has made me way happier than the review it's self, thank you W1zzard.


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## Anath (Mar 23, 2012)

CrAsHnBuRnXp said:


> Now I just need to find someone with an Asus card in stock.



Even the distributors are tapped out. I dont get my next shipment in until next week.


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Mar 23, 2012)

Hey w1z how about you sell me one of those 680's.


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## xenocide (Mar 23, 2012)

OneCool said:


> MAN!! If AMD would drop the price of the 7870 to $225-260ish it would over plain and simple.



Not necessarily.  Nvidia still has 4 or more cards to release.


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## lZKoce (Mar 23, 2012)

It really depends on the game if gaming is at stake. I looked at the results for the only game I play Starcraft2 and they are horrible. Even on large resolutions: 2-5 frames difference from a single GPU. 429 quid for 3 frames- you serious? I know why is that, but still not cool


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> Scaling seems not as good as I was hoping for till you get to 1600P. Still awesome Wish they had something similar to ZeroCore. Most likely drivers will help the scaling even more.
> Beats 7970 CFX
> 
> GTX 680 Sli / 7970 CFX / 7950 CFX
> http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_680_SLI/images/perfrel.gif http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7970_CrossFire/images/perfrel.gif http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7950_CrossFire/images/perfrel.gif



Scaling is still pretty damn good. its about 95%, and thats still with immature drivers. We can expect some better sli performance with future drivers


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## redeye (Mar 23, 2012)

*interesting...*

with all due respect... the gtx680SLI does not wipe the floor with the 7970 crossfire... while the 7970 combo is about 1100, it can be purchased now!... whereas the 680SLI can't
(while the review systems changed, the numbers are still in the ball park)


http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7970_CrossFire/14.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_680_SLI/14.html

to sum up 

Metro2033 1920x1200 4xAA 16xAF GTX 680 SLI 4096M..........48.0 FPS
Metro2033 1920x1200 4xAA 16xAF HD 7970 Crossfire 6144M...52.9 FPS


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## avatar_raq (Mar 23, 2012)

I can't wait for the multi-monitor comparison!! Eyefinity / Surround FTW!!


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## N3M3515 (Mar 23, 2012)

The BEST part of the review:
"*Earlier today I finally ordered three 1080p monitors to add multi-monitor gaming performance numbers to our reviews.*"


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## eddman (Mar 23, 2012)

redeye said:


> with all due respect... the gtx680SLI does not wipe the floor with the 7970 crossfire... while the 7970 combo is about 1100, it can be purchased now!... whereas the 680SLI can't
> (while the review systems changed, the numbers are still in the ball park)
> 
> 
> ...



I don't know. Losing in just one modern game and winning the rest is sort of "wiping the floor" IMO.


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## HTC (Mar 23, 2012)

Jizzler said:


> "Earlier today I finally ordered three 1080p monitors to add multi-monitor gaming performance numbers to our reviews."
> 
> Nice.





N3M3515 said:


> The BEST part of the review:
> "*Earlier today I finally ordered three 1080p monitors to add multi-monitor gaming performance numbers to our reviews.*"



Totally agree!!!!

If @ all possible, several triple monitor resolutions should be used in reviews (landscape and / or portrait).


It surprised me that, as the resolution went up, so did the scaling. Since it had 2 GB (as opposed to 7970's 3GB), i was expecting it the other way around.


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## NHKS (Mar 23, 2012)

Dimi said:


> I'm still stuck with a 1680x1050 res screen though, is it worth upgrading to a 1080p screen? Say a Samsung S27A750D 3D Led monitor.



The S27A750D will not support nvidia 3D vision (ver.1 or 2), since it uses proprietary 3d tech from samsung and the TriDef driver supports only Radeon HD3D tech.. 

as for 3d vision from nvidia, its recommended u go for version-2 since it has larger 3d glasses(abt 20% more area) and features 'lightboost' which essentially reduces strain on the eyes by allowing greater brightness of screen.. currently there are only 4 models(Acer HN274HB, Asus VG278H, BenQ XL2420T & XL2420TX) that support ver-2, more will be launched..
For more info on 3d vision compatible monitors, see here or here


Great review! W1zz! and just asking if we have separate reviews for 3D performance of nvidia cards (i know here can't be comparisons to AMD Radeons since HD3D is rare or not used at all)


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## Spartan805 (Mar 23, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> Another great review W1zz  but first paragraph:
> 
> "NVIDIA launched its newest, most advanced GPU, the GeForce GTX 680, on March 22. The card wiped the floor with other single-GPU cards, but there's a lot more to it than its performance"
> 
> Wiped the floor?  Really? Faster than 7970 yes in most case's but by very slight margin's



I agree..... its close and if anything I'd say amd can improve with BETTER driver support. Close none the less.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

redeye said:


> with all due respect... the gtx680SLI does not wipe the floor with the 7970 crossfire... while the 7970 combo is about 1100, it can be purchased now!... whereas the 680SLI can't
> (while the review systems changed, the numbers are still in the ball park)
> 
> 
> ...



yay 1 game! honestly the GTX680 performs better, and Sli also scales better right now. Don't base anything off one game.


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## Kreij (Mar 23, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> yay 1 game! honestly the GTX680 performs better, and Sli also scales better right now. Don't base anything off one game.



With Catalyst 11.12 driver too. We'll see with latest drivers when W1zz gets a chance.


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## BumbleBee (Mar 23, 2012)

is there a point testing 1024x768 lol


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## Rowsol (Mar 23, 2012)

Okay, it only took 5 years but crysis is finally cpu bound.


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## BumbleBee (Mar 23, 2012)

the only gamers I know that play at 1024x768 or lower are counter-strike players. what good is this information to them? seems like a lot of work... anyways thanks for the review


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## 15th Warlock (Mar 23, 2012)

I'll repeat myself, thank you for the very thorough review, I always look forward to reading your articles, you address all the minute details 



> Earlier today I finally ordered three 1080p monitors to add multi-monitor gaming performance numbers to our reviews.



I specially look forward to this, not many websites cater to ppl playing on eyefinity/surround setups, at resolutions 5760x1080 or higher, I commend you for your dedication to your readers. 

You may already know this, but I humbly recommend you to download a little program called "widescreen fixer", it provides support to many games out there that don't properly render on multiple monitors like Skyrim, MW3, ME3 and many other games, and even legacy games like battlefield 2, you'll be surprised at how little many game developers care about people gaming on multiple monitors 

Enjoy your triple monitor setup, you're in for a treat


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

Kreij said:


> With Catalyst 11.12 driver too. We'll see with latest drivers when W1zz gets a chance.



newer AMD drivers or Newer Nvidia drivers that released late yesterday?


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## Kreij (Mar 23, 2012)

I mean using the latest drivers from both camps.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

Kreij said:


> I mean using the latest drivers from both camps.



ohh yeahhh. That would be nice. Im interested to see what nvidia will be able to do with driver releases to come for the 680. There was a magical driver for the 470 that made it rise about the HD5870 at the time.


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## iamthewizard2 (Mar 24, 2012)

what a stupid article....so you test GTX 680 SLI and dont even compare it against a GTX 580 SLI or any other SLI by that matter??? WTF????!


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## renz496 (Mar 24, 2012)

iamthewizard2 said:


> what a stupid article....so you test GTX 680 SLI and dont even compare it against a GTX 580 SLI or any other SLI by that matter??? WTF????!



if you don't like it don't read it. don't make such a useless comment. 

btw thanks for the review w1zz


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## Lionheart (Mar 24, 2012)

iamthewizard2 said:


> what a stupid article....so you test GTX 680 SLI and dont even compare it against a GTX 580 SLI or any other SLI by that matter??? WTF????!



Obvious douche bag troll :shadedshu and no, you are not a wizard especially with an attitude like that...


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## thematrix606 (Mar 24, 2012)

renz496 said:


> if you don't like it don't read it. don't make such a useless comment.
> 
> btw thanks for the review w1zz





Lionheart said:


> Obvious douche bag troll :shadedshu and no, you are not a wizard especially with an attitude like that...



Actually he has a very valid point, this should have been tested against the popular SLI solutions, like 580 & 570 and crossfire of 6970 & 7970. 

Otherwise you only capture a part of your audience.


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## BumbleBee (Mar 24, 2012)

it's the wrong way to go about it.


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## HTC (Mar 24, 2012)

thematrix606 said:


> Actually he has a very valid point, this should have been tested against the popular SLI solutions, like 580 & 570 and crossfire of 6970 & 7970.
> 
> Otherwise you only capture a part of your audience.





BumbleBee said:


> it's the wrong way to go about it.



Agree with both of you!


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## OneCool (Mar 24, 2012)

Im thinking W1z is waiting for the multi monitor setup and he going to rerun the 7x00 with the first official AMD driver that supports them 12.2

Also he said his second 680 was late getting there so you know he stayed up all night just to get us that.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 24, 2012)

HTC said:


> Agree with both of you!



Then i agree with you three.


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## btarunr (Mar 24, 2012)

BumbleBee said:


> is there a point testing 1024x768 lol



It needs to be there for consistency with the all-resolution/average Relative Performance figure.


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## BumbleBee (Mar 24, 2012)

no it doesn't


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## N3M3515 (Mar 24, 2012)

btarunr said:


> It needs to be there for consistency with the all-resolution/average Relative Performance figure.



I think that it is irrelevant..
For the average only should be 1680x1050 - 1920x1080 - 2536x1xxx
nobody buys a GTX680 to play at 1024x768 or 1280x1024


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## Kreij (Mar 24, 2012)

It gives you an average based on all of the various aspect ratios (4:3, 16:10, etc.)
Whether 1024x768 is a good 4:3 to use, is not for me to judge.


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## mR Yellow (Mar 25, 2012)

Another incomplete review... where is the 7970 CFX?
Other sites show it being faster than SLI.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 25, 2012)

W1zz, it wouldn't hurt to put 7970 & 7950 cfx results, for the sake of comparison.


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## m1dg3t (Mar 25, 2012)

Patience all, i'm sure they are coming


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> Another great review W1zz  but first paragraph:
> 
> "NVIDIA launched its newest, most advanced GPU, the GeForce GTX 680, on March 22. The card wiped the floor with other single-GPU cards, but there's a lot more to it than its performance"
> 
> Wiped the floor?  Really? Faster than 7970 yes in most case's but by very slight margin's



god you don't need to get so specific. Its performance FPS was wasn;t that much but when you consider other things like noise, power consumption, cooling, and for the price it wiped the floor pretty good

If wizz says a part wiped the floor, it wiped the floor!


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## erocker (Mar 25, 2012)

Defend the billion dollar corporation, DEFEND IT! Lol, I want to see how a 4gb version fares in higher resolution gaming.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2012)

erocker said:


> Defend the billion dollar corporation, DEFEND IT! Lol, I want to see how a 4gb version fares in higher resolution gaming.



well the 2gb version is holding its own pretty well, so if thats any indication on the 4gb, i assume itll do a bit better


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## aBigRat (Mar 25, 2012)

It seems, when comparing clock to clock. The GTX 680 is at HD 7950 level.
800MHz vs 1050MHz+ (25% clock gap) and 60% vs 71% (22% performance gap).
And the real transistor count of the two is almost equal, and so does the power draw.
Hope AMD will release some variant like HD 7960 and 7980 with rated clock at 1GHz.
That will help AMD retake the crown nicely.


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## HTC (Mar 25, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> W1zz, it wouldn't hurt to put 7970 & 7950 cfx results, for the sake of comparison.



As well as 6970s and 580s dual cards.


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## m1dg3t (Mar 25, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> god you don't need to get so specific. Its performance FPS was wasn;t that much but when you consider other things like noise, power consumption, cooling, and for the price it wiped the floor pretty good
> 
> If wizz says a part wiped the floor, it wiped the floor!










If you are happier than anything to have a stripped down, limited, OC'd Fermi that _barely_ perform's better, MOAR power to ya  15% - 20% is _starting_ to wipe the floor, like the diff between 7970 & 680 vs 580 & 6970  And i'm not just refering to FPS

I'm still waiting for Kepler 

See: I can troll too


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## erocker (Mar 25, 2012)

Trolling is lame, I like graphs and charts and stuffs. BF3:






If the GTX 680 does this without hitting this amout of vram, I'm sure Nvidia did some "magical" IQ tweaking... Unless the game engine itself scales IQ due to Vram limitations.. Don't know really.


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## HTC (Mar 25, 2012)

erocker said:


> Trolling is lame, I like graphs and charts and stuffs. BF3:
> 
> http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp112/erocker414/bf3vramusage.jpg
> 
> *If the GTX 680 does this without hitting this amout of vram, I'm sure Nvidia did some "magical" IQ tweaking... Unless the game engine itself scales IQ due to Vram limitations..* Don't know really.



I said it before in post #29:



HTC said:


> It surprised me that, as the resolution went up, so did the scaling. Since it had 2 GB (as opposed to 7970's 3GB), i was expecting it the other way around.


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## erocker (Mar 25, 2012)

HTC said:


> It surprised me that, as the resolution went up, so did the scaling. Since it had 2 GB (as opposed to 7970's 3GB), i was expecting it the other way around.



I don't understand what you're saying here. Are you agreeing that IQ goes down with the memory limitation?


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## HTC (Mar 25, 2012)

erocker said:


> I don't understand what you're saying here. Are you agreeing that IQ goes down with the memory limitation?



I'm agreeing that, since the scaling gets better with higher resolutions, somethings different between the 2, unless nVidia accomplishes the same with less RAM (doubtful).

EDIT

I'm surprised nobody's investigating how's it possible to scale better @ higher resolutions with less RAM.

Maybe the IQ gets lowered, maybe nVidia has a better implementation of it's scaling then ATI does, maybe something else is going on: dunno, really.


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## mandis (Mar 25, 2012)

What was the point of this review? Why would you compare an SLI configuration solely against single cards? What is that supposed to prove? How are we supposed to gain any tangible evidence from this??

I was looking forward to this review and now I can't justify the time i wasted reading it. I'm very dissapointed!


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## BumbleBee (Mar 25, 2012)

the natives are getting restless


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## Stevethegreat (Mar 26, 2012)

With all due respect I just don't think that the scaling is ought to be so slight. Excluding driver's problems you should be getting upwards the 70% compared to single card performance. It seems to me that you're bottlenecked by the CPU. Maybe it's time to retire the i7-920. The good ol' chap has seen too many battles (reviews) and maybe lately he's fudging your results. 

Try a Sandy Bridge at 4.7GHz (or even better an Ivy Bridge) and you'll get different results me thinks, especially on lower resolutions. Let those little beasts -your GFX cards- breathe. 

Apart from that, great review as always very methodic and the most informative compared to all the other sites...


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## jaredpace (Mar 26, 2012)

mandis said:


> What was the point of this review? Why would you compare an SLI configuration solely against single cards? What is that supposed to prove? How are we supposed to gain any tangible evidence from this??
> 
> I was looking forward to this review and now I can't justify the time i wasted reading it. I'm very dissapointed!



Just check both reviews and make your own comparison like this:


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## mandis (Mar 26, 2012)

jaredpace said:


> Just check both reviews and make your own comparison like this:
> 
> http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_680_SLI/images/crysis_2560_1600.gif
> http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7970_CrossFire/images/crysis_2560_1600.gif



Thanx jaredpace! 

I suppose what bothered me the most with this review was its "MARKETING" over "informative" orientation. This review should have been about last gen vs current gen SLIs as well as SLI vs CF. Anything less than that renders the entire attempt rather pointless...


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## N3M3515 (Mar 26, 2012)

Stevethegreat said:


> With all due respect I just don't think that the scaling is ought to be so slight. Excluding driver's problems you should be getting upwards the 70% compared to single card performance. It seems to me that you're bottlenecked by the CPU. Maybe it's time to retire the i7-920. The good ol' chap has seen too many battles (reviews) and maybe lately he's fudging your results.
> 
> Try a Sandy Bridge at 4.7GHz (or even better an Ivy Bridge) and you'll get different results me thinks, especially on lower resolutions. Let those little beasts -your GFX cards- breathe.
> 
> Apart from that, great review as always very methodic and the most informative compared to all the other sites...



I agree in the part that sli and cfx will be bottlenecked with the i7 920. at least in 1080p


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## Moatsim (Mar 26, 2012)

Omg


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## xorbe (Mar 27, 2012)

BumbleBee said:


> is there a point testing 1024x768 lol



Though the result by itself isn't so interesting, it's very nice info to see how the gfx card perf scales 1024 through 2560


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## xenocide (Mar 28, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> I agree in the part that sli and cfx will be bottlenecked with the i7 920. at least in 1080p



The 920 is overclocked to 3.8GHz for all the tests, I have severe doubts it bottlenecks anything.  If he went to SB people would complain since it's not 16x\16x.  People are always just looking for any reason to refute the facts.  The fact remains, W1z's test bench is fine, and his testing methodology is definitely amongst the best.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 28, 2012)

xenocide said:


> The 920 is overclocked to 3.8GHz for all the tests, I have severe doubts it bottlenecks anything.  If he went to SB people would complain since it's not 16x\16x.  People are always just looking for any reason to refute the facts.  The fact remains, W1z's test bench is fine, and his testing methodology is definitely amongst the best.



I'm not refuting anything , nor looking for any reason to refute any fact. 

Yes, W1z methodology is fine. But not perfect, not saying it has to be, but there is ALWAYS room for improvement, and i believe everyone is entitled to have its own opinion on any given topic.

So, my opinion is that i7 920 even at 3.8, could be a bottleneck at 1080p when testing highend single gpu cards in sli or cfx, even more if it is dual gpu cards in sli/cfx.


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## thematrix606 (Mar 28, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> I'm not refuting anything , nor looking for any reason to refute any fact.
> 
> Yes, W1z methodology is fine. But not perfect, not saying it has to be, but there is ALWAYS room for improvement, and i believe everyone is entitled to have its own opinion on any given topic.
> 
> So, my opinion is that i7 920 even at 3.8, could be a bottleneck at 1080p when testing highend single gpu cards in sli or cfx, even more if it is dual gpu cards in sli/cfx.



The reasoning should simply be, that the gtx 680 is a NEW piece of technology, and it should be coupled with recent other hardware as well. So yes, you should use an SB with it, because people who upgrade, will most likely use that CPU with it as well. It's just capturing the majority of your audience, really simple, rather common sense logic.

Now, why no response from the author on 2 of the major flaws of this review? Oo

No 580/570 SLI or 6970/7970 Xfire, and older HW!


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