# NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Kepler 2 GB



## W1zzard (Mar 16, 2012)

Today NVIDIA released their new GeForce GTX 680 which is based on the company's brand-new Kepler architecture. The card comes with massively improved performance per Watt. It also introduces an automatic dynamic overclocking method which gives the card the leading edge, making it the fastest single GPU graphics card in the world.

*Show full review*


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## W1zzard (Mar 22, 2012)

If you have any questions regarding dynamic overclocking, post them here, I will try to answer them.


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## Recus (Mar 22, 2012)

Kepler is super. 

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru.../52616-nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-2gb-review.html
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=28910
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/1


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## 15th Warlock (Mar 22, 2012)

Thanks for the excellent review W1zzard, as always, very thorough 

I have a question, now that NDA has lifted, do you know when the card is officially available for sale? It's past 6am PMT and Newegg is yet to show any results. 

Thank you once more


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## mtosev (Mar 22, 2012)

the card got 9.5 and the editor's choice award.nice gfx by nvidia


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## Mindweaver (Mar 22, 2012)

Great review!  Now let the price wars begin! I want a 580 for around $200.. hehehe


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## Supercrit (Mar 22, 2012)

Now AMD has to drop prices due to nvidia being cheaper, on what earth are we living on now?


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## Yellow&Nerdy? (Mar 22, 2012)

Great review as always from W1zzard. Not really sure what advantages the dynamic overclocking brings, but overall the card seems pretty good. 5 - 10% faster than the 7970, with less power consumption and a lower price puts quite some pressure on AMD to lower the price of their top cards. Now I'm hoping that Nvidia releases some more affordable cards, so that we can get a full on price war.


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## okidna (Mar 22, 2012)

Great review!  Also thorough explanation about the new overclocking method. 

Great card too. 

Well done NVIDIA, this time there will be no keplerishotbbqgrill jokes anymore


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## jpierce55 (Mar 22, 2012)

An Earth when AMD knew Nvidia would be a little late and took advantage. If we see a price war we will know that for truth. I wonder what we can expect on their mid range card.


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## Crap Daddy (Mar 22, 2012)

As I understood well, the max OC with this card, from a traditional POV is around 1300MHz (1150 plus offset 150 MHz)?


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## Fairlady-z (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> If you have any questions regarding dynamic overclocking, post them here, I will try to answer them.



Dear Wizzard,

Do you think I should dump my two 7970's with two EK Nickel Acetal blocks, two EK back plates in exchange for two GTX 680's? I have a Corsair 800D case, and it gets hot it there; therefore, I thought about watercooling my cards. The current catalyst is a little clunky and pain in my butt on boot up, as the eyefinity wont shift to arranged monitor when it boots Up, as I have to fire up the catalyst controller for it to work. Anyways, sorry for the rant, but I feel bummed out or am I wrong for feeling this way? I think I got the very short end of the stick performance and quality component wise. Not wealthy by any means, but the cost of the cards is not a concern to me. 

Thanks,

Fairlady-Z.


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## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

Ok card but the dynamic oc seems like a pain in the ass to me.
I would have liked to see 7870 on those graps as well, why isnt there?


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## LifeOnMars (Mar 22, 2012)

Killer product, great job Nvidia. Also a very thorough review Wizz and Kudos for adapting and including the new features that Kepler brings.

I want SLI cards of these bad boys now and thats what I'm saving for.


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## johnnyfiive (Mar 22, 2012)

They're slowly popping up on newegg fellas! I'm waiting for evga's to show up.


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## Fourstaff (Mar 22, 2012)

AMD is in for a rude shock. Gogo price wars!


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## 15th Warlock (Mar 22, 2012)

johnnyfiive said:


> They're slowly popping up on newegg fellas! I'm waiting for evga's to show up.



Do you have a link? I seem to be unable to get  to display any results for gtx 680. 
Thank you


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## johnnyfiive (Mar 22, 2012)

" Thank you for ordering from Newegg.com. "
EVGA 02G-P4-2680-KR GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Item #: N82E16814130768

Man these are selling out quick already. Had the ASUS one as I was going to check out, GONE.
Got the EVGA one in the cart as soon as I saw it show up. Sheesh.


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## entropy13 (Mar 22, 2012)

Ahead somewhat in raw performance over the 7970, still a bit ahead in perf/watt, way ahead in perf/$.


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## johnnyfiive (Mar 22, 2012)

EVGA

EVGA 02G-P4-2680-KR GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit GD...


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## deadmansclick (Mar 22, 2012)

Fourstaff said:


> AMD is in for a rude shock. Gogo price wars!



prices are the same in the uk for 680 & 7970 atm


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## Psychoholic (Mar 22, 2012)

Hmm.. so 6% (Avg) over 7970, guess i don't have a reason to go jump on one of these, was kinda hoping I would be compelled hell might just order one to play with 

I'd like to see a comparison with 7970 at the same clocks though, should be pretty close clock for clock.


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## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

deadmansclick said:


> prices are the same in the uk for 680 & 7970 atm



That's because new products prices are always inflated they will become lower eventually.


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## Fourstaff (Mar 22, 2012)

deadmansclick said:


> prices are the same in the uk for 680 & 7970 atm



Yeah, very soon AMD will have to cut their asking price of the 7970 to below £400 to stay competitive. Not everyday your opponent comes up with a product which is faster, consumes less power and cheaper at the same time.



DarkOCean said:


> That's because new products prices are always inflated.


GTX 680 is very price competitive, as you just saw.


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## 15th Warlock (Mar 22, 2012)

johnnyfiive said:


> EVGA
> 
> EVGA 02G-P4-2680-KR GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit GD...



Thank you so much! just ordered from my phone 




> Order Summary
> Qty	Product Description	Price
> Order #:*******(shipped via UPS Guaranteed 3 Day)
> 2
> ...



You rock!


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Mar 22, 2012)

Whats the difference between adaptive vsync and tripple buffering?


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 22, 2012)

Wow this is a beast of a card!


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## legends84 (Mar 22, 2012)

now i felt like want to throw away my 7970


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## ramcoza (Mar 22, 2012)

*Nice*

Multi monitor (5760x1200) review here.. 
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_kepler_gpu_geforce_gtx_680_video_card_review/14


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## Dimi (Mar 22, 2012)

Very nice review, i will get me one of these for my next build (hopefully next month with an ivy bridge cpu). 

My only gripe with the review is that it wasn't done with the just released 301.10 drivers which could have increased even more fps and make use of the newly implemented technology by nVidia.


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## puma99dk| (Mar 22, 2012)

Great Review W1zzard ^^

too bard it's so expensive >.<

but i guess that's the price so i think i will keep my GTX 570.


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## W1zzard (Mar 22, 2012)

Psychoholic said:


> I'd like to see a comparison with 7970 at the same clocks though, should be pretty close clock for clock.



not possible, due to dynamic clocks always changing the clock speed of gtx 680



DarkOCean said:


> I would have liked to see 7870 on those graps as well, why isnt there?



because it's too slow to be included in the comparison



Crap Daddy said:


> As I understood well, the max OC with this card, from a traditional POV is around 1300MHz (1150 plus offset 150 MHz)?



as mentioned in the review you can't just look at a single clock speed anymore. but yes, base clock would be up by 150 mhz, to 1300



Dimi said:


> My only gripe with the review is that it wasn't done with the just released 301.10 drivers



those were released 3 hours ago. i worked a week on the gtx 680 review. can i borrow your time machine?


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## zargana (Mar 22, 2012)

Thanks for the review. Also thanks Nvidia for the price. 

If Amd wants his share from the market, he needs to catch train before its too late. 

499$ nvidia gpu price -hope- will have have snowball effect on AMD side.

Then i should buy my 7970.


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## entropy13 (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> those were released 3 hours ago. i worked a week on the gtx 680 review. can i borrow your time machine?



And the 680 still beats the more expensive 7970 even without the "right" drivers...


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## BarbaricSoul (Mar 22, 2012)

Great reveiw Wizz. 

Great card for a high-end mid-level card. I'd love to see what the actual top GK100 could do. Judging from the GK104's performance, I'd say the GK100, at stock settings, could beat the 6990 and take the overall performance crown.


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## krisna159 (Mar 22, 2012)

damn good... nice review like always Wizz..
i hope this card will be available in my country soon... its worthy to upgrade... :toast


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## Athlon2K15 (Mar 22, 2012)

As always the best GPU reviews are right here on tpu. looks like AMD needs to get their shit together or they'll be stuck doing APU's for the years to come


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## Sihastru (Mar 22, 2012)

Review driver: NVIDIA 285.62. I've seen reviews that re-tested with the R300 drivers and there are sizeable performance differences. Will there be a followup? Perhaps for the SLI review?


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## fullinfusion (Mar 22, 2012)

Nice review as always Wizz 

Hows the sli tests going? Almost done? That's going to be interesting to see what sli vs cross fire brings to the table.


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## imitation (Mar 22, 2012)

Way to go, NVIDIA! Now let the price drops begin!

Thanks for the review, W1zz!


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## W1zzard (Mar 22, 2012)

fullinfusion said:


> Hows the sli tests going? Almost done? That's going to be interesting to see what sli vs cross fire brings to the table.



no second card for SLI. i got more incoming but they seem to be in transit somewhere


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## Rowsol (Mar 22, 2012)

Nvidia is cheaper than the AMD counterpart.  Never thought I'd see the day.

Thanks for the review!


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## xaira (Mar 22, 2012)

best and easiest to understand reviews are always right here on TPU...gr8 job


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## Dimi (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> those were released 3 hours ago. i worked a week on the gtx 680 review. can i borrow your time machine?



If i had one, ABSOLUTELY!

This was a great review, didn't mean to nitpick. My apologies!

Do you think you would get more fps when paired with a 3770K? I got a 3+ year old i7 920 but i really want to upgrade, especially to an ivy bridge because they got that quicksync thingy to convert video's really fast. I don't want the sandy bridge with ivy being this close to release.


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## dj-electric (Mar 22, 2012)

These maxoc results does not look good imo


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## HossHuge (Mar 22, 2012)

> Another area that has seen improvement is NVIDIA's display output logic, which supports up to four active displays now. This makes it easier than ever before to setup a multi-monitor gaming system, with just one NVIDIA card.



Finally!

I haven't had a Nvidia card since my 8600gts.  It might be time for a switcharoo.


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## Lionheart (Mar 22, 2012)

Like pretty much everyone else said, great review Wizz and this looks like to be a another beasty card from Nvidia 

Round of applause for Wizz CLAP CLAP CLAP FAP FAP FAP


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## Jonap_1st (Mar 22, 2012)

poeple : "if your 7970 wont drop to $400 - 450, i will give my wallet to nvidia!"


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## Capitan Harlock (Mar 22, 2012)

legends84 said:


> now i felt like want to throw away my 7970



only for just 10 max 15 fps? dont kidding me , are both good cards but i dont think is a pain for little difference in fps is not like compare amd fx and intel


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## HossHuge (Mar 22, 2012)

Jonap_1st said:


> poeple : "if your 7970 wont drop to $400 - 450, i will give my wallet to nvidia!"



Prices here have changed already.  7970 is selling at the same price.


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## badtaylorx (Mar 22, 2012)

wow....so basically amd and nvidia are even........both sets of fanboys must be pissed!!!


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## dj-electric (Mar 22, 2012)

Cheer up HD7970 owners, you got an overclocking monster that can reach performance beyond an overclocked GTX680. No hard feelings.

NVIDIA did kicked their balls thought with that one (efficiency-wise)


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## Mindweaver (Mar 22, 2012)

Wow.. They way these cards are selling out.. when they are back in stock I bet they will be $550-$600 on the egg...


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## jsfitz54 (Mar 22, 2012)

Newegg:  Only EVGA card in stock.


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## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

Fourstaff said:


> GTX 680 is very price competitive, as you just saw.



I was trying to sa prices are always inflated in Europe, Australia etc, yes it is competitive so that i'm expecting the competition will drop their prices but i think we will not see any miracles.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Mar 22, 2012)




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## manofthem (Mar 22, 2012)

EVGA in stock
 Computer Hardware, Video Cards & Video Devices, D...

Beaten to it already, sorry


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## Dos101 (Mar 22, 2012)

Wonder how PhysX performance on this is compared to a 580?


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## NHKS (Mar 22, 2012)

UPDATE : EVGA & K|ngp|n hit *1842MHz* yesterday under LN2 with a stock GTX680 board(added PWM board) ..

 attempt still ON!


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 22, 2012)

I would seriously love to give W1Z a flying High five!


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## avaya (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard - I think the silent computing and home theater communities would use/link to/benefit from a big matrix of every gpu you have reviewed with dBa idle, dBa load (and maybe a couple other fields like release date and performance metric) scores. 

Your sound testing methodology makes you the king of every hardware review site I know.


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## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

Dos101 said:


> Wonder how PhysX performance on this is compared to a 580?



It must be better.


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## Steevo (Mar 22, 2012)

Amazingly efficient card. Hard to say if this will be the top dog with the odd overclocking features, however I am guessing there will be more attempts at reaching a maximum stable clock.


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## Desert Eagle (Mar 22, 2012)

Thanks for the excellent review W1zzard. I have been looking forward to this review more than any other in recent memory.


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## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> because it's too slow to be included in the comparison



Slower than gtx 480 or 6970?


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## Mistral (Mar 22, 2012)

Good review and nice to see the nV have surpassed themselves in the power/efficiency department. Sweet pricing too, so far, let's see how long stock lasts.

Here's to hoping for $300-something 7950s


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## Wrigleyvillain (Mar 22, 2012)

Mistral said:


> Sweet pricing too, so far, let's see how long stock lasts.



It was gone before you finished typing this.


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## Benetanegia (Mar 22, 2012)

Nice review W1zzard. Lots of work with dynamic clocks and such.

So my thoughts:

Based on my calculations (by specs) and a lot of assumptions (such as efficiency loss) I predicted it would be 25% faster than GTX580 @1080/1200p a long time ago and it is indeed 25% faster. It's really intriguing, to say the least, because of the many factors that I took into account in order to reach that conclusion/guesstimate, but I'm amazed and overly happy with the result, because it means that this is a win for science. (I know it's kinda arrogant after the fact, but I'd really like to hear from all the people that called me crazy, fanboy and whatnot in the threads related to specs, where I made those predictions, but I know most of them were new users and we will never ever hear about them on TPU).

However the most intriguing factor is that the performance lead over the GTX580 is bigger at 2560x1600, and that's something that I'm sure nobody would have predicted. HD7970 being comparatively faster at 1600p is not a surprise though. Also, according to [H] it looks like the performance lead over the HD7970 is also bigger on multi-monitor, which is again a big surprise.

But all things considered, I still think these cards are not really a worthy upgrade until they come close to $400.


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## Dos101 (Mar 22, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> It must be better.



That's probably true, but it'd be nice to see some numbers confirming that.


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## wolf (Mar 22, 2012)

excellent review as always, very indepth especially the dynamic clock boosting section.

round of applause for Nvidia, they really did listen to what the consumers wanted (or perhaps what the AMD fanboys whined about..)

cleaper, faster, quieter, more efficient, and more features than the 7970, damn good work Nvidia, damn good work. It has been a while since they didn't jump right in with a huge power hog of a chip to outpace the competition, and they did their homework damn well alright. G92 was a star, as was GF104/114, and GK104 is no exception!


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## Mistral (Mar 22, 2012)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> It was gone before you finished typing this.



Still pretty much available in Canada.


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## Anath (Mar 22, 2012)

Wow, these are definitely worth the upgrade. I cant wait for an sli review. I am sure they blow the 580 sli's out of the water. I wonder how long its going to take for them to become available again. Oh the waiting game....


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## raptori (Mar 22, 2012)

very good review and professional explanation for the whole D-OC, and good job Nvidia, a card that is good in every aspect ,I sold my 580 for $480 and will take one of those.


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## m1dg3t (Mar 22, 2012)

Great review as always W1zz! Very thorough  So from what i gather this card perform's 5% - 10% better than 7970 and consume's slightly less power and is slightly cooler, i must commend Nvidia for this 

Regarding the OCing, i guess with how it is on this card the better your cooler is the better your OC (avg) will be 

In my area cheapest 580 $379 and cheapest 680 $499  Still no price drop's on 79xx


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## N3M3515 (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> because it's too slow to be included in the comparison



GTX 480 & HD6970 are slower than HD7870, yet they are in the charts, so?


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## Dos101 (Mar 22, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> GTX 480 & HD6970 are slower than HD7870, yet they are in the charts, so?



They were the high-end cards of previous GPU generations where as the 7870 is not, at least that's my guess for putting them in the charts.


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## Crap Daddy (Mar 22, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Nice review W1zzard. Lots of work with dynamic clocks and such.
> 
> So my thoughts:
> 
> ...



I remember very well all this and especially the horror in some posts regarding the 256bit mem interface width and how this gonna suck plus only 2GB... Many said that GK104 will at best equal the GTX580.

But, as much as this is a small engineering marvel I can't help but think what an exceptional GTX660Ti this would be priced around $300 or even a GTX670 at $350.
As I came from the 200 gen and skipped the 400 in favor of 500 I am certain I'll do the same now as I expect to be able to buy a card that'll bring at least 50% increase over my 570 at the same price point.


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## TheGuruStud (Mar 22, 2012)

Where's the AA in batman? Where's the AF? Scores aren't comparing well with others AT ALL.

I want to add that none of the reviews are even close to each other.
You can randomly assign who wins at metro, batman, dirt, etc. It's a joke. There is no consistency between perf. One will show a few fps difference (between the two cards) and another double digit. WTF?

I'm sick of reviews. They just get worse and worse.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 22, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Nice review W1zzard. Lots of work with dynamic clocks and such.
> 
> So my thoughts:
> 
> ...



I for one was wrong in my predictions,  i thought gtx680 would be like 14% faster, turns out to be just 6%, BUT 6% faster and $50 bucks cheaper, more power efficient, that's a win in my book.

Still i think $450 would be a better price.


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## Yellow&Nerdy? (Mar 22, 2012)

Stop posting the GTX 680 orders...! Makes me feel so poor.


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## MasterInvader (Mar 22, 2012)

OK Gtx680 review done, now it´s "purchase" day...

And regarding the 680 "numbers" I´am not going Kepler, it´s a nice card but for that kind of money isn't the "best" choice at the moment.

The 500 Series are quite "cheap" at the moment and I´am not a fan for single GPU.
Right now you can buy a TwinFrozR GTX570 for 229€ or a GTX580 for 319€, and once again I´am going SLI or 3Way depending on the deal´s.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Mar 22, 2012)

16% eh? Performance improvements seem to be at a crawl. Between my 15-22% OC gain and 3 GB vram I guess I'm still satisfied with my 580 for now. I just hope they let us have control panel FXAA support on the older cards. That addresses pretty much the only reason (MLAA) I've ever considered switching back to AMD.


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## Benetanegia (Mar 22, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> I for one was wrong in my predictions,  i thought gtx680 would be like 14% faster, turns out to be just 6%, BUT 6% faster and $50 bucks cheaper, more power efficient, that's a win in my book.
> 
> Still i think $450 would be a better price.



Well it's slightly more than that at 1080p, but you are right, in the end the difference between GTX680 vs HD7970 is smaller than I too thought, not by much tho. However the difference with GTX580 is the exact same which means we were probably right and the difference is that HD7970 got some driver improvements while Nvidia cards didn't get them. It did land were predicted, only HD7970 moved a little to the right.

Now regarding drivers I do expect slightly better than normal/usual increases this time around, a one time 5-10% increase sometime in the coming weeks, apart from the usual aggregated 10-20% that comes gradually over the months. The reason is that Kepler uses (semi-)static schedulers vs Fermi that used fully dynamic schedulers. This means that unlike with Fermi, Nvidia will have to do some scheduling on drivers, and to an extent specific to each game, just like AMD has been doing since like forever. This means a bigger difference between best case and worst case scenarios and I think that this behavior is absolutely represented in this review. i.e Battlefield 3 results vs Metro 2033 or AVP results.



Yellow&Nerdy? said:


> Stop posting the GTX 680 orders...! Makes me feel so poor.



+1


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## hrvoje (Mar 22, 2012)

Yellow&Nerdy? said:


> Stop posting the GTX 680 orders...! Makes me feel so poor.



Yeah, and excellent review as always Wiz


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## m1dg3t (Mar 22, 2012)

MasterInvader said:


> And regarding the 680 "numbers" I´am not going Kepler, it´s a nice card but for that kind of money isn't the "best" choice at the moment.



Huh? It perform's *slightly* better than ATi 79xx and is cheaper, how does that not make it the best choice ATM 

I would gladly pay the ~$100 premium for this card over the 580, definately worth every single improvement! The 680 is what 30% faster right?


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## alexsubri (Mar 22, 2012)

Wowzers! Good job nVidia ...my prediction was right. But lets see how long it will last because  ATI's drivers are still not showing the full potential of the 79xx series.


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## MasterInvader (Mar 22, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> I would gladly pay the ~$100 premium for this card over the 580, definately worth every single improvement! The 680 is what 30% faster right?



Sorry but it´s allot more then "100$" 

The retail price in Europe [my country Portugal] is 499€ for a reference Nvidia 680.
I can buy right now a reference 580 for 325€

So the difference is 174€ in US dollar´s  is *229$*


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## Hustler (Mar 22, 2012)

Bah..really not interested in this high end shit, I'm not paying $500+ just to play crappy dx9 console ports @1080p.

When are the equivalent 560Ti Kepler cards coming out..?


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## chodaboy19 (Mar 22, 2012)

Great review! Everything was explained so clearly and thoroughly which left me with no questions.


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## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

MasterInvader said:


> Sorry but it´s allot more then "100$"
> 
> The retail price in Europe [my country Portugal] is 499€ for a reference Nvidia 680.
> I can buy right now a reference 580 for 325€
> ...



Noone is thinking to the rest of the world but the US when they taking about prices.


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## Delta6326 (Mar 22, 2012)

Awesome Review W1zz!! I love everything about this card except for the Dynamic clocks and the Load temps for it being less power hungry, but still an awesome card!

W1zz you should add a view counter I always want to see how many people have viewed your awesome reviews!!


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## crow1001 (Mar 22, 2012)

Nvidia really screwed up the overclocking on the 680, I just want to set a clock and let the GPU max out, afraid to say AMD and the 78** cards are the ones for overclocking guys.


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## m1dg3t (Mar 22, 2012)

MasterInvader said:


> Sorry but it´s allot more then "100$"
> 
> The retail price in Europe [my country Portugal] is 499€ for a reference Nvidia 680.
> I can buy right now a reference 580 for 325€
> ...





DarkOCean said:


> Noone is thinking to the rest of the world but the US when they taking about prices.



I was going by the current price's in Canada as that is what applies to me  You can spend your $$$ how ever you like 

And don't compare what thing's sell for here in NA to EU because they are not direct conversion's, wasn't there a big thread/debate about just that yesterday? lol


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## Benetanegia (Mar 22, 2012)

I'm looking at TechReport review where they test several throughput numbers and in those GK104 is the most impressive.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22653/6

It's amazing the improvements seen for color fill, tesselation and to a lesser extent texture fillrate. I mean texture fillrate is doubled because TMU amount was doubled, but the perfect scaling is still impressive considering that cache size and RF size didn't increase.

Then color fill also doubled up compared to GTX560 TI with the same amount of ROPs, 32. And it's 30% higher than GTX580 with 48 ROPs. That's impressive.

And finally geometry and tesselation performance which also doubles up (vs GTX580) despite the fact that it has half as many units. It quadruples the GTX560 Ti which has the same ammount. That's insane.

I know that AMD has been achieving those kind of higher fillrates for a long time, so it's not unheard off results, but that does not make it any less impressive: all the things that Nvidia has improved in just 1 generation is mind-blowing. As a geek it's something really hard to overlook.

I don't know what is "holding back" the GTX680, when individually all different performance levels are so great, but the next gen is surely going to be interesting too if they simply find the bottleneck and unleash the power.


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Mar 22, 2012)

So this card sounds like its not what everyone expected. Now my question is should I get a 570/580 or wait for the 660?


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

awesome review Wizz. this card won in everything other then like 3 games. Nvidia definitely has a winner on there hands especially for the price of it. Awesome. Definitely getting one of these. Pretty amazing that in some cases, such as battlefield 3, the GTX680 is beating out the HD6990 and GTX590


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

alexsubri said:


> Wowzers! Good job nVidia ...my prediction was right. But lets see how long it will last because  ATI's drivers are still not showing the full potential of the 79xx series.



either is the 300.99 drivers for the 680. Both sides will get some improvements with the cards. I have a feeling nvidia will come out with better drivers first.


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## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

CrAsHnBuRnXp said:


> So this card sounds like its not what everyone expected. Now my question is should I get a 570/580 or wait for the 660?



Wait. worst case scenario you will get same performance for same money but lower power consumption and higher oc!?(damn dynamic oc).


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> Wait. worst case scenario you will get same performance for same money but lower power consumption and higher oc!?(damn dynamic oc).



It still a better card in almost all aspects. performance, efficiency, noise, and heat. I also have seen some benchmarks where surprisingly the GTX680 wins in multi monitor high resolution environments.


----------



## Anath (Mar 22, 2012)

I contacted amazon. They should have the cards for sell sometime this week. They wouldnt give me a definite date though


----------



## Melvis (Mar 22, 2012)

Looks like a pretty goood card thats for sure, well done nvidia and cheaper now that is a shocker.

7970 results are still based on older drivers i guess? as we all know a 7870 will beat a 7970 in crysis 2 with newer drivers :S  So my guess once AMD drivers are all worked out for the 7970 the performance difference will be about the same. (3% maybe)

Power consumption is about the same realy but the 7970 is a cooler running card, still a bit hot there kepler.

Overall good card


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 22, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> Regarding the OCing, i guess with how it is on this card the better your cooler is the better your OC (avg) will be



yes, look at the temperature testing section of the dynamic oc page. lower temp = higher clock (with certain limits)


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

From Hardware Canucks



> We could prattle on and on extolling the GTX 680’s virtues but here’s what really matters: NVIDIA’s newest flagship card is superior to the HD 7970 in almost every way. Whether it is performance, power consumption, noise, features, price or launch day availability, it currently owns the road and won’t be looking over its shoulder for some time to come.


----------



## m1dg3t (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> yes, look at the temperature testing section of the dynamic oc page. lower temp = higher clock (with certain limits)



Thank's for clearing that up. That's why i had that thought but my understanding/knowledge is limited. I did look over all aspect's of the review but sometime's i just need to be told what i already know  lol

So for best result's using "DOC" (Dynamic OC) overall temp control is imperative, minimum ^T for best result's


----------



## alexsubri (Mar 22, 2012)

Its nice to see how it competes with the 7970, yet the AMD Radeon HD 7970 Overclocked to 1.70 GHz Core, 8.00 GHz Memory still beats the 680


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 22, 2012)

Take a good look at this:

GTX480 at launch $499
GTX580 at launch $499 25% inc in price/perf
GTX680 at launch $499 35% inc in price/perf

HD6970 at launch $369
HD7970 at launch $550 0% inc in price/perf

Way to go NVIDIA!


----------



## m1dg3t (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> From Hardware Canucks



 They talk as if it is leap's and bound's better  

It is only slightly better, 7970 is nipping at it's heel's. Look at the whole package not just one thing, when you do that the 2 are so damn close! The Nvidia IS the faster, more efficient GPU overall though


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> They talk as if it is leap's and bound's better
> 
> It is only slightly better, 7970 is nipping at it's heel's. Look at the whole package not just one thing, when you do that the 2 are so damn close! The Nvidia IS the faster, more efficient GPU overall though



yeah I KNOW. Even if the performance isnt that much better the price, efficiency, and low noise make up for it.


----------



## m1dg3t (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> yeah I KNOW. Even if the performance isnt that much better the price, efficiency, and low noise make up for it.



Even then the difference's are _NOT_ all that much, that is/was my point 

Well except for the current pricing, there is a ~$75++ (ATi costing more ATM) between the 2 in my area


----------



## Am* (Mar 22, 2012)

> Introduced first with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580, the power limiter is in full force again on the GTX 680. It can not be disabled according to NVIDIA and board partners must use it.



I stopped reading here. Another throttling POS that will have bugged driver support for eternity...no thanks. I learned my lesson with the Thermi. 

I don't give a crap how much faster it is on paper, if they can't get power consumption right without referring to hardware power throttling, it is another fail of an attempt at getting a one-up on the competition with skewed results. Give us a non-throttled 680 or GTFO.


----------



## EarthDog (Mar 22, 2012)

You should read in to it a bit more Am*... the lack of knowledge on the subject precedes your post.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

Am* said:


> I stopped reading here. Another throttling POS that will have bugged driver support for eternity...no thanks. I learned my lesson with the Thermi.
> 
> I don't give a crap how much faster it is on paper, if they can't get power consumption right without referring to hardware power throttling, it is another fail of an attempt at getting a one-up on the competition with skewed results. Give us a non-throttled 680 or GTFO.



You do realize that all high end cards have some sort of power throttling function right?


----------



## Mindweaver (Mar 22, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> They talk as if it is leap's and bound's better
> 
> It is only slightly better, 7970 is nipping at it's heel's. Look at the whole package not just one thing, when you do that the 2 are so damn close! The Nvidia IS the faster, more efficient GPU overall though



Yea, they are looking at stock.. 7970 stock clock is 925mhz and the 680 is 1006mhz.. ATI could have bump there stock clocks up a bit. Hell my buddy has his at 1200mhz with room left to go... I'd like to see clock for clock and then push them as far as they can go and show there results..


----------



## Delta6326 (Mar 22, 2012)

Mindweaver said:


> I'd like to see clock for clock and then push them as far as they can go and show there results..



Thats the thing though with DOC you cant stay at just 1006Mhz it will auto oc it.


----------



## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> Thats the thing though with DOC you cant stay at just 1006Mhz it will auto oc it.



Exactly.

Have to wonder how 7970 would fare against 680 but with 256bits and higher clocks on mem and gpu .


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

Mindweaver said:


> Yea, they are looking at stock.. 7970 stock clock is 925mhz and the 680 is 1006mhz.. ATI could have bump there stock clocks up a bit. Hell my buddy has his at 1200mhz with room left to go... I'd like to see clock for clock and then push them as far as they can go and show there results..



then thats AMD fault right? Not using their overclock headroom to their advantage? While nvidia does and beating the 7970 in almost all aspects.


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 22, 2012)

I personally do no give a single f*ck over who wins or who doesn't, the only thing i care about is price/performance, and thanks to this $499 GTX 680, amd will be forced to drive down the 7970 hopefully to $449 and there's a chain reaction, 7950 $350, 7870 $249, 7850 $199........excellent.

Now talking strictly about winning that is pure MARKETING, because a 6% won't be noticed by anybody........as far as any gamer can see these two cards give the same feeling, same game experience.
Obviously there are a few games that favor one brand over the other, that's like the exception that proves the rule.

Finally overclocking, i think amd has the edge in that department. Maybe a factory o/c 7970 would be on par with a factory o/c gtx680, i mean 0 - 3% at the most.
They reach almost the same speeds but one has to take in to account that 7970 stock is 925 vs the 1006 of the gtx680. Thats 80Mhz, so the growth of the 7970 is bigger.


----------



## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> I personally do no give a single f*ck over who wins or who doesn't, the only thing i care about is price/performance, and thanks to this $499 GTX 680, amd will be forced to drive down the 7970 hopefully to $449 and there's a chain reaction, 7950 $350, 7870 $249, 7850 $199........excellent.
> 
> Now talking strictly about winning that is pure MARKETING, because a 6% won't be noticed by anybody........as far as any gamer can see these two cards give the same feeling, same game experience.
> Obviously there are a few games that favor one brand over the other, that's like the exception that proves the rule.
> ...



Can't wait for a 7870 at $249 .


----------



## Benetanegia (Mar 22, 2012)

Nvidia could have clocked the GTX680 higher too. Same OC margin according to W1zzard's reviews on both cards and also under LN2 the GTX680 is clocking higher too. That argument is as useless as has always been. Both cards have OC headroom.


----------



## Anath (Mar 22, 2012)

evga's are back up on newegg for sale get them while they are hot!


----------



## Am* (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> You do realize that all high end cards have some sort of power throttling function right?



You do realize AMD doesn't, and NEVER HAS used a driver to forcefully control power to the card while it's fully operating and loaded (unless the card is overheating), right? The reason is, because there is a massive latency problem when they're forcing a bloated x86 application (that takes milliseconds to seconds to respond) to force control of hardware when it's operating (that responds in nanoseconds). I'm just waiting for the "GTX 680 stuttering" threads to roll in...


----------



## newtekie1 (Mar 22, 2012)

Am* said:


> *I stopped reading here.* Another throttling POS that will have bugged driver support for eternity...no thanks. I learned my lesson with the Thermi.
> 
> I don't give a crap how much faster it is on paper, if they can't get power consumption right without referring to hardware power throttling, it is another fail of an attempt at getting a one-up on the competition with skewed results. Give us a non-throttled 680 or GTFO.



That is a pitty, if you would have read just a little bit further you would have read that AMD does the same thing, and has been for a couple generations at least.



Am* said:


> You do realize AMD doesn't, and NEVER HAS used a driver to forcefully control power to the card (unless the card is overheating), right? The reason is, because there is a massive latency problem when they're forcing a bloated x86 application (that takes milliseconds to seconds to respond) to force control of hardware when it's operating (that responds in nanoseconds). I'm just waiting for the "GTX 680 stuttering" threads to roll in...



Actually, yes they do, read the rest of this review, W1z talks about it.  In fact their solution is entire driver based, using estimates to guess power consumption and throttle cards.  They've been doing it since at least the HD6000 series.

So nVidia uses actual hardware monitors to monitor power draw and throttles based on those readings, and AMD uses software to guess power draw based on current load on the card, clock speeds, voltages, etc. and then throttles based on those calculations.  I wonder which has worse latency...

And before you continue to mindlessly argue a point you obviously know nothing about, I'll point you to the review of the HD6970 where the power throttling is clearly explained to you.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Nvidia could have clocked the GTX680 higher too. Same OC margin according to W1zzard's reviews on both cards and also under LN2 the GTX680 is clocking higher too. That argument is as useless as has always been. Both cards have OC headroom.



thank you for this!!!!!


----------



## Mindweaver (Mar 22, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> Thats the thing though with *DOC* you cant stay at just 1006Mhz it will auto oc it.





DarkOCean said:


> Exactly.



Aww yea.. thanks! 



[B]nvidia[/B]intelftw said:


> then thats AMD fault right? Not using their overclock headroom to their advantage? While nvidia does and beating the 7970 in almost all aspects.



Hell yea it is!.. and I never said nvidia didn't? I own cards from both sides... I want lower prices on both sides.. I'm not a fanboi for either.. I don't have there names inside of mine...  nvidia and amd have enough people blowing there horn they don't need me to as well..


----------



## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

Any word on gtx670 ?


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 22, 2012)

Anath said:


> evga's are back up on newegg for sale get them while they are hot!



EVGA, ZOTAC, Asus, Gigabyte
 HURRY!!

.............meanwhile, hd 7970 .........$550......


----------



## Crap Daddy (Mar 22, 2012)

alexsubri said:


> Its nice to see how it competes with the 7970, yet the AMD Radeon HD 7970 Overclocked to 1.70 GHz Core, 8.00 GHz Memory still beats the 680



1.70 GHz core?


----------



## Am* (Mar 22, 2012)

newtekie1 said:


> That is a pitty, if you would have read just a little bit further you would have read that AMD does the same thing, and has been for a couple generations at least.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Actually, you've got it completely the wrong way around. AMD uses an on-chip power *controller* that simply drops power according to GPU load, and DOESN'T rely on software in any way, shape or form. Nvidia uses the drivers to throttle power to the card by on-board power limiters based on pre-set limits in the drivers. That makes a world of difference in how it works and why AMD's does and Nvidia's doesn't.



> NVIDIA is using three INA219 power monitoring chips on their board, which provide the driver with power consumption numbers for 12V PCI-Express and the two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. The driver then decides whether the board is running below or above the NVIDIA configured power limit. Depending on the result of the measurement, the dynamic overclocking algorithm will pick a new clock target roughly every 100 milliseconds (three frames at 30 FPS). AMD's power limiting system works slightly different. It does not measure any actual power consumption but relies on an estimate based on current GPU load (not just %, but taking more things into account). This makes the system completely deterministic and independent of any component tolerances and reduces board cost. *AMD uses a hardware controller integrated in the GPU to update measurements and clocks many times per frame, in microsecond intervals, independent of any driver or software.*


----------



## Delta6326 (Mar 22, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> EVGA, ZOTAC, Asus, Gigabyte
> HURRY!!
> 
> .............meanwhile, hd 7970 .........$550......



lol EVGA, Gigabyte are now sold out again... aww


----------



## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> .............meanwhile, hd 7970 .........$550......



not for long.


----------



## CounterSpell (Mar 22, 2012)

i think its a nice idea to include the 78xx series in the benchmarks. 

@

anyway, nice review and thanks!!!


----------



## Anath (Mar 22, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> lol EVGA, Gigabyte are now sold out again... aww



I sat there for about 2 minutes hit refresh and they were already sold out. Geeze these people are serious about their cards haha. 

On a side note i noticed evga is not offering a lifetime warranty on the 680s what's up with that?


----------



## Casecutter (Mar 22, 2012)

Good work W1zz...
While, I've been trying to check other reviews (in between doing work). Several things:

- Nvidia now appears to have absolutely changed the game as the Boost found untapped potential without any reviews seeing any glitchy-ness during actual play; although most test aren’t covering real game play.  While what the Adaptive V-Sync was different than Turbo Boost but near shown how it impacts FpS?

- I thought that first side saying a “new class of enthusiast card” because the 195W/2-pin GTX680 was misleading to say 7970/580 required a 6 & 8pins and had a TDP of 250W.   That’s more a issue for the GTX680 as just because Nvidia can’t/doesn’t offer the old stratosphere OC’s and has it fitting with no way to turn off dynamic clocking so you get a algorithm will" _try_ to respect what you'd like it to do".  Such card aren't "bad" because they permit options that aren't there for the GTX680.  A 7970 it could easily make-due with two 6-pins and a much lower TDP had AMD restrain what enthusiast could expect.  Just look at the power consumption if the CSN didn’t kick in under maximum load they wouldn’t be all that different.

- I see why they priced it $50 less it would’ve basically “one-up-man-ship” a 7970 and with that alone not a great wow.  I think when at 2650x the 7970 has more value as when in games where it matters in (low Fps) the 7970 holds more advantage look a Metro, A&P, both Crysis titles, Shogun or even Skyrim, while we need to see how bigger resolutions 3-panels performs.

- I don’t really see the efficiency considering the means of using the Turbo Boost "Clock-Speed-Nanny" (CSN) and a small chip.  I thought the whole CSN was going to work more at the Cuda-core level also; I haven’t got any reviews outlining such details. 

- Improper case airflow will curtain your performance, most folk won’t even realize. 

- There's still a bunch of things to determine here, but for most general operators this is nice cause it promotes plug-n-play and work with many PSU’s and cases… Really idiot-proofs this "new level enthusiast".

- I don’t know if we’ll see any price war from this, 7970 might see more rebates, but until TSMC get’s things moving there’s not enough volume for either to go running scared.  

- Now Nvidia needs to keep releasing cards like this down the price structure to really make an impact. Can they continue releasing lower cost sku’s with Clock Boost PCB’s/technology at the real mainstream price point’s.  Because the whole lower cost chip/clock boost is what got them to eke-out over the 7970.  If they can't this will be ho-hum in 4 months.


----------



## Gjohnst4 (Mar 22, 2012)

Haven't bought green team in years. Considering it!


----------



## GC_PaNzerFIN (Mar 22, 2012)

Nice card but it has that 300€ card feeling all over it. PCB looks quite empty, vrm weakened, 2x 6pins... 

Now, where is my GTX 690? Doesn't matter if its 2x GK104, I take that too if its priced reasonably.


----------



## PopcornMachine (Mar 22, 2012)

Impressed with 680.  NVIDIA finally figured out how to make a power efficient high end video card, and at a reasonable price.

But I'm still not spending $500 on a video card.  If I were buying right now I'd go for a 7870 priced closer to $300.  But if I were in that situation, maybe best to wait and see what GTX 670 looks like.


----------



## newtekie1 (Mar 22, 2012)

Am* said:


> Actually, you've got it completely the wrong way around. AMD uses an on-chip power *controller* that simply drops power according to GPU load, and DOESN'T rely on software in any way, shape or form. Nvidia uses the drivers to throttle power to the card based on pre-set limits. That makes a world of difference in how it works and why one does and Nvidia's doesnt.



1.)  So you are admitting that AMD does the same thing then?

2.)  The chip on the GPU only measures those figures, the driver then uses them to estimate power consumption and  drops the clocks.



			
				W1zzard said:
			
		

> NVIDIA's system measures actual card power draw via dedicated circuitry, AMD estimates it based GPU load percentage counters that watch the important functional units in the ASIC. Without the requirement for dedicated circuitry AMD's solution is more cost effective because it is a software solution. Software in this context means *driver* and mostly the SMC microcontroller that has been present inside AMD's GPU silicon for several generations doing clock, fan and thermal management, even though AMD claims changes were needed in Cayman for this system.



Again, go read more detailed explanation that W1z gives.  The chip on the GPU is nothing more than a controller chip that was already present on AMD's GPUs that reads the data, the driver is still what is doing the actual calculations for power consumption and clock/voltage adjustements.

But I'll stop arguing with you now, because I know you know it all, and AMD definitely "HAS NEVER used a driver to forcefully control power to the card", even though I just showed you they have/do.


----------



## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

GC_PaNzerFIN said:


> Nice card but it has that 300€ card feeling all over it. PCB looks quite empty, vrm weakened, 2x 6pins...
> 
> Now, where is my GTX 690? Doesn't matter if its 2x GK104, I take that too if its priced reasonably.



What matter is it successfully competes with 7970 wich is more expensive and thats make the price not die size ;if 7970 would have been cheaper this would to.


----------



## Assimilator (Mar 22, 2012)

If this is the power of GK104, I cannot _wait_ to see what GK110 can do.


----------



## xkm1948 (Mar 22, 2012)

Finally some good product from the green side!  A nice way to force AMD drop price. However I am not very impressed. So basically the card is already being pushed to its limit while only marginally beat stock 7970. Well, we all know how much 7970 can OC.

Now AMD drop the damn price so I can get some 7970 cheaper.


----------



## GC_PaNzerFIN (Mar 22, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> What matter is it successfully competes with 7970 wich is more expensive and thats make the price not die size ;if 7970 would have been cheaper this would to.



I agree, I just can't justify dropping 500 for either card right now. GPU is perfect for dual GPU card so it left me drooling with the idea of 690 already.


----------



## Jegergrim (Mar 22, 2012)

Reading this  review was a real treat, thank you Wizz . Awesome review which explained every detail in depth, cant ask for more.


----------



## ERazer (Mar 22, 2012)

great review wizz 

WTS my left kidney! anybody? j/k

great job green team but i think ima keep my gfx till next series


----------



## DarkOCean (Mar 22, 2012)

Anyone else noticed that the 3d stock clock is 1110.5?


----------



## Delta6326 (Mar 22, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> Anyone else noticed that the 3d stock clock is 1110.5?
> http://www.fudzilla.com/images/stor.../Gainward/gpuz gainward gtx 680 load temp.gif



.... You have everything set to show what the max was thats not stock.


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 22, 2012)

As for those saying 7970 overclocks way more take a look at this from guru3d.com:
"on average our card was managing 1250 MHz without any kind of voltage tweaking perfectly fine. The 10K 3Dmark 11 score is certainly testimony of that."

1250 WITHOUT voltage tweaking.


----------



## Delta6326 (Mar 22, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> As for those saying 7970 overclocks way more take a look at this from guru3d.com:
> "on average our card was managing 1250 MHz without any kind of voltage tweaking perfectly fine. The 10K 3Dmark 11 score is certainly testimony of that."
> 
> 1250 WITHOUT voltage tweaking.



Because it Auto does that for you...


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 22, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> Because it Auto does that for you...



I don't know if i got it wrong, but that's what i understood after reading this:

"Interesting to see is that the feature maintains itself while overclocking. We overclocked the card to roughly 1250 MHz and even then the Dynamic Clock Adjustment technology kicks in, but here's where it will often clock down a little bit. overall though it did not hinder the overclocking experience and on average our card was managing 1250 MHz without any kind of voltage tweaking perfectly fine. The 10K 3Dmark 11 score is certainly testimony of that."

So, if they voltage tweak the card i think 1350Mhz would be attainable.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

Crap Daddy said:


> 1.70 GHz core?



yeah the GTX680 while on LN2 did 1.8GHZ.

Clocks like that don't matter for about 90% of people though. the most common max clocks on these cards seem to be 1200mhz to 1300mhz

There some variables you have to consider when comparing cards when overclocked. Mainly its whether its a cherry picked card or not. most cards won't overclock the same.

Heres a screenshot posted on facebook from Evga of the 680 doing 1400mhz. Also I think if its possible nvidia could include the option to turn off the dynamic clock thing through drivers. Its just a thought.


----------



## JKnows (Mar 22, 2012)

Dear W1zzard,

You are really doing great tests, the performance summary and for overall awesome. My only concern is the 3DMark11 tests. It would be much better to see the points in default performance mod, because these FPS numbers means me nothing. I cannot compare with my and other systems.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

heres the full thread of the picture i posted above

http://kingpincooling.com/forum/showthread.php?p=20414#post20414


----------



## bear jesus (Mar 22, 2012)

why are people so happy with this when they complained so loud at the 7970 which is obviously very close in most games? i know the dynamic overclock is a nice feature  but i was expecting more from the way everyone hyped it and is now responding to the results.

I pay attention to 2560x1600 mainly as it gives similar results to my setup and i just keep seeing the 680 being neck and neck with the 7970 or beating it by a mall margin excluding a few yet in all the games TPU reviewed that i currently play the 7970 beats it or is neck and neck but i do not intend to buy this for games i have already played .

According to the TPU review the 7970 is more power efficient in idle, multi monitor and average power consumption, it is mainly just blu-ray that is the major difference effecting normal usage efficiency between them

I am not complaining about the card at all, i was happy with the performance increase the 7970 showed in reviews so i am more than happy with the increases over it for the exact same price but the way everyone is reacting it seams like this is something way more special than it is.

I would like to take a look at what the non reference models bring before i make my choice and no this is not some AMD fan boy rant trying to make the 680/7970 look good/bad, i just want to buy a 680 as well as all you excited GPU lovers.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

bear jesus said:


> why are people so happy with this when they complained so loud at the 7970 which is obviously very close in most games? i know the dynamic overclock is a nice feature  but i was expecting more from the way everyone hyped it and is now responding to the results.
> 
> I pay attention to 2560x1600 mainly as it gives similar results to my setup and i just keep seeing the 680 being neck and neck with the 7970 or beating it by a mall margin excluding a few yet in all the games TPU reviewed that i currently play the 7970 beats it or is neck and neck but i do not intend to buy this for games i have already played .
> 
> ...



I don't know what review your are watching but the 680 review shoes its consumes less pwoer then the 7970 in everything other then idle?

We are happy mainly because the price to performance ratio is great compared to the 7970. ITs performs better in almost everything, and it costs less. thats win in a lot of peoples books, no matter its its better by 1% or 100%

Nevermind your right. average and multimonitor the GTX680 consumes more power, but only be 1-3w which is like nothing


----------



## bear jesus (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> I don't know what review your are watching but the 680 review shoes its consumes less pwoer then the 7970 in everything other then idle?



Ok well i must have got that one wrong, i just scanned through them again when typing my message, will look back.

*edit* i think it is right. but the point is people are super stoked over this when its not much better than the 7970 and they were hating on that so hard 

But also the 7970 and 680 are the same price here.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

bear jesus said:


> Ok well i must have got that one wrong, i just scanned through them again when typing my message, will look back.
> 
> *edit* i think it is right.
> 
> But also the 7970 and 680 are the same price here.



The egg the price for them is 499 and then for the 7970 its still from 549 to about 574


----------



## bear jesus (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> The egg the price for them is 499 and then for the 7970 its still from 549 to about 574



http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-nvidia/geforce-gtx-680-pci-e

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-amd/radeon-hd7970-pci-e

I live in the land of the brits 

But i wonder if them being the same price added to my interpretation of the results being more negative than most.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

bear jesus said:


> http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-nvidia/geforce-gtx-680-pci-e
> 
> http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-amd/radeon-hd7970-pci-e
> 
> I live in the land of the brits



well then id still get the 680 haha


----------



## bear jesus (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> well then id still get the 680 haha



As i said i intend to 

I just want to try Nvidia again as it's been a while, i was just kind of hoping for something more exciting and i just see it as the 7970 in green with some added software/hardware features.

*edit*
Yes i know it is a little more than just that


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

bear jesus said:


> As i said i intend to
> 
> I just want to try Nvidia again as it's been a while, i was just kind of hoping for something more exciting and i just see it as the 7970 in green with some added software/hardware features.



eh you can dumb down any graphics card to that, I however am pleased with the 680. I have always gone with nvidia. there were 2 generations that I went with AMD/ATI. X1950XTX and HD5870. I like being back with nvidia though. THey support the games I play better with more features especially with skyrim being able to force really nice eye candy into the game with barely any performance hit.


----------



## bear jesus (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> eh you can dumb down any graphics card to that, I however am pleased with the 680. I have always gone with nvidia. there were 2 generations that I went with nvidia. X1950XTX and HD5870. I like being back with nvidia though. THey support the games I play better with more features especially with skyrim being able to force really nice eye candy into the came with barely any performance hit.



I never noticed a difference between brands when in use other than software logos/ui/features, i just bought what was suitable for my wallet and enjoyed it until i upgrade next... or it dies and i am forced to upgrade


----------



## Shurakai (Mar 22, 2012)

Fourstaff said:


> consumes less power



On average it's actually 3watts more, so it doesn't beat the 7970. Still, one sexy card  Gogo price war!


----------



## Benetanegia (Mar 22, 2012)

bear jesus said:


> But i wonder if them being the same price added to my interpretation of the results being more negative than most.



The way I see it, yes.

It's not excitement IMO, but up to 10% more performance for 10% cheaper is a step in the right direction and people are happy about that I guess.

Like I said in page 1 or 2, personally, I'd like to see them at $400 before I get excited about the product.

But now, about the chip, maybe I'm more excited than the average reader because internally I'm comparing it to the chip that should really be compared with from a technical standpoint: the GTX560 Ti. 

Twice as fast at 2560x1600, a little less at 1200p, similar powr consumption and a 25% smaller chip, meaning that there's room for a 25% bigger refresh chip, that will hopefully sell on the price bracket where it belongs, or closer at least, if AMD decides to compete. 

And then what GK110 could bring into the table is just amazing.


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 22, 2012)

newtekie1 said:


> 1.)  So you are admitting that AMD does the same thing then?
> 
> 2.)  The chip on the GPU only measures those figures, the driver then uses them to estimate power consumption and  drops the clocks.
> 
> ...



i think you are confusing 
- voltage controller (which controls the voltage regulators to generate output voltage)
- power measurement IC (which checks how much power is running through the 12V input lines and reports that to the driver)

obviously both cards needs a voltage controller, otherwise they couldnt dynamically adjust voltages.

power measurement IC is only present on NVIDIA, AMD does not use any components to get the input data for their powertune algo


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> i think you are confusing
> - voltage controller (which controls the voltage regulators to generate output voltage)
> - power measurement IC (which checks how much power is running through the 12V input lines and reports that to the driver)
> 
> ...



but they both essentially do the same thing. jsut nvidia is hardware side AMD is software


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 22, 2012)

cheers wizzard ,good review as ever 

they have done well , I like the new card ,but it dosnt exceed my expectations in any way ,theyve had long enough to make a faster card then Amd imho,and given the choices they have made they have come up smelling of roses to most ,as even an idiot is now going to be able to brag about his super ocd gfx card, i prefer the old school way of ocing a card, but since this is all software and driver based i dont see this issue not being overcome by someone soon.

any reviews with a waterblock on because id be interested in what it might do,   kept do-ably cool (not ln2 max) and judging by your review it might then hold high clocks much better


----------



## Am* (Mar 22, 2012)

newtekie1 said:


> 1.)  So you are admitting that AMD does the same thing then?
> 
> 2.)  The chip on the GPU only measures those figures, the driver then uses them to estimate power consumption and  drops the clocks.
> 
> ...



*Facepalm*

Forgot I was talking to the genius who thinks forcefully downclocking the GPU to hit average power consumption figures through drivers (which you CAN'T manually override) is the same thing as a GPU that directly checks the on chip load monitor before dropping or increasing the clocks (and which can be manually overridden). Last time I checked, only one of the companies in question has stuttering problems (due to throttling) on single card setups, and that happens to be Nvidia and I'd probably know more about it than you, since I've had to put up with mine for what will soon be 2 years now, on 5 completely different setups (that have had AMD cards from the 4890 to a 6970). With this generation, Nvidia are adding MORE throttling crap, which saves me the trouble of considering buying another GPU from them, even though a simple mode selection feature (gamer/blu-ray/2D clocks) would have easily fixed this problem if they hadn't introduced power limiters as well.

And I would bother to return the favour to you and mis-quote something from one of your posts, but you're not the first and you certainly won't be the last to do it and so I can't be arsed, to be perfectly honest. Good day, sir.


----------



## happita (Mar 22, 2012)

Good for Nvidia. They finally got a handle on the power efficiency front. With that debut price of $499, they're really looking for the kill. If I had a video card that was 1 generation older, I would jump on this right freaking now!! But my 5850 is still decent enough to give me mid/high settings in the games that I play. So I'm gonna hold my breath for now until more demanding games come out.


----------



## Hayder_Master (Mar 22, 2012)

this is NIVIDIA big bang, didn't expect all thous things come with this card, impressive


----------



## Frick (Mar 22, 2012)

I LOVE the power consumption on this one. Nice job there.


----------



## Isenstaedt (Mar 22, 2012)

So when can we expect mid-range Kepler cards?


----------



## Benetanegia (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> but they both essentially do the same thing. jsut nvidia is hardware side AMD is software



Yeah I think Am* is living in lalaland. I fail to see how AMD doing a guesswork rather than a direct power consumption measurement, is in any way better. Neither worse the way it is implemented, but it makes no difference.

Also it's all a moot point when you can set the slide to +32% so that it's absolutely imposible to hit the limit and the performance difference is 1-2% anyway. It's not trottling too much if at all at default settings. In fact that 1-2% could come from the gains from GPU Boost reaching higher heights, rather than being something the GPU "regains back" from not being trottled.


----------



## v12dock (Mar 22, 2012)

If AMD priced the 7970 at 400 or better yet 350 it would be gameover


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 22, 2012)

v12dock said:


> If AMD priced the 7970 at 400 or better yet 350 it would be gameover



your dreaming because that would never happen. The 7970 still performs pretty well, except Nvidia just kicked AMD in the teeth by releasing a card that is about 15% faster across the board for $50 cheaper.


----------



## sergionography (Mar 22, 2012)

according to the graphs on average gtx680 is 6% faster than hd7970, but has like 15% less transistors and is 20% smaller in die sizem, that sure is an achievement! good job nvidia 
now 7970 should come down in price to about 470$ or something considering performance difference.
but i wouldnt say kepler is better than GCN tho, i think nvidia will have a harder time competing with the 7800 series as they have an ever better performance/watt than the gtx680, and thats were GCN architecture truly shines, which makes me wonder if AMD's drivers are crippling its performance or something

tho ive seen some odd cases like civilizations, i could swear i saw the hd7970 beating kepler on the anandtech review, i wonder what settings it was running on there or so
also i would like to see more in depth overclock benchmarks because with dynamic clock topping at 1110mhz its hard to know if 12%overclock headroom will truly give a 12% gain in performance

another aspect i wanna see is compute performance, because ive seen other benchmarks were kepler is slower than fermi in compute.

but thank you W1zz, great review


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 22, 2012)

sergionography said:


> another aspect i wanna see is compute performance, because ive seen other benchmarks were kepler is slower than fermi in compute.
> 
> but thank you W1zz, great review



you know what, thats a very good point, wizzard ,many people on tpu would love to know F@home ppd and power per watt for every card and many outside tpu would be interested, and in general computes getting more seriouse these days,,,   any chance i mean you could let em run at night for tpu

i would of course be able to do such testing if you wanted


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> but they both essentially do the same thing. jsut nvidia is hardware side AMD is software



no. the control logic on amd is in hardware, nvidia is software.

the measurements for input data on nvidia are physical measurements, whereas on amd it does not measure anything, just checks idle time on certain units inside the gpu


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> no. the control logic on amd is in hardware, nvidia is software.



do you think it could be  hacked ,as id half expect nvidia themselves to already have something or a cetain driver for ln2 guys, and given physx's rock solid hackability


----------



## HammerON (Mar 22, 2012)

Great review (as always) W1z
I really appreciate the explanation of the Dynamic OC.


----------



## Casecutter (Mar 22, 2012)

sergionography said:


> 12%overclock headroom will truly give a 12% gain in performance



I doubt it

As for power see how they did it at [H] and it not that big of a deal.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_kepler_gpu_geforce_gtx_680_video_card_review/13

When looking at it from that perspective, and given the Boost "Clock Speed Nanny" (CSN) there’s some strange things going on. Efficiency across those 5 titles is 3% better in favor of the GTX680.  It’s improved in eff/Fps but overall not leaps and bounds over a 7950 given what they had to implement to get there. 

While I think given this new technolgy the right thing is to look which produces the lowest mean framerate. As in who's hovers the most in lower 1/3 of the frames. They have learn to play the new game make the way we look at stuff (rules) and promonted what we've always like to see...


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 22, 2012)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> do you think it could be  hacked ,as id half expect nvidia themselves to already have something or a cetain driver for ln2 guys, and given physx's rock solid hackability



everything can be hacked. just a question of how difficult and who will spend time on it


----------



## RigRebel (Mar 22, 2012)

Wow... Still need to do some more reading but at first glance the card specs look good and benches rock to boot. I am really anticiapting the lower TPD for midrange 660ti/660 SLI setups, the TXAA if it's as smooth and non taxing on the FPS as speculated, the dynamic non-precomputed physix; and also, a nice 3D/2D surround solution on a single card other than 2WIN and 690! bravo.. Nice refienments (they were sorely needed) to go with marginal-moderate-high FPS increases depending on games.  Now bring on the 660Ti and 660 class please  let me seem them boggers in SLI.  

PS.. What AMD fans are ready for an "I told ya so"? > lol Nice 2months on top lol. Nvidia will be taking that back now.  Thank you. -pimpslap-


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 22, 2012)

agreed lets hope theyve allready done it though , i think throwing a water block on one of these ,and a good chip one at that, might be nice

too dear though for not a big enough jump , yet ya never know

any one got a clue when the lower  6xx spec cards are out then?

im tempted to get a 550ti to fold and Batman on ,but i dunno whats comeing out when


----------



## RigRebel (Mar 22, 2012)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> agreed lets hope theyve allready done it though , i think throwing a water block on one of these ,and a good chip one at that, might be nice
> 
> too dear though for not a big enough jump , yet ya never know
> 
> ...



Certain posts speculate mid April for the 660/650 cards. Early reports from linzfire http://lenzfire.com/2012/02/entire-nvidia-kepler-series-specifications-price-release-date-43823/ was stating the 550ti is going to translate into a 650ti that will perform close to a 570!! I'd wait and see if I were you, could be only a couple months away!. Obviously not all those specs from lenzfire panned out but I sure hope the market translations from the 500 series to the 600series do! A 650Ti PERFORMING LIKE A 570!!! And, probably much better in SLI >>> BRING IT ON!  
PSS.. I'm a little hesitant about EK WBs .. are they still cracking ? :/


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 22, 2012)

ill throw the gt240 back in then for now ,itll help batman a bit , and hopefully V7 works right now with mixed gpu's


----------



## Kreij (Mar 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> everything can be hacked. just a question of how difficult and *who will spend time on it*



We have complete faith in you, O' Fearless Leader.


----------



## RigRebel (Mar 22, 2012)

Kreij said:


> We have complete faith in you, O' Fearless Leader.



lol I just have to comment on your ISP .gif... lol awesome!


----------



## LAN_deRf_HA (Mar 22, 2012)

When you get another for SLI can we get one of those xfire vs sli scaling charts? Haven't seen one in awhile.


----------



## RigRebel (Mar 22, 2012)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> When you get another for SLI can we get one of those xfire vs sli scaling charts? Haven't seen one in awhile.



here here... ditto.


----------



## KainXS (Mar 22, 2012)

damn even im flabbergasted, over 1100mhz on stock cooling

god damn

waits for AMD to ram their prices down, thanks nvidia, now i can get  a cheaper card, but AMD would have to drop the price to at least 460 dollars for me to consider it now

come on drop them prices AMD I want a cheap card


----------



## bongpack05 (Mar 22, 2012)

Where's the 680 GT? cough 8800 gt cough


----------



## jamsbong (Mar 23, 2012)

Remember the brilliant RV770? This is history repeating with Nvidia as the one with the clever architecture.

GTX680 = Tahiti. So either card is worth buying in terms of performance. The reason to buy Kepler would be the better price, lower power consumption (i.e. GPU produce less heat energy), CUDA, fancy AA. As for features that were unique to ATI is also now available in NV, eyefinity and the lean/low power consuming architecture. I hope NV will never make another barbarian/joule guzzler GPU again.

This is really the perfect achievement from Nvidia! This is definitely a worthy buy, lets see if this will ignite the price war. I'll definitely get one when the price is a bit better than they are now.

What I seriously love about this card is that it is able to keep up despite being lean and consumes less power. Moreover, for once, this chip does not have a heat spreader like previous NV cards. This makes the job of adding water block a lot easier. When I mod my 560TI to water cooling, it was quite annoying that the spreader was in the way. I end up drilling holes and a whole lot of custom mod to get it to work.

The dynamic clocking system is a good feature. I actually tried my own custom dynamic clocking on my 4890. It worked but everytime the clock changes, there is a noticeable halt. This is similar to the problem faced by Kepler now. See the last paragraph:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22653/9
Hopefully future drivers will fix this up because I hate those inconsistent framerate.


----------



## ensabrenoir (Mar 23, 2012)

....Im about to spend alot of money..... Now quick somebody make ...something fun that will max out a sandy bridge e and a pair of these in sli.


----------



## entropy13 (Mar 23, 2012)

jamsbong said:


> I hope NV will never make another barbarian/joule guzzler GPU again.



I personally think that they HAD to do that (first incarnation of Fermi - GTX 400 series) just so they could tone it down a bit with the GTX 500 series. And then eventually have Kepler.



jamsbong said:


> Hopefully future drivers will fix this up because I hate those inconsistent framerate.



They used 300.99 drivers. The 301.10 drivers got released hours before reviews did, so we don't have to wait for a long time.


----------



## bongpack05 (Mar 23, 2012)

No longer buying 500$ cards had a 7800 gtx and x1800xt brick on me and warranty ran out  600$ paper weights.


----------



## v12dock (Mar 23, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> your dreaming because that would never happen. The 7970 still performs pretty well, except Nvidia just kicked AMD in the teeth by releasing a card that is about 15% faster across the board for $50 cheaper.



15%? according to W1zzard's review its only 6% faster


----------



## Frizz (Mar 23, 2012)

Sold out on pccasegear.com already!! It's only been a few hours lol


----------



## newtekie1 (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> i think you are confusing
> - voltage controller (which controls the voltage regulators to generate output voltage)
> - power measurement IC (which checks how much power is running through the 12V input lines and reports that to the driver)
> 
> ...



No, I'm not.  You talked about the extra micro-controller on the AMD GPU that measures load and such, then the driver estimates power consumption based on that.  While nVidia uses separate sensors that measure actual power draw.

I know what a voltage controller is and what it does.



W1zzard said:


> no. the control logic on amd is in hardware, nvidia is software.
> 
> the measurements for input data on nvidia are physical measurements, whereas on amd it does not measure anything, just checks idle time on certain units inside the gpu



So the AMD solution is no longer software/driver based like you said it was in the HD6970 review?


----------



## owikh84 (Mar 23, 2012)

Can someone buy 3 of this bad boy & bench'em on SB-e?
I'd love to see 3x GTX680 vs 3x 7970.


----------



## swirl09 (Mar 23, 2012)

Its a great card, and while it brings some new tech to the table and all this achieved on a smaller die, its not quite the clear cut victory for me.







13 DX11 games (looking at 2560res):
7 NV win
5 AMD win
1 draw

And at this moment in time there are OC'd 7970s (@1010) for the same money as the GTX 680 :-s

Im sure prices will change between now and the time I buy (IB), and I do think Ill be buying nV - hopefully a custom (with 4GB if it provides gains at higher res). Just sayin, not as easy a decision as Id have liked ;p


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

v12dock said:


> 15%? according to W1zzard's review its only 6% faster



Correct!!

and the 7970 is been held back by poor drivers in the review as proven by the 7870 later on beating the 7970 in the odd game (Crysis 2) Which should never happen.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

Melvis said:


> Correct!!
> 
> and the 7970 is been held back by poor drivers in the review as proven by the 7870 later on beating the 7970 in the odd game (Crysis 2) Which should never happen.



We can say the exact damn thing about drivers for the 680. Obviously theres more too the 680 that will hopefully be unlocked with later drivers.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 23, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> PSS.. I'm a little hesitant about EK WBs .. are they still cracking ? :/



no and any block will crack if you over tighten it , ,but all mine are EK and all are fine I do have a friend who A overtightened one and cracked cpu block plus took the block apart and assembled it so bad it leaked all round , but if your not daft they are fine ,and thats a gen rule ,tight but not too tight


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> We can say the exact damn thing about drivers for the 680. Obviously theres more too the 680 that will hopefully be unlocked with later drivers.



We can but cant be proven yet as there isnt any other cards that have come out apart from the 680, so until then my statement stands.

As the 7870 has already proven the point


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

new drivers have released for teh 680

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-301.10-whql-driver.html


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> new drivers have released for teh 680
> 
> http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-301.10-whql-driver.html



Whats your point? Newer drivers also came out for the 7970, but it hasnet been rebenched with the newer drivers so..... 

We can only go buy what a lesser Nvidia card can do with these newer drivers to see if its close to the heels of the 680 or not.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

Melvis said:


> Whats your point? Newer drivers also came out for the 7970, but it hasnet been rebenched with the newer drivers so.....
> 
> We can only go buy what a lesser Nvidia card can do with these newer drivers to see if its close to the heels of the 680 or not.



Im just posting to let everyone know that new drivers have released. why jump all over me about it? I wasn't reply to tell just you that the drivers have released.


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> Im just posting to let everyone know that new drivers have released. why jump all over me about it? I wasn't reply to tell just you that the drivers have released.



My bad, just seemed to me was all been straight after my post, moving on...


----------



## Benetanegia (Mar 23, 2012)

Melvis said:


> We can but cant be proven yet as there isnt any other cards that have come out apart from the 680, so until then my statement stands.
> 
> As the 7870 has already proven the point



Nothing has been *proven*. HD7870 because of its higher clock and exact same front-end and ROP count as HD7970, it has a higher triangle rate and pixel rate than HD7970. We can conclude that's the reason as much as we can say it's drivers.

And it's only in Crysis 2 where that happens, so if it's drivers and if it is fixed you'll see a whooping 0.2% improvement in the overall results, yay!!

But being realistic and analitical, you may also probably see a 20% reduction in HD7800's Crysis 2 results because the abnormally high fps in that test was a consequence of drivers screwing up with the graphics pipeline and skipping one or two passes. It wouldn't be the first time that happens and to be realistic the HD7970 is already faster on Crysis 2 compared to other cards than it is on average. So chances of HD7970 increasing fps == 5%. Chances of HD7870 losing fps == 95%

EDIT: No strange behavior in these reviews:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22573/8
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-radeon-hd-7870-oc-review/18


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Nothing has been *proven*. HD7870 because of its higher clock and exact same front-end and ROP count as HD7970, it has a higher triangle rate and pixel rate than HD7970. We can conclude that's the reason as much as we can say it's drivers.
> 
> And it's only in Crysis 2 where that happens, so if it's drivers and if it is fixed you'll see a whooping 0.2% improvement in the overall results, yay!!
> 
> ...



Huh? couse its been proven, newer drivers obviously helped the card why else would it of beaten the 7970? the 7970 has more grunt then the 7870 PERIOD!! so regardless if it has this and that the drivers helped, and if ya ever had ATi/AMD drivers in the past yrs you would know that every newer driver just about that comes out for this brand gives an improvement and alot more then just 0.2% let me tell you.

Regardless my point still stands no matter what, drivers helped PERIOD, if ya cant except the fact then meh not my problem. and please stop posting to other sites, we are on TPU so stick with what has been showin to us since your also on this site.

All im saying is with better/newer drivers the gap would be alot closer and or near nil, just talk to a bunch of the 7970 users on this site they will tell you how bad the drivers are for the card, its everywhere.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

Melvis said:


> Huh? couse its been proven, newer drivers obviously helped the card why else would it of beaten the 7970? the 7970 has more grunt then the 7870 PERIOD!! so regardless if it has this and that the drivers helped, and if ya ever had ATi/AMD drivers in the past yrs you would know that every newer driver just about that comes out for this brand gives an improvement and alot more then just 0.2% let me tell you.
> 
> Regardless my point still stands no matter what, drivers helped PERIOD, if ya cant except the fact then meh not my problem. and please stop posting to other sites, we are on TPU so stick with what has been showin to us since your also on this site.
> 
> All im saying is with better/newer drivers the gap would be alot closer and or near nil, just talk to a bunch of the 7970 users on this site they will tell you how bad the drivers are for the card, its everywhere.



if the drivers helped the 7870 shouldn't they ahve helped the 7970 too??


----------



## vziera (Mar 23, 2012)

I feel somewhat sorry for those who already got the 7970


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> if the drivers helped the 7870 shouldn't they ahve helped the 7970 too??



I dont know?? i guess, but i have no idea as the benchmarks of the 7970 arnt of the newer drivers, only people that own the card can answer that question!


----------



## Benetanegia (Mar 23, 2012)

Melvis said:


> Huh? couse its been proven, newer drivers obviously helped the card why else would it of beaten the 7970? the 7970 has more grunt then the 7870 PERIOD!! so regardless if it has this and that the drivers helped, and if ya ever had ATi/AMD drivers in the past yrs you would know that every newer driver just about that comes out for this brand gives an improvement and alot more then just 0.2% let me tell you.
> 
> Regardless my point still stands no matter what, drivers helped PERIOD, if ya cant except the fact then meh not my problem. and please stop posting to other sites, we are on TPU so stick with what has been showin to us since your also on this site.
> 
> All im saying is with better/newer drivers the gap would be alot closer and or near nil, just talk to a bunch of the 7970 users on this site they will tell you how bad the drivers are for the card, its everywhere.



^^ Fanboy in denial.

The only thing that has been proven is that the HD7870 is NOT faster than HD7970 in Crysis 2. Look at the links. W1zz just found a rare glitch. PERIOD. 

Drivers help, drivers help! Close the eyes as tight as you can while saying it 3 times and it will become true!!

Drivers have never increased OVERALL performance drastically. Never. Ever. Not for AMD. Not for Nvidia.

People always DL the new drivers, fire up their newly bought game, which just happens to be the one addressed by that particular diver... see a 10% increase... claim 10% increase across the board. Every.Single.Time. I've been on this for 15 years. Every. Single. Time.

Both cards will have *some* improvements. GTX680 much more so arguably, because the dispatcher is static vs dynamic in Fermi, a change much much more radical and prone to driver optimization than the one made by AMD. But you can still close your eyes, stop reading this thread of blasphemy and yell at your walls "HD7970 will be faaastaaaaa!!" all day/night long for all I care.

Sorry for the tone, almost 4 AM here, need something to keep me awake.


----------



## jaredpace (Mar 23, 2012)

vziera said:


> I feel somewhat sorry for those who already got the 7970



Just don't run anything to overwhelming on a 680.


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> ^^ Fanboy in denial.
> 
> The only thing that has been proven is that the HD7870 is NOT faster than HD7970 in Crysis 2. Look at the links. W1zz just found a rare glitch. PERIOD.
> 
> ...



Now you have stepped over the line boy, im no fanboy i just look at the facts. I have owned and bought twice as many Nvidia cards then i have ATI over the last 12yrs, so dont you dare call me a fanboy :shadedshu

A rare glitch? you think that was it? even wizz said himself that it might of been better drivers 

I dont have to close my eyes anyone that owns a ATI card knows that drivers help, i guess your not one of them? 

Funny i remember my brothers 3850 matching a 8800GT within 6 months purely because drivers have gotten better, how odd? 

Of course they will and i must admit Nvidia drivers have always been more refined then ATI's, just takes them longer is all.  But im just stating a fact that the 7970 has had some driver issues in the past and still might have a few even now? god only need a owner of the 7970 to tell us that. Once again my point still stands, so until we have another bench off between the two 6months from now its any bodies guess, but i know for a fact drivers help alot when it comes to ATI cards, but also for Nvidia to dont get me wrong. 

Time for you to go to bed me thinks!


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

jaredpace said:


> Just don't run anything to overwhelming on a 680.
> 
> http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5699/45124.png



idk about that on multi screen display thats at like 5xxx by 1600 resolution the 680 was acutally holding its own and beating the 7970 in a lot of the benchmarks.


----------



## alexsubri (Mar 23, 2012)

I know its the drivers for 79xx cuz I have a 7950 and still using RC11, but CatalystMaker needs to pull a hail marry, asap!


----------



## Benetanegia (Mar 23, 2012)

Melvis said:


> Funny i remember my brothers 3850 matching a 8800GT within 6 months purely because drivers have gotten better, how odd?



 Oh yeah, sure, and I'm also sure that was a really warm and pleasing and wet dream. Let's see HD4800 launch review (6 months after HD3800 release, give or take):

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Diamond/HD_4870/23.html - Hmm no 8800 GT still much faster.

And regarding Crysis 2. W1zz had no idea of what was happening and said the first thing that came to his head. The links I posted DEMOSTRATE that W1zz's results were nothing but a glitch. Especially the guru3d review, they use a very similar bench setup, SAME drivers and the results are very consistent with W1zz's results, within a couple of frames, for all the cards, except for the HD7800 cards that are 20 frames faster on W1zz's review. So I wonder why. 

You ARE closing your eyes to the facts. That's either fanboyism or stu... I'd rather think you are a fanboy tbh.

HERE a whole year (and a half) of driver improvements for you. Fact:


----------



## jamsbong (Mar 23, 2012)

Tahiti seems to be fast only when there is heaps of post-processing involved. Crysis and Metro2033 are the 2 games which was made that way.
Most other games were built with console limitations in mind. So in a way, I'm saying if there is a game that is made for 7950 then it will look good on that card only but that is never gonna happen nowadays. It had happened in the past with 3DFX cards but those days are long gone.

I do hope that the 79xx card gets closer to the theoretical performance with later driver release because I think it is absurd to have 7870 faster than 7950 in some benchmarks.


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Oh yeah, sure, and I'm also sure that was a really warm and pleasing and wet dream. Let's see HD4800 launch review (6 months after HD3800 release, give or take):
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Diamond/HD_4870/23.html - Hmm no 8800 GT still much faster.
> 
> ...



Meh you can believe whatever you want, i realy dont give a shit tbh, i had both cards here ran both same settings in multiple different games with newest drivers from ATi but i left the 8800GT with the older drivers to see if there was an increase just by having the newer drivers and the fact is there was, it matched the 8800GT in almost all the games, i was shocked but its the truth. I guess you will have to try it for ya self one day instead of just looking at reviews? 

So you are saying that in every other review the 7870 was slower then the 7970 in Crysis 2?

Once again dont call me a fanboy boy, see my system specs < thats the ONLY 2 ATI cards i have owned personally in the last 12 yrs unless they brought out the 4870X2 back in 2001?


----------



## Steevo (Mar 23, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Nice review W1zzard. Lots of work with dynamic clocks and such.
> 
> So my thoughts:
> 
> ...




Only faster in multi monitor due to lowering the fps of the surround monitors. Thats the same as saying my jetski is faster then your car if we are both in the lake. 

Im glad they gave the red team some competition, but am waiting until some others try running them in some real world scenarios that seem to bring out the issues like green flash videos from clock changes and such.


Still an amazing card.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

Steevo said:


> Only faster in multi monitor due to lowering the fps of the surround monitors. Thats the same as saying my jetski is faster then your car if we are both in the lake.
> 
> Im glad they gave the red team some competition, but am waiting until some others try running them in some real world scenarios that seem to bring out the issues like green flash videos from clock changes and such.
> 
> ...



im guessing your assuming there would be issues with flash video? I don't see how there would. My GTX470 goes to about 450mhz when watching flash and fluctuates.


----------



## Benetanegia (Mar 23, 2012)

Melvis said:


> Meh you can believe whatever you want, i realy dont give a shit tbh, i had both cards here ran both same settings in multiple different games with newest drivers from ATi but i left the 8800GT with the older drivers to see if there was an increase just by having the newer drivers and the fact is there was, it matched the 8800GT in almost all the games, i was shocked but its the truth. I guess you will have to try it for ya self one day instead of just looking at reviews?



I have done my own tests and contradict everything you say. It's pure myth. And W1zz's demostration of driver (non-)improvement is not good for you? haha, not when it doesn't suit you right?



> So you are saying that in every other review the 7870 was slower then the 7970 in Crysis 2?



I cannot say *every other* review. I cannot speak in absolute terms, that's not falsable, but yes, every review that I've seen other than TPU, have the HD7870 being a lot slower than HD79*5*0.

Another one: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...2165-amd-radeon-hd-7870-hd-7850-review-9.html
Finding reviews it's not easy, not many of them use Crysis 2 from what I've seen.



Steevo said:


> Only faster in multi monitor due to lowering the fps of the surround monitors. Thats the same as saying my jetski is faster then your car if we are both in the lake.



I've not seen that mentioned anywhere other than on pre-release rumours. No mention at all in the [H]. Care to offer a proof that it's effectively doing that? Without proof there's no way I'm going to take that into account.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> I have done my own tests and contradict everything you say. It's pure myth. And W1zz's demostration of driver (non-)improvement is not good for you? haha, not when it doesn't suit you right?
> 
> 
> 
> I cannot say *every other* review. I cannot speak in absolute terms, that's not falsable, but yes, every review that I've seen other than TPU, have the HD7870 being a lot slower than HD79*5*0.



I want to look into this as well. It doesnt make sense that the 7870 would be faster

for instance







but anyways based on the hardwarecanucks review and other stuff ive seen it seems the whole 7870 faster then 7970 is infact a glitch. Maybe Wiz could rebench or something at some point for the 7870 review.

Anyways this is a thread about the GTX680 not 7870. I think we can all agree that both the GTX680 and 7970 at this point are being held back by drivers.


----------



## v12dock (Mar 23, 2012)

Again the GTX 680 is extremely well priced but didn't turn out to be the ultra powerful beast some were anticipating.
Ether way @ $499.99 the 680 is a better value than the 7970 at the moment.

Yes the 7970 is limited by drivers right now but I am sure Nvidia can make improvements. They are both good cards and the 680 should be faster considering it was released 4 months later.


----------



## alexsubri (Mar 23, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> I want to look into this as well. It doesnt make sense that the 7870 would be faster
> 
> for instance
> 
> http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/GPU/HD7870/HD7870-36.jpg



It's the drivers guys  ,,,its a risk we all took when purchasing the 7xxx series


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> I have done my own tests and contradict everything you say. It's pure myth. And W1zz's demostration of driver (non-)improvement is not good for you? haha, not when it doesn't suit you right?
> 
> 
> 
> I cannot say *every other* review. I cannot speak in absolute terms, that's not falsable, but yes, every review that I've seen other than TPU, have the HD7870 being a lot slower than HD79*5*0.



Something tells me you haven't because if you did then you would of got the results like i did, i think i even wrote it all down yrs ago, if your lucky i might show you later. (if i can find them)

Regarding what Wizz demonstrated this was before those cards/drivers so i cant tell you, but i know just from my own experience from having these two cards < that almost every driver update that i have used (not all but most) i have seen an increase in performance in the games i play, who better to know then the person who owns the cards/setup right?

Well if thats the case then thats fair enough, its a glitch then, and im happy to go with that, i just stick with TPU reviews of GPU's as there the best out there and i go along with what Wizz says, he is the master after all 

Once again only time will tell 6 or so months from now when the drivers have been all worked out for BOTH of these cards will tell us how much faster the GTX680 realy is compared to the 7970 at the moment i take it all with a grain of salt but either way the GTX680 is still a great step forward for Nvidia and TBH i was hopeing to go back to Nvidia soon and this is making me seriously considering it. ( does that make me a fanboy?)


----------



## Benetanegia (Mar 23, 2012)

Well what can I do if you want to believe in Unicorns.

Sigh. Like I said, probably 1-2 games got an improvement and you attributed it to all of them, as if it was something that happened across the board. 2 months later, new drivers, new games, another increase in a couple games, across the board claim, rinse and repeat. Every single time happens the same.

And like I said I cannot convince you, but for me and I supose 95% of people out there a W1zzard's analysis like I posted has far more weight than myths and one single guy's beliefs of what's happened. Like I showed, when the HD4870 launched the HD3800 were still much slower than 8800. That is fact, so there were no significant improvements, at leasst over the improvements that the 8800 also achieved.


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Well what can I do if you want to believe in Unicorns.
> 
> Sigh. Like I said, probably 1-2 games got an improvement and you attributed it to all of them, as if it was something that happened across the board. 2 months later, new drivers, new games, another increase in a couple games, across the board claim, rinse and repeat. Every single time happens the same.
> 
> And like I said I cannot convince you, but for me and I supose 95% of people out there a W1zzard's analysis like I posted has far more weight than myths and one single guy's beliefs of what's happened. Like I showed, when the HD4870 launched the HD3800 were still much slower than 8800. That is fact, so there were no significant improvements, at leasst over the improvements that the 8800 also achieved.



Not as much as what i can do if you want to beleive in pigs that fly, o well. Grow up FFS.

And you just proved my point, across the games and in time there is imporvment you just said it ya self, so how can you not belevie me when i say this? you make no sense boy.

Well i guess your one of those ones that just hasnt tried for you self then i guess? not my problem if you dont beleive me or not, maybe before you start making claims based on someone elses opinon and not yours you should first try it for your self hmmm? 

Fact is and is still my point from the start and you just agreed with me that newer drivers DO give improvement in performance regardless what anyone says, if you have ever owned  a GPU and mainly a ATI one you would know this, but guess you havent? o well guess you wont know till ya buy one dude, have a nice day im done talking to kids


----------



## KainXS (Mar 23, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> Well what can I do if you want to believe in Unicorns.
> 
> Sigh. Like I said, probably 1-2 games got an improvement and you attributed it to all of them, as if it was something that happened across the board. 2 months later, new drivers, new games, another increase in a couple games, across the board claim, rinse and repeat. Every single time happens the same.
> 
> And like I said I cannot convince you, but for me and I supose 95% of people out there a W1zzard's analysis like I posted has far more weight than myths and one single guy's beliefs of what's happened. Like I showed, when the HD4870 launched the HD3800 were still much slower than 8800. That is fact, so there were no significant improvements, at leasst over the improvements that the 8800 also achieved.



Whoever has had these cards knows your right(I HAVE), why argue

just ignore it man, don't make a big deal of this.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Mar 23, 2012)

v12dock said:


> Again the GTX 680 is extremely well priced but didn't turn out to be the ultra powerful beast some were anticipating.
> Ether way @ $499.99 the 680 is a better value than the 7970 at the moment.
> 
> Yes the 7970 is limited by drivers right now but I am sure Nvidia can make improvements. They are both good cards and the 680 should be faster considering it was released 4 months later.



Honestly this should bring pricing to a decent range.


----------



## xenocide (Mar 23, 2012)

It's not drivers.  W1z must have found a glitch with Crysis 2 that rendered it at a lower resolution or quality setting for the 78xx testing.  Either that or the Drivers he was given had some odd tricks up their sleeves to make the cards appear to run better than they should.

Seriously, what does AMD have to gain out of gimping their flagship GPU?


----------



## eidairaman1 (Mar 23, 2012)

xenocide said:


> It's not drivers.  W1z must have found a glitch with Crysis 2 that rendered it at a lower resolution or quality setting for the 78xx testing.  Either that or the Drivers he was given had some odd tricks up their sleeves to make the cards appear to run better than they should.
> 
> Seriously, what does AMD have to gain out of gimping their flagship GPU?



IDK honestly and I dont care as card prices over 400 bux is ridiculous (400 bux got you a Radeon 9700 Pro AIW in 2002)


----------



## xenocide (Mar 23, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> IDK honestly and I dont care as card prices over 400 bux is ridiculous (400 bux got you a Radeon 9700 Pro AIW in 2002)



http://146.142.4.24/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=400&year1=2002&year2=2012

2002: $400
=
2012: $506.20

Actually the GTX680 is the same value (when factoring inflation).


----------



## eidairaman1 (Mar 23, 2012)

ya but 400 bux is still 400 and 500 is still 500


----------



## entropy13 (Mar 23, 2012)




----------



## sergionography (Mar 23, 2012)

jamsbong said:


> Remember the brilliant RV770? This is history repeating with Nvidia as the one with the clever architecture.
> 
> GTX680 = Tahiti. So either card is worth buying in terms of performance. The reason to buy Kepler would be the better price, lower power consumption (i.e. GPU produce less heat energy), CUDA, fancy AA. As for features that were unique to ATI is also now available in NV, eyefinity and the lean/low power consuming architecture. I hope NV will never make another barbarian/joule guzzler GPU again.
> 
> ...



well its now kinda the other way around, kepler is kickass in gaming, in compute not so much, or atleast according the to benchmarks ive seen on anandtech, were yet to see more benchmarks about compute
in other words cuda isnt why you would buy nvidia this time.
as far as gtx680 is concerned i think its most appealing for those who just wanna put a card in and game, for overclocking i think the hd7970 still holds its ground, and with amd drivers it has room to improve
in other words this will translate into some interesting price wars! bring it on



Melvis said:


> Something tells me you haven't because if you did then you would of got the results like i did, i think i even wrote it all down yrs ago, if your lucky i might show you later. (if i can find them)
> 
> Regarding what Wizz demonstrated this was before those cards/drivers so i cant tell you, but i know just from my own experience from having these two cards < that almost every driver update that i have used (not all but most) i have seen an increase in performance in the games i play, who better to know then the person who owns the cards/setup right?
> 
> ...



you talk as if ur the only one who owned the card

and again as far as drivers are concerned its almost always AMD who has potential increase from driver updates mostly because everytime a new driver comes out it either is half baked or ruins something else while its at it, the only question is will we see these "perfect" drivers? and if so, when?
nvidia on the other hand has it down right usualy from the start, with minor tweaks here and there.


----------



## burebista (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> everything can be hacked. just a question of how difficult and who will spend time on it


My friend Ramiro tried something. 
To sum his thoughts: the card is perfect for gamers out-of-the-box but crappy for benchers (crappy VRM and crappy power limit).


----------



## Rahmat Sofyan (Mar 23, 2012)

I wonder, on this review, FXAA is on or off?
and how about TXAA?
whether TXAA automatically activated, and therefore the GTX 680 so fast?
or indeed GTX 680 really fast, because we already knew nVidia bring new AA on kepler, but on any review I can't find anything how to use TXAA or something else about it.

any advice?


----------



## Melvis (Mar 23, 2012)

sergionography said:


> you talk as if ur the only one who owned the card
> 
> and again as far as drivers are concerned its almost always AMD who has potential increase from driver updates mostly because everytime a new driver comes out it either is half baked or ruins something else while its at it, the only question is will we see these "perfect" drivers? and if so, when?
> nvidia on the other hand has it down right usualy from the start, with minor tweaks here and there.



lol naa and TBH both the cards wasnt even mine, i just build them and test them, so i did and thats the results i got. the 3850 matched the 8800GT in most of the games i benched using the Newest drivers from ATi at the time and leaving 6-8months old drivers with the 8800GT. BUT once i updated the drivers for the 8800GT yea it was game over the 8800GT walked all over the 3850. (windows XP was used)

Thats exactly right, and as far as perfect drivers go, that will never happen. Only improvments till us the user is happy with it  with what games we play.


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 23, 2012)

xenocide said:


> W1z must have found a glitch with Crysis 2 that rendered it at a lower resolution or quality setting for the 78xx testing



i think that's what was happening for hd 78xx. i restored the original disk image and crysis 2 gains went away. will look more into this, but second gtx 680 is arriving today, so sli review has priority



Rahmat Sofyan said:


> I wonder, on this review, FXAA is on or off?
> and how about TXAA?
> whether TXAA automatically activated, and therefore the GTX 680 so fast?



txaa can not be activated through the driver, it requires game developers to actively integrate it in their program code.

fxaa was off, i never touch any settings in the driver for my reviews, which is what most people do


----------



## Rahmat Sofyan (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> i think that's what was happening for hd 78xx. i restored the original disk image and crysis 2 gains went away. will look more into this, but second gtx 680 is arriving today, so sli review has priority
> 
> 
> 
> ...



now it's clear.GTX 680 is the fastest one!!! 

thanx W1zz


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 23, 2012)

Just got a package from ASUS:






  



Spoiler


----------



## m1dg3t (Mar 23, 2012)

Can i haz when done pl0x?


----------



## entropy13 (Mar 23, 2012)

That empty box looks quite heavy.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

so much for GTX680 failing at overclocking

http://www.overclock.net/t/1232947/hwbot-gtx-680-takes-record-1900-mhz#post_16783937

oh jesus Zotac is releasing a 2GHZ GTX680 varient....I doubt this will happen.

http://translate.google.com/transla...http://digi.tech.qq.com/a/20120322/002197.htm


----------



## m1dg3t (Mar 23, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> so much for GTX680 failing at overclocking
> 
> http://www.overclock.net/t/1232947/hwbot-gtx-680-takes-record-1900-mhz#post_16783937



Def nice clock's! bta already posted a link to that yesterday IIRC. Also you wont see any end user's getting that high, best we/they can hope for is what ever the DOC paramater's allow 

Plus that was done with the add on VRM pwr board


----------



## jamsbong (Mar 23, 2012)

sergionography said:


> well its now kinda the other way around, kepler is kickass in gaming, in compute not so much, or atleast according the to benchmarks ive seen on anandtech, were yet to see more benchmarks about compute
> in other words cuda isnt why you would buy nvidia this time.



You're right, I just went through Anandtech's review. There was a long detailed explanation comparing Fermi with Kepler architecture. In summary, Kepler remove many of the non-gaming features to make it go fast and efficient. Surprisingly, ATI has gone in the opposite direction with GCN being more complex to adapt itself for general computing capability. Note that Kepler's double precision FLOP is lower than Fermi!

I guess this also means that Tahiti will never be as efficient in gaming as Kepler. Oh well...


----------



## Recus (Mar 23, 2012)

Here is new tech demo preview:










Bokeh depth of field
APEX clothing
Tessellation wrinkles?

http://product.pcpop.com/000337190/Picture/005200798.html#005200828


----------



## Crap Daddy (Mar 23, 2012)

The only thing left for the 7970 is the ability to overclock in a more flexible way and in theory reach higher speeds than the GTX680. But in a more practical way this is a bit hard to reach.

While overclocking on the GTX680 is limited by certain factors, 1250-1300MHz are attainable under the restrictions imposed by NV although we must take into consideration that these clocks are not fixed, they change all the time under load depending on certain conditions. So a comparison clock/clock with Radeon is almost impossible. On the other hand, 1200 MHz are pretty hard to reach with a 7970 and the cost in thermals and power consumption are huge.

Take a look at this graph. GTX680 is clocked at 1156 base, 1209 boost, highest read in Afterburner 1275. The 7970 was clocked at 1180 with 1.25v


----------



## dj-electric (Mar 23, 2012)

Damn you w1zz...

And you gotta be really really DUMB to think that if you can overclock your GTX680 to 1.3GHZ your gonna get good results. 30% frequency increase for about 8-15% performance increase.
(I'm talking to you, overclockersclub.com)
Overclocking using heaven loops till it crashes is the wrong way to overclock a card that starts throttling at some point and just keeping the same performance.


----------



## jamsbong (Mar 23, 2012)

Recus said:


> Here is new tech demo preview:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



real time Natural hair! and possibly some eye reflection.


----------



## laszlo (Mar 23, 2012)

nice card from green side

so where is the hitler video? i really miss it


----------



## LifeOnMars (Mar 23, 2012)

We want realistic Boob Physics Nvidia, when will you learn? If I want realtime tessellated wrinkles I can stare at my Grandma.


----------



## Fairlady-z (Mar 23, 2012)

Any one interested in a MSI 7970 OC w/ EK block and Back plate brand new all in box's $500+s/h? 

I really want these cards bad lol.


----------



## dj-electric (Mar 23, 2012)

laszlo said:


> nice card from green side
> 
> so where is the hitler video? i really miss it



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVF8xeQq4lU


----------



## LifeOnMars (Mar 23, 2012)

That is awesomely hilarious and well written 

"Benchmarks are my f@**g life"


----------



## Crap Daddy (Mar 23, 2012)

Fairlady-z said:


> Any one interested in a MSI 7970 OC w/ EK block and Back plate brand new all in box's $500+s/h?
> 
> I really want these cards bad lol.



If you are aware how the overclocking goes with the GTX680, if you want to have new hardware and are not satisfied with software support from AMD then it's fine. Otherwise I'd keep the card.


----------



## Fairlady-z (Mar 23, 2012)

Crap Daddy said:


> If you are aware how the overclocking goes with the GTX680, if you want to have new hardware and are not satisfied with software support from AMD then it's fine. Otherwise I'd keep the card.




I am terrible at this stuff, and I honestly have some one put it together for me....shame I know. If any one is interested let me know. Also, I am having some issues with the drivers Catalyst is as responsive as our government which is driving me nuts.


----------



## vziera (Mar 23, 2012)

I think I'm staying with my GTX580. Hell I'm no tech slave


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 23, 2012)

vziera said:


> Hell I'm no tech slave



what do i say?


----------



## Crap Daddy (Mar 23, 2012)

Fairlady-z said:


> I am terrible at this stuff, and I honestly have some one put it together for me....shame I know. If any one is interested let me know. Also, I am having some issues with the drivers Catalyst is as responsive as our government which is driving me nuts.



Good luck then.


----------



## Kreij (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> what do i say?



Tell him he's got it backward.
We aren't slaves to tech ... tech is our slave.
We whip it and beat it relentlessly, pummelling it when it doesn't perform and then toss it to the roadside when a newer stronger slave show up.


----------



## dj-electric (Mar 23, 2012)

When no one's watching, i put the GTX580 Lightning in my lap and start bouncing my knee...
That is how i relate to hardware. Besides that tubing accident i don't wanna mention... but it still hurts


----------



## vziera (Mar 23, 2012)

Kreij said:


> Tell him he's got it backward.
> We aren't slaves to tech ... tech is our slave.
> We whip it and beat it relentlessly, pummelling it when it doesn't perform and then toss it to the roadside when a newer stronger slave show up.



well, the slave gets more money lol


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 23, 2012)

Kreij said:


> it when it doesn't perform and then toss it to the roadside when a newer stronger slave show up



that's true. I threw away a bunch of HD 2000 class cards last year. and yes, it hurt.
HD 3000 will be next this year


----------



## Kreij (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> that's true. I threw away a bunch of HD 2000 class cards last year. and yes, it hurt.
> HD 3000 will be next this year



Autograph them and give them away in a contest. I'm sure there are many people on TPU who would love a W1zzard atuographed GPU even if it was old tech and just sat on a shelf.


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 23, 2012)

Kreij said:


> Autograph them and give them away in a contest. I'm sure there are many people on TPU who would love a W1zzard atuographed GPU even if it was old tech and just sat on a shelf.



now how do i sign that?


----------



## cadaveca (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> now how do i sign that?






Sharpie(tm)?!?







Man, I'd take a card signed by you! You are a big part of VGA history! Author of ATITool, GPU-Z, you bet they'd be wanted!


----------



## dj-electric (Mar 23, 2012)

^+1
Would love to have "W1zzard" signed on my.... ugh... card


----------



## ISI300 (Mar 23, 2012)

Brilliant card from the green team (now I can say this since I swapped my 5770 for a GTX 260), However:

Die size about the same as a 9800 GT. Price=500$ ?! (Don't misunderstand, amd will poo into their own blood as long as their prices are as such).
also for the 7970: 550$ And less performance than a 680 (quite a bit slower), don't rally care about the whole GPGPU thing very much. but when the f*** will amd push that damn things price down?
and wizzy, are you people allowed to keep these cards sent to you as press release? (sorry about the nosy question, ignore if you want)


----------



## Delta6326 (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> that's true. I threw away a bunch of HD 2000 class cards last year. and yes, it hurt.
> HD 3000 will be next this year



Wait you just throw them away!? I could use a AGP card if you have one, my sisters old computer is getting well really old, its from 2001 and doesn't even have a dedicated card, but she still trys to game on it. I think it has P4 LGA 478 2.8GHz? and maybe 512MB ram


----------



## LAN_deRf_HA (Mar 23, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> Wait you just throw them away!? I could use a AGP card if you have one, my sisters old computer is getting well really old, its from 2001 and doesn't even have a dedicated card, but she still trys to game on it. I think it has P4 LGA 478 2.8GHz? and maybe 512MB ram



I'd imagine after the shipping costs you'd do better to just buy a used card stateside.


----------



## ISI300 (Mar 23, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> When no one's watching, i put the GTX580 Lightning in my lap and start bouncing my knee...
> That is how i relate to hardware. Besides that tubing accident i don't wanna mention... but it still hurts



You have got to be bloody sh**ting, erm, nevermind.
does the card have that rear backplate heatspreader thing? or are those soldering points for capacitors exposed? (haven't seen the card)

You sort of like me, brother (if you mind me calling), except I do it with my hands (Handing the card, smelling the GPU from the inside, mosfets suffered from oc, etc)
We should invent a name for ourselves, like car lovers have such as gearhead...
GPUHead, PCBEaters, any ideas?


----------



## Kreij (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> now how do i sign that?



Well, you could sign it "DanTheBanjoman", "DarkSaber" or "Urlyin", but signing it "W1zz" or "W1zzard" might be better. You could sign your real name, but anyone who doesn't know who you are would say, "Who the hell is that?!?"

Don't forget to include a certificate of authenticity page that you sign also, so we can sell the signed old stuff way overpriced on the BST forum to the other sucke ... er ... members.

If you still have that original Fermi that you blew up, sign it and send it to me. I'll have it museum quality mounted and framed and send it back, so you can auction it off in case you ever need money for coke and hookers new hardware.

Don't worry W1zz, I got you covered when the really tough questions come up.


----------



## ArmoredCavalry (Mar 23, 2012)

Wasn't sure if this had been brought up yet, but it says FXAA has been added as an option in the control panel?

Does this mean it can now be forced in all DX9/10/11 games? I know before they had an option in Nvidia's control panel, but it was only for OpenGL.


----------



## ISI300 (Mar 23, 2012)

ArmoredCavalry said:


> Wasn't sure if this had been brought up yet, but it says FXAA has been added as an option in the control panel?
> 
> Does this mean it can now be forced in all DX9/10/11 games? I know before they had an option in Nvidia's control panel, but it was only for OpenGL.



and also, which of the outlined features will be supported by older generation cards (such as fermi, gt200, g80)


----------



## laszlo (Mar 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> that's true. I threw away a bunch of HD 2000 class cards last year. and yes, it hurt.
> HD 3000 will be next this year



don't throw them better donate for making free pc for poor people's kids....


----------



## Casecutter (Mar 23, 2012)

vziera said:


> I feel somewhat sorry for those who already got the 7970



I don't if they've used and enjoyed it for say most all of Jan, Feb and now 3 weeks in March that's 10 weeks or $5 a week. 

While today you'd supposedly trail by approximately 5% in a few of the most demanding titles @1920x where it really matters (those approx 60Fps or less). So if you don't play Batman, Civilization, or Dragon Age it really becomes moot.   It is BF3 that really mattered most... 7970 buyer has played for 10 weeks and today they feel like the lost 10% in average Fps that alway the nature of this bussiness.  Though in some tests we see the minimums for GTX680 while good aren't spectacular as 10%, and it's those low-points that matter more when it actual game play.  And that's where "Turbo Boost" took the advantage especially BF3 and the untapped omph in a GK104, but they needed Turbo Boost to find it.  Nvidia knew BF3 was the only game they had to really make the most supearlative, and on that front the spent the time/money and really worked the profiles of the "clock speed nanny" to really shine.  Will they be able to cost PCB and the components that are need for that on a $400 GK104? 

There’s a lot of talk about efficiency, and on the pure watts/Fps it very good, but in actual gaming consumption it's like 3% more efficient across the spectrum of actual gaming titles, which yield say 5% in Fps (verse a 7970) while exceptionally remarkable against previous GTX580.  That's again all "clock speed nanny" 

When GTX580 plummeted in price a few weeks back that was a clear sign the 680 was going to overwhelm the 580.  I feel sorry for the GTX580 buyer who thought it was a deal for $420, while needing to work some huge rebate... they may hurt the worst.


----------



## Wrigleyvillain (Mar 23, 2012)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jensen H Huang
> Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 9:48 AM
> To: Employees
> ...



Anandtech


----------



## Delta6326 (Mar 23, 2012)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> Because of its super energy-efficient architecture



How is it super efficient? It should consume less power than it does.
It has smaller bus, less shaders, less memory. and it only wins in peak, Max and Blue-ray, but I guess it is still faster and it does win Max power by a bit. I would say its Efficient, but not Super.







But thats me just being picky I still want this card!! My 2x 4850 comes in at almost  50% of this GTX 680 in Relative performance.


----------



## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Mar 23, 2012)

W1z, is there any chance you can do a test with WoW at 1920x1200 with all the bells and whistles? (there is a DX11 option)


----------



## Wrigleyvillain (Mar 23, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> I would say its Efficient, but not Super.



Though this is Nvidia and the word "efficient" was never even in their vocabulary before!


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 23, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> Def nice clock's! bta already posted a link to that yesterday IIRC. Also you wont see any end user's getting that high, best we/they can hope for is what ever the DOC paramater's allow
> 
> Plus that was done with the add on VRM pwr board



yeah well Evga SC+ signature varient of the 680 will have 8+6 pin power design, but then 5 phase PWM, Evga FTW will have 8 phase pwm, and then the Classified will have 13 phase I think. So those cards shoudl be able to clock pretty damn well assuming the cooling is adequete


----------



## Fairlady-z (Mar 23, 2012)

Woohoo Radeon HD7970 out the door, and GTX680sli in lol. Pretty pumped and I hope the drivers are better, as this 7970 in CF was giving me a headache one problem after another.


----------



## Baam (Mar 23, 2012)

New card looks great. Might be time for me to go Nvidia. As of now, price performance, this card kills the 7970.


----------



## RigRebel (Mar 23, 2012)

jamsbong said:


> Remember the brilliant RV770? This is history repeating with Nvidia as the one with the clever architecture.
> 
> GTX680 = Tahiti. So either card is worth buying in terms of performance. The reason to buy Kepler would be the better price, lower power consumption (i.e. GPU produce less heat energy), CUDA, fancy AA. As for features that were unique to ATI is also now available in NV, eyefinity and the lean/low power consuming architecture. I hope NV will never make another barbarian/joule guzzler GPU again.
> 
> ...



- Tahiti = Fermi which was out way sooner. Correction, Tahiti = improved Fermi,  Kepler = improved Fermi / Tahiti hybird... more or less. 
-  Idk why people are trying to hold on the 4 screen things since you could 4 independent ever since 1st gen iSeries H55 chipset... IGD+PEG at same time 2 on board 2 on card.. and you could 3 way for Nvidia in the lesser known MDT series or the 2win on a single card. Yes the Kepler is a better improvement on this but it's not like 4 monitors was not possible on the Nvidia side.


----------



## sergionography (Mar 24, 2012)

Casecutter said:


> I don't if they've used and enjoyed it for say most all of Jan, Feb and now 3 weeks in March that's 10 weeks or $5 a week.
> 
> While today you'd supposedly trail by approximately 5% in a few of the most demanding titles @1920x where it really matters (those approx 60Fps or less). So if you don't play Batman, Civilization, or Dragon Age it really becomes moot.   It is BF3 that really mattered most... 7970 buyer has played for 10 weeks and today they feel like the lost 10% in average Fps that alway the nature of this bussiness.  Though in some tests we see the minimums for GTX680 while good aren't spectacular as 10%, and it's those low-points that matter more when it actual game play.  And that's where "Turbo Boost" took the advantage especially BF3 and the untapped omph in a GK104, but they needed Turbo Boost to find it.  Nvidia knew BF3 was the only game they had to really make the most supearlative, and on that front the spent the time/money and really worked the profiles of the "clock speed nanny" to really shine.  Will they be able to cost PCB and the components that are need for that on a $400 GK104?
> 
> ...



http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review/16
in this review the hd7970 did better than kepler and was well in the 80fps range, which is wierd if you ask me

also look at this
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review/17
hd7970 is dominating in compute, so while kepler is a bit more efficient in games it happens to be for the price of compute(but i would take that with a grain of salt as this review about compute isnt extensive enough)
but dang this round it looks like both amd and nvidia are kinda switching places! or more or less becoming very similar

EDIT: also i just realized this test is using an i7 920 while the other is using an intel sandy bridge extreme, the difference between the 2 is interesting
and here the driver used is 11.12, any reason why you didnt use catalyst 12.2 w1zz? since i believe thats the one that adds support to hd7970(im assuming because they dont make a great difference and the release hd7970 results are being compared with kepler)


----------



## WhoDecidedThat (Mar 24, 2012)

NVIDIA should release a version of this card which doesn't have GPU Boost and with which we can change the base clocks. GPU Boost is useless.


----------



## Wrigleyvillain (Mar 24, 2012)

Fairlady-z said:


> Woohoo Radeon HD7970 out the door, and GTX680sli in lol.



So who got chumped the buyer or you?


----------



## xenocide (Mar 25, 2012)

sergionography said:


> http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review/16
> in this review the hd7970 did better than kepler and was well in the 80fps range, which is wierd if you ask me
> 
> also look at this
> ...



In the exact page you linked the GTX680 beats the HD7970 in 2/3 resolutions.  The HD7970 only wins at 1920x1200, and at that res it's only ahead by 1fps, which is well within the MoE.  By your logic I could point to the bottom chart (1680x1050) and say "oh look, the GTX570 is faster than the HD7970!"  As for Compute, it's 50/50.  Half the time it runs about as well as the 580, half the time it runs like a 560Ti.  As long as the GTX680 can perform in games, it's a winner in my book (especially being smaller, less power hungry, quieter, and cooler than the HD7970).

As for the test bench, this has come up every review.  W1z has done several benchmarks proving the OCed i7-920 is not holding back the setup.  While SB is technically faster, when testing GPU's it's largely irrelevant.  The difference even in the most CPU-bound game he runs (SC2) was only a few percentage points.


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 25, 2012)

Talking about head to head o/c versus o/c:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-sli-overclock-surround,3162-11.html
"Overall, it’s pretty easy to see that AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 has more to gain from an aggressive overclock than Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 680. It’s a little disappointing, then, that the Catalyst Control Center driver tops out at 1125/1575 MHz."
It would be interesting to see, two msi lightnings of this puppies(gtx680, hd7970) voltage tweaked and tested.


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## ViperXTR (Mar 25, 2012)

GTX 680, currently selling in our place at 686 USD, wtf


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## INSTG8R (Mar 25, 2012)

ViperXTR said:


> GTX 680, currently selling in our place at 686 USD, wtf



They are almost 750 USD here :shadedshu


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## ViperXTR (Mar 25, 2012)

i-im sorry to hear that >.<


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## RigRebel (Mar 25, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> Talking about head to head o/c versus o/c:
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-sli-overclock-surround,3162-11.html
> "Overall, it’s pretty easy to see that AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 has more to gain from an aggressive overclock than Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 680. It’s a little disappointing, then, that the Catalyst Control Center driver tops out at 1125/1575 MHz."
> It would be interesting to see, two msi lightnings of this puppies(gtx680, hd7970) voltage tweaked and tested.



Lol I love these so called "fair" assessments ... they will over clock the 7970 to make it fair with the GTX 680 yet fail to mention the 1GB advantage of the 7970 cards lol. If they wanted to make it completely "fair" just to compare clock for clock, they'd find a way to nerf the extra 1GB of ram the 7970 has lol ... I know that probably can't be done but still not exactly "fair".

PS... combining post so no double posting. 

Wow. I don't know if it's been said yet but prices are already dropping on GTX 560 cards... CompUSA shows all 560 cards from at least 6 manufactures just all went to @$164.99-$169.99 when previously at $179.00-$199.00. GTX 560 ti seems to be dropping a small $5.00 per card as well. Hope it keeps dropping


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## sergionography (Mar 25, 2012)

xenocide said:


> In the exact page you linked the GTX680 beats the HD7970 in 2/3 resolutions.  The HD7970 only wins at 1920x1200, and at that res it's only ahead by 1fps, which is well within the MoE.  By your logic I could point to the bottom chart (1680x1050) and say "oh look, the GTX570 is faster than the HD7970!"  As for Compute, it's 50/50.  Half the time it runs about as well as the 580, half the time it runs like a 560Ti.  As long as the GTX680 can perform in games, it's a winner in my book (especially being smaller, less power hungry, quieter, and cooler than the HD7970).
> 
> As for the test bench, this has come up every review.  W1z has done several benchmarks proving the OCed i7-920 is not holding back the setup.  While SB is technically faster, when testing GPU's it's largely irrelevant.  The difference even in the most CPU-bound game he runs (SC2) was only a few percentage points.



yes im aware and i agree, what i meant to say is that kepler in this setup ties with hd7970 in civilization, while in wizz's review the hd7970 was way behind, thats the point i was trying to make. and i assumed the cpu had something to do with it, tho the interesting bit is, kepler performed the same pretty much on both benchmarks(except in 1680x1050) while the hd7970 caught up in the anandtech review and was on par with kepler. one thing i just noticed is that wizz used 4xAA, anand was using 4xMSAA

as for the compute, what i was trying to say is that hd7970 is much more consistent in its performance in compute, while the gtx680 definitely seems to have its weak points, with the fluid simulation being on top, and half the benches being all the way down, and on of them being within the top but pretty close to the tahiti its hard to even consider it a total Win (in that specific becnhmark)


----------



## INSTG8R (Mar 25, 2012)

ViperXTR said:


> i-im sorry to hear that >.<



So am I. The only major part I kept from my old PC was the GFX card waiting for this gen of cards to surface. But the ridiculous prices have pretty much put my "final upgrade" on hold and hope competition forces prices down...:shadedshu


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## RigRebel (Mar 25, 2012)

sergionography said:


> yes im aware and i agree, what i meant to say is that kepler in this setup ties with hd7970 in civilization, while in wizz's review the hd7970 was way behind, thats the point i was trying to make. and i assumed the cpu had something to do with it, tho the interesting bit is, kepler performed the same pretty much on both benchmarks(except in 1680x1050) while the hd7970 caught up in the anandtech review and was on par with kepler. one thing i just noticed is that wizz used 4xAA, anand was using 4xMSAA
> 
> as for the compute, what i was trying to say is that hd7970 is much more consistent in its performance in compute, while the gtx680 definitely seems to have its weak points, with the fluid simulation being on top, and half the benches being all the way down, and on of them being within the top but pretty close to the tahiti its hard to even consider it a total Win (in that specific becnhmark)



LOl sorry thought you were someone repling to my post above originally... I'll let this post stand though cause it's relevant to your post.  Of course we're gonna see some fallout spins from the AMD side. All the single card benches and most the 2way SLI benchs that I have seen have the GTX 680 beating the 7970 on BF3 but some with good margin and others just barely. I haven't really looked at the other game benches cause wow, so much to read through atm and swamped.  As far as 4xAA and 4xMSAA yeah the MSAA is more taxing on FPS I believe. There could be other small factors contributing to the inconsistencies in the GTX 680 reviews. One of course could be that each review uses a different test bench setup. Not sure what could be going on there; BUT, I did see a reivew where they compared 3way and 4way SLI to 3 and 4 xfire and it seems like something happens in BF3 to the GTX680 with 3 and 4 sli setups... The xfire seemed to beat it miserrably with scalability in 4way SLI being almost non-exsistent. Seems like the GTX 680 losses it's scalability after 3 cards.  I'm wondering if this is a driver problem... I havn't had a chance to read more about it yet. Any thought ?


----------



## sergionography (Mar 25, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> LOl sorry thought you were someone repling to my post above originally... I'll let this post stand though cause it's relevant to your post.  Of course we're gonna see some fallout spins from the AMD side. All the single card benches and most the 2way SLI benchs that I have seen have the GTX 680 beating the 7970 on BF3 but some with good margin and others just barely. I haven't really looked at the other game benches cause wow, so much to read through atm and swamped.  As far as 4xAA and 4xMSAA yeah the MSAA is more taxing on FPS I believe. There could be other small factors contributing to the inconsistencies in the GTX 680 reviews. One of course could be that each review uses a different test bench setup. Not sure what could be going on there; BUT, I did see a reivew where they compared 3way and 4way SLI to 3 and 4 xfire and it seems like something happens in BF3 to the GTX680 with 3 and 4 sli setups... The xfire seemed to beat it miserrably with scalability in 4way SLI being almost non-exsistent. Seems like the GTX 680 losses it's scalability after 3 cards.  I'm wondering if this is a driver problem... I havn't had a chance to read more about it yet. Any thought ?



yea man exactly, thats what was confusing me, and i tried spotting the differences but still cant put my hand on what is going on, but owell in general the 680 has an edge in gaming on single gpu, but its pretty close in my opinion
as for scaling yea i saw something like that, and it said that the inconsistent clocks on 4 different cards or so make the scaling very difficult to achieve(remember usualy sli and xfire setups clock according to the lowest card in the bunch, in this case each card clocks differently) so if thats the case im assuming future drivers might disable dynamic clocking(thats the easy solution) or find some clever way to sort it out and i know nvidia's drivers team is pretty talented and can eventually do it, but i could be wrong as i know very little about this issue other than what i read in the article I saw


----------



## RigRebel (Mar 25, 2012)

sergionography said:


> yea man exactly, thats what was confusing me, and i tried spotting the differences but still cant put my hand on what is going on, but owell in general the 680 has an edge in gaming on single gpu, but its pretty close in my opinion
> as for scaling yea i saw something like that, and it said that the inconsistent clocks on 4 different cards or so make the scaling very difficult to achieve(remember usualy sli and xfire setups clock according to the lowest card in the bunch, in this case each card clocks differently) so if thats the case im assuming future drivers might disable dynamic clocking(thats the easy solution) or find some clever way to sort it out and i know nvidia's drivers team is pretty talented and can eventually do it, but i could be wrong as i know very little about this issue other than what i read in the article I saw



They did disable dynamic (turbo) clocking I believe in that one.. wish I had the review. I have the link in my work email just can't get to it tonight. I'll re-post on monday with the review link.


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 25, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> Lol I love these so called "fair" assessments ... they will over clock the 7970 to make it fair with the GTX 680 yet fail to mention the 1GB advantage of the 7970 cards lol. If they wanted to make it completely "fair" just to compare clock for clock, they'd find a way to nerf the extra 1GB of ram the 7970 has lol ... I know that probably can't be done but still not exactly "fair".



I don't know what exactly are you talking about, i just read people that would like to see how the two cards compare when overclocked.
I don't think they overclock the 7970 to "make it fair", they compare it to see which one performs better over the stock clock.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> I don't know what exactly are you talking about, i just read people that would like to see how the two cards compare when overclocked.
> I don't think they overclock the 7970 to "make it fair", they compare it to see which one performs better over the stock clock.



yeah they cant just overclock one card. they would have to overclock the other to the same percentage overclock for it to be fair no matter the clock number, since each card acts differently when clocked scaling wise.


----------



## RigRebel (Mar 25, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> I don't know what exactly are you talking about, i just read people that would like to see how the two cards compare when overclocked.
> I don't think they overclock the 7970 to "make it fair", they compare it to see which one performs better over the stock clock.



Yes they did.. They say in the first sentence. Direct quote > "I saw it argued in the comments *that the only fair way to compare a GeForce GTX 680 to a Radeon HD 7970 is with both cards overclocked*. Because the 680 employs GPU Boost, it purportedly already demonstrates performance close to its limit, whereas Tahiti-based GPUs are known to offer quite a bit of headroom. " 

Again notice the word "fair" ... this is the second type review I've read and the first one said same thing but went on to further say something like "the only fair way to tell is to compair clock to clock" .. again they say this but they forget that the 7970 has 1GB more ram so what's "fair" about that ... hypocritical IMO. I'll post the other review on monday it's in my work mail.

 Who cares about clock for clock if the end result is getting as much overclocking as you can in the first place. Isn't that the whold point of Overclocking?... to see just how high you can raise the ceiling and how much you can push out of it... The GTX 680 can raise the ceiling to @1340Mhz...and the AMD is somewhere around @1141Mhz I think. Comparing "clock to clock" in a competition where total overclocking is the goal is just another way of AMD side not admiting defeat and wanting to pick it apart and test anything in their favor, IMO. AGain I use the analogy.. so what if your honda is more efficent per cyclinder... a mustang GT will still smoke ya. lol


----------



## sergionography (Mar 25, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> They did disable dynamic (turbo) clocking I believe in that one.. wish I had the review. I have the link in my work email just can't get to it tonight. I'll re-post on monday with the review link.



are you sure, I think at this point that's not possible, I think wizz even mentions it when over locking and sais even when u overclock u pretty much raise the boast ceiling rather than staying on that frequency, tho I still don't know much about gpu boast,to me it sounds decieving in theory, when I first Thor about it I figured it would give out inconsistent fps, giving you crapload fps on easy to render and scenes that are light on the gpu, but then when the gpu is stressed you get to a limitation, so overall increasing average fps but the experience pretty much remains the same, tho NVIDIA kept the boast minimal I'm assuming to avoid this issue, however if that boast was lik 25% increase in clock just think how inconsistent fps will be, idk if I'm totally looking at this the wrong way, but I'm assuming this is why Keller doesn't seem to scale as much as Tahiti in overclocking


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 25, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> Yes they did.. They say in the first sentence. Direct quote > "I saw it argued in the comments *that the only fair way to compare a GeForce GTX 680 to a Radeon HD 7970 is with both cards overclocked*. Because the 680 employs GPU Boost, it purportedly already demonstrates performance close to its limit, whereas Tahiti-based GPUs are known to offer quite a bit of headroom. "
> 
> Again notice the word "fair" ... this is the second type review I've read and the first one said same thing but went on to further say something like "the only fair way to tell is to compair clock to clock" .. again they say this but they forget that the 7970 has 1GB more ram so what's "fair" about that ... hypocritical IMO. I'll post the other review on monday it's in my work mail.
> 
> Who cares about clock for clock if the end result is getting as much overclocking as you can in the first place. Isn't that the whold point of Overclocking?... to see just how high you can raise the ceiling and how much you can push out of it... The GTX 680 can raise the ceiling to @1340Mhz...and the AMD is somewhere around @1141Mhz I think. Comparing "clock to clock" in a competition where total overclocking is the goal is just another way of AMD side not admiting defeat and wanting to pick it apart and test anything in their favor, IMO. AGain I use the analogy.. so what if your honda is more efficent per cyclinder... a mustang GT will still smoke ya. lol



And yet another AMD vs NVIDIA thing...........


----------



## perryra1968 (Mar 25, 2012)

AMD 5970...$299.00...Black Friday.....Still is the best deal I ever had.....ever! It'll be a while before I upgrade. BF3 at 19X12 is only 11 FPS difference between 5970 and 680. Thanks Newegg!


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## N3M3515 (Mar 25, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> yeah they cant just overclock one card. they would have to overclock the other to the same percentage overclock for it to be fair no matter the clock number, since each card acts differently when clocked scaling wise.



They overclocked each card to the max they could i think.......so it is not about clocking the to to the same %, and hey i don't care about fairness, i care about seing how much each one gains from o/c and from the looks of it 7970 scales better imho.


----------



## sergionography (Mar 26, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> Yes they did.. They say in the first sentence. Direct quote > "I saw it argued in the comments *that the only fair way to compare a GeForce GTX 680 to a Radeon HD 7970 is with both cards overclocked*. Because the 680 employs GPU Boost, it purportedly already demonstrates performance close to its limit, whereas Tahiti-based GPUs are known to offer quite a bit of headroom. "
> 
> Again notice the word "fair" ... this is the second type review I've read and the first one said same thing but went on to further say something like "the only fair way to tell is to compair clock to clock" .. again they say this but they forget that the 7970 has 1GB more ram so what's "fair" about that ... hypocritical IMO. I'll post the other review on monday it's in my work mail.
> 
> Who cares about clock for clock if the end result is getting as much overclocking as you can in the first place. Isn't that the whold point of Overclocking?... to see just how high you can raise the ceiling and how much you can push out of it... The GTX 680 can raise the ceiling to @1340Mhz...and the AMD is somewhere around @1141Mhz I think. Comparing "clock to clock" in a competition where total overclocking is the goal is just another way of AMD side not admiting defeat and wanting to pick it apart and test anything in their favor, IMO. AGain I use the analogy.. so what if your honda is more efficent per cyclinder... a mustang GT will still smoke ya. lol



i dont think they mean clock for clock, i think what they mean is how much performance can you squeeze out of both cards for the end user who is interested in overclocking.
im not sure on the top overclocks records but i know some people got real high overclocks with the hd7970.
of about 1180 or something, so while that is still lower than kepler, it is like 20% from stock, 1340 for kepler is also about 20% off from stock(since kepler already clocks to 1100 when needed) yet it doesnt scale well(because overclocking kepler is complex and it pretty much makes the max boast 1340 rather than making it native) 
but i get what you mean tho, there is no such thing as "fair"
nvidia did a clever move to get as much power out of the envelope as possible, and they did a darn good job, not to mention how handy that will be for oems who are on a restricted thermal/power envelope for laptops and what not. 
having oems and power restrictions in mind its interesting tho to see how both teams had their approach to efficiency and battery life, amd pushing for max idle time with zero power, and nvidia pushing for different power states and turbo and what not(and it makes sense since nvidia for the most part always gets paired with an intel cpu that has a integrated gpu for low power. meaning nvidia's optimus does the job for them)

EDIT: i just came across these 2 benchmarks of both cards maxed out with their clocks
my conclusion was somewhat correct, hd7970 gains more momentum when overclocked

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx680/6.htm

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_lcs_hd7970/7.htm

i specifically posted the links on the battlefield because nvidia seemed to have an edge in that game, but overclocked they match eachother, even tho nvidia is clocked at 1300 something while amd is in the 1200 range.


http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx680/5.htm

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_lcs_hd7970/6.htm

same thing going on with arkam city

tho i would take this with a grain of salt because im not sure how legit this website is, but what do you think?


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## xtremesv (Mar 26, 2012)

Jonap_1st said:


> poeple : "if your 7970 wont drop to $400 - 450, i will give my wallet to nvidia!"



I don't know why people are asking for $100-150 price reduction when GTX 680 is just 5% faster than 7970 on average, that'd mean a price tag of $475 ($75 reduction) for AMD offering to be competitive.

Am I the only one who is not really impressed by this new card


----------



## W1zzard (Mar 26, 2012)

sergionography said:


> i dont think they mean clock for clock, i think what they mean is how much performance can you squeeze out of both cards for the end user who is interested in overclocking.
> im not sure on the top overclocks records but i know some people got real high overclocks with the hd7970.
> of about 1180 or something, so while that is still lower than kepler, it is like 20% from stock, 1340 for kepler is also about 20% off from stock(since kepler already clocks to 1100 when needed) yet it doesnt scale well(because overclocking kepler is complex and it pretty much makes the max boast 1340 rather than making it native)
> but i get what you mean tho, there is no such thing as "fair"
> ...



did nobody see that graph ?






both cards oc'd to max


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## sergionography (Mar 26, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> did nobody see that graph ?
> 
> http://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_680/images/max_oc_vs_7970.gif
> both cards oc'd to max



yea i saw these, but ive seen the cards getting pushed more than 16% for an hd7970, that makes it around 1050 or something for the core right? ive seen posts of people getting higher numbers and thats when i got curious. in the benchmarks ive posted they were being overvolted i believe and were pushed further
but you are correct most users will not overvolt and wont achieve the extreme overclocks i was looking at, so pretty much ur conclusion applies

what do you think about the sli scaling mentioned earlier? will you be doing a review about that by any chance? im really curious about that


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## W1zzard (Mar 26, 2012)

sergionography said:


> that makes it around 1050 or something for the core right?



1080 MHz GPU. Higher was not stable in all tests

We already posted a SLI review, I won't invest more time in this. Got more cards coming this week that need my attention


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## N3M3515 (Mar 26, 2012)

sergionography said:


> i dont think they mean clock for clock, i think what they mean is how much performance can you squeeze out of both cards for the end user who is interested in overclocking.
> im not sure on the top overclocks records but i know some people got real high overclocks with the hd7970.
> of about 1180 or something, so while that is still lower than kepler, it is like 20% from stock, 1340 for kepler is also about 20% off from stock(since kepler already clocks to 1100 when needed) yet it doesnt scale well(because overclocking kepler is complex and it pretty much makes the max boast 1340 rather than making it native)
> but i get what you mean tho, there is no such thing as "fair"
> ...



Yeah, the same pattern can be seen here: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-gtx-680-2gb-overclocking-review-win-some-lose-some/15322-4.html

Scalability of the 7970 seems better.


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## sergionography (Mar 26, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> Yeah, the same pattern can be seen here: http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-gtx-680-2gb-overclocking-review-win-some-lose-some/15322-4.html
> 
> Scalability of the 7970 seems better.



that and it seems the early benchmarks hd7970 did real bad in battlefield, like 30% slower than kepler, but here its only like 10fps away at 78 vs 89
but yea it seems the battle in this round is closer than ever, now lets see the prices go down!

and im curious on how the 670 and 660 will stack up against the 7800 series, considering the 7800 series being way more efficient than tahiti.


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## Moatsim (Mar 26, 2012)

think of it in quad SLI !!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Disruptor4 (Mar 27, 2012)

Can someone explain wtf is with the 5970 being up there challenging the 680 with the performance and actually beating it sometimes? Not to mention the 7970 doesn't seem worthy enough over the 5970. In fact, it looks like nothing has been really worth it over the 5970 according to those graphs... What have I even been waiting for???


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## xenocide (Mar 27, 2012)

sergionography said:


> and im curious on how the 670 and 660 will stack up against the 7800 series, considering the 7800 series being way more efficient than tahiti.



The GTX680 proves Kepler is was more efficient than Tahiti as well.  I expect the 670 to be around the 7950 (with maybe an elusive Ti model edging it out), 660 to be around the 7870 (just like last gen), and 650 to be below or around the 7850.



Disruptor4 said:


> Can someone explain wtf is with the 5970 being up there challenging the 680 with the performance and actually beating it sometimes? Not to mention the 7970 doesn't seem worthy enough over the 5970. In fact, it looks like nothing has been really worth it over the 5970 according to those graphs... What have I even been waiting for???



The HD5970 is a very good dual-gpu card.  There's a reason it cost a lot at launch.  You'll notice more often than not the HD6990 and GTX590 beat the GTX680 as well, for the same reason.  Dual-GPU cards hold their performance over a much longer period of time than true single card solutions.  It's kind of the benefit of the investment.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 27, 2012)

xenocide said:


> The GTX680 proves Kepler is was more efficient than Tahiti as well. I expect the 670 to be around the 7950 (with maybe an elusive Ti model edging it out), 660 to be around the 7870 (just like last gen), and 650 to be below or around the 7850.



I just wish they return to the JUST prices, way overpriced except for the GTX680....
670 with 7950 perf and $350 pricetag anyone? , one can dream...


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## Melvis (Mar 27, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> I just wish they return to the JUST prices, way overpriced except for the GTX680....
> 670 with 7950 perf and $350 pricetag anyone? , one can dream...



Ebay in 8 months time


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## Disruptor4 (Mar 27, 2012)

xenocide said:


> The HD5970 is a very good dual-gpu card.  There's a reason it cost a lot at launch.  You'll notice more often than not the HD6990 and GTX590 beat the GTX680 as well, for the same reason.  Dual-GPU cards hold their performance over a much longer period of time than true single card solutions.  It's kind of the benefit of the investment.



Oh wow I forgot that it was dual gpu! I'm so used to the dual gpu being a x90 or x990 that I forgot they did that! Cheers! Makes so much more sense now!


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## xenocide (Mar 27, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> I just wish they return to the JUST prices, way overpriced except for the GTX680....
> 670 with 7950 perf and $350 pricetag anyone? , one can dream...



I would honestly not be surprised if we saw;

GTX680: $499 (Slightly better than HD7970)
GTX670: $399 (Slightly better than HD7950)
GTX660: $299 (Slightly better than HD7870)
GTX650: $199 (On par for HD7850)

Would make it really hard for AMD to compete at those price points.  Keeping their equivalent cards slightly better and lower priced than AMD alternatives--by $50-80 at every price point--would seriously hurt AMD sales.  Nvidia is at a huge advantage since GK104 was designed to be a mid-range GPU, and would have been priced accordingly.


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## ISI300 (Mar 27, 2012)

INSTG8R said:


> They are almost 750 USD here :shadedshu



The Asus HD 7970 is more than 1500$ over here... hem ... iran. in the only online shop that I could find it.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 27, 2012)

xenocide said:


> I would honestly not be surprised if we saw;
> 
> GTX680: $499 (Slightly better than HD7970)
> GTX670: $399 (Slightly better than HD7950)
> ...



Yes, in the case of a price war, NV has a huge advantage.


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## sergionography (Mar 27, 2012)

xenocide said:


> I would honestly not be surprised if we saw;
> 
> GTX680: $499 (Slightly better than HD7970)
> GTX670: $399 (Slightly better than HD7950)
> ...



yea im aware this will most likely happen, but my concern was, will nvidia beat amd in efficiency against the 7800 series. and will it have a smaller die size yet perform a bit better(just like the case with the gtx680)
cuz if gk104 is as efficient as kepler can be, then the smaller chips might not see a much better performance/per watt the way we saw with pitcairn vs tahiti
because nvidia being second after amd in the release date gives them all the flexibility to place cards a bit faster than their amd counterparts and place them in the market were they please in terms of price, however it wont be a total win situation for nvidia if they end up creating a bigger and more expensive chip to manufacture compared to its direct rival.
because gk104 does that, and even if hd7970 and gtx680 had the same performance(thats assuming the worst cases considering all the second thots people might have and sli scaling and what not) nvidia is still a winner because gk104 is cheaper to manufacture than tahiti, therefor margin is better for nvidia


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## kzinti1 (Mar 28, 2012)

So the best overclocking tool will be watercooling?
Is there any mention of dynamic overclocking being fully (and immovably) integrated into later editions of these 680's? 
Or will the later editions of these cards, perhaps, be more manual OC friendly?
I can't help but think of the GTX 680 as being the same as going from a manual, stick-shift car to one with an automatic transmission. I prefer to change gears when I decide to, not when the car decides it's time. 
This is what the auto-OCing of these videocards feels like to me. 
Except, it also has a governor limiting the voltage, like a governor limiting the fuel going through a carburetor.
I don't want Nvidia telling me when, or even if, I can OC my videocards as I like. The same way that they screwed up the GTX 590's by mandating a set maximum voltage.
If this is the future of OCing videocards, then I think it sucks!


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## Fairlady-z (Mar 28, 2012)

kzinti1 said:


> So the best overclocking tool will be watercooling?
> Is there any mention of dynamic overclocking being fully (and immovably) integrated into later editions of these 680's?
> Or will the later editions of these cards, perhaps, be more manual OC friendly?
> I can't help but think of the GTX 680 as being the same as going from a manual, stick-shift car to one with an automatic transmission. I prefer to change gears when I decide to, not when the car decides it's time.
> ...



I can see what your saying, but honestly OC'ing has been pretty easy for me and stable to boot. Over all very happy with the out comes I get 10945 score single card on 3Dmark11 which is pretty good considering highest I got out of my 7970s 9222.


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## kzinti1 (Mar 28, 2012)

Thanks. I guess I'm just not the least bit familiar with this new style of OCing.
Hopefully, it'll make more sense when these 2 cards arrive and I can work with them.
In the review, heat was mentioned as being a limiting factor, so I'm already looking for some decent water blocks. 
EK has some, but they're ugly as sin. Also, EK's electroplating process is still low quality. 
Even though the materials they have chosen to use are almost perfect, the thickness of the plating is far too thin.


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## Am* (Mar 28, 2012)

EarthDog said:


> You should read in to it a bit more Am*... the lack of knowledge on the subject precedes your post.



Enlighten me. 



newtekie1 said:


> And before you continue to mindlessly argue a point you obviously know nothing about, I'll point you to the review of the HD6970 where the power throttling is clearly explained to you.



From YOUR OWN quote:



> *AMD has added options to CCC for the user to adjust the power limit* in two directions *which helps the underclocking/power saving crowd and the enthusiasts*; *NVIDIA has no option for control of their power limiting system*



This is what caused problems with every Fermi card for ages on certain games (proved by the fact that games like BFBC2 took a big hit from this throttling while AMD's didn't) until they tweaked the drivers. Please continue to "mindlessly argue a point you obviously know nothing about".

AMD has their own driver problems but at least they don't suffer from the hardware throttling that the Nvidia cards have, and give you the option to disable it, as it stops a lot of potential headaches with older games that freak out during clockrate changes. That's all I've been trying to say from the start, if the Nvidia drivers had the option to disable the throttling, I'd have no problem whatsoever with it or any of their cards.



Benetanegia said:


> Yeah I think Am* is living in lalaland. I fail to see how AMD doing a guesswork rather than a direct power consumption measurement, is in any way better. Neither worse the way it is implemented, but it makes no difference.
> 
> Also it's all a moot point when you can set the slide to +32% so that it's absolutely imposible to hit the limit and the performance difference is 1-2% anyway. It's not trottling too much if at all at default settings. In fact that 1-2% could come from the gains from GPU Boost reaching higher heights, rather than being something the GPU "regains back" from not being trottled.



AGAIN, it DOES make a big difference until the drivers mature, which will take forever (anywhere between 8 months to 2 years, if not more). Without an option to turn off the power throttling, it is and no doubt will be a problem for a while, and your overclock will not fix it if the game is not exceeding the thresh hold usage of the GPU (it will actually make it worse), until they tweak the majority of their game setting profiles in the drivers...


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## Anath (Mar 28, 2012)

Just a heads up for those of you looking to pick up a GTX680. Prices will be going up. I just got off the phone with several of my distributors, one distributor wont even sell to me because they were told by Nvidia to only sell to specific distributors until the second week of April. The other distributors have the MSRP price of around $575-$580. I just ordered a batch which should be in next week but the price i paid was higher than the $499 price they were originally going for.


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## Am* (Mar 28, 2012)

Anath said:


> Just a heads up for those of you looking to pick up a GTX680. Prices will be going up. I just got off the phone with several of my distributors, one distributor wont even sell to me because they were told by Nvidia to only sell to specific distributors until the second week of April. The other distributors have the MSRP price of around $575-$580. I just ordered a batch which should be in next week but the price i paid was higher than the $499 price they were originally going for.



That's probably Nvidia's way of asking AMD to kindly drop the prices.


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## kzinti1 (Mar 29, 2012)

Anath said:


> Just a heads up for those of you looking to pick up a GTX680. Prices will be going up. I just got off the phone with several of my distributors, one distributor wont even sell to me because they were told by Nvidia to only sell to specific distributors until the second week of April. The other distributors have the MSRP price of around $575-$580. I just ordered a batch which should be in next week but the price i paid was higher than the $499 price they were originally going for.



A further sign that Nvidia wants to make every penny it can off of these GTX 680- MID-Level videocards, before the better ones start showing up in a couple of months.
At the same time, Nvidia is trying to get people used to the idea of having to pay a very steep premium to buy these newer, faster cards when they do arrive.
While I don't like it, it's a very good business plan. 1st, sell these mid-level cards at the price of what's supposed to be a top-level card. This is to make these cards seem to be more than they actually are and to make a killing on them at the outset. 
It also forces AMD to reconsider their own pricing structure and make it appear as if AMD is actually ripping its own customers off, planting the seed of mistrust in AMD's customers, driving down AMD's share of the videocard market and converting quite a few of their customers to Nvidia.
Next, raise the prices of these 680's, making it appear as if there's some kind of shortage, making even more people think that they'd best buy these cards while they still can. Yet another premium over an already overpriced, less than the best, videocard.
Wait a month or two, bring out the real top performing cards, reduce the present 680's to todays level of around $500, where Nvidia is still making a killing, and charge $600 to $800 for the new, actual top-level cards. 
It's so obvious what Nvidia is doing I'm surprised no mention has been made of it before. Especially by main-stream review sites such as TPU.
Extremely dirty pool, Nvidia! Even though, at the same time, I'm quite impressed at the simplicity and guaranteed success of your plan. 
IF, your newer cards coming out within a couple of months are worth what you think they'll be, of course. I think your plan is well worth the gamble inherent in such a scheme. If it works, you'll have forever crushed AMD. Possibly even putting them completely out of business.
 Bravo!


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## sergionography (Mar 29, 2012)

Am* said:


> That's probably Nvidia's way of asking AMD to kindly drop the prices.



more like their way of saying "AMD we r better than you, y u not recognize??" lol


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## kzinti1 (Mar 29, 2012)

They already know Nvidia will always be able to beat them.
Just as AMD knows that they're fighting a losing battle against Intel.
It's really a shame, all around. Everybody, especially the consumers, will never, ever get the best possible equipment.
Intel and Nvidia has no reason to do the best they possibly can since they have exactly zero competition. 
Everything everybody offers for sale has already been beat, on paper. 
The only thing Nvidia and Intel has to do is to go into production and publicly humiliate AMD with overwhelmingly superior products.
RIP, AMD. :shadedshu


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## N3M3515 (Mar 29, 2012)

kzinti1 said:


> They already know Nvidia will always be able to beat them.
> Just as AMD knows that they're fighting a losing battle against Intel.
> It's really a shame, all around. Everybody, especially the consumers, will never, ever get the best possible equipment.
> Intel and Nvidia has no reason to do the best they possibly can since they have exactly zero competition.
> ...



Do you even remember Radeon 9700 ?? LOL
You think nvidia has always had the better performing card? LOL
Ati being a MUCH smaller company than nvidia, put the Geforce Ti4600 to shame with the Radeon 9700, and from there ati had always the better performing single gpu card until Geforce 8 series arrived.
9700 pro > Ti 4600 http://www.anandtech.com/show/970 (lol, with aa and as it was like 100% better sometimes more)
9800 pro > 5800 Ultra http://www.guru3d.com/article/3d-prophet-radeon-9800-pro-review/
9800XT > 5950 Ultra http://www.anandtech.com/show/1174/60 / http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-radeon-9800-xt-review/17
X800XT PE> 6800 Ultra http://www.anandtech.com/show/1314/11 
X1800XT > 7800 GTX http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/r520reviewxvxv/conclusion.htm 
X1950XTX > 7900 GTX http://www.anandtech.com/show/2069/14

So, if they did that back then of course they can do that again and then after a while will again be nvidia on top and......i think you get it.

And don't get me started with amd cpu's...


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## kzinti1 (Mar 29, 2012)

I'm not concerned with ancient history. Today and tomorrow are all that counts as far as computers are concerned.
You obviously should realize this.
You should also quit looking behind you. Keep your eyes to the front and on the prize.


----------



## N3M3515 (Mar 29, 2012)

kzinti1 said:


> I'm not concerned with ancient history. Today and tomorrow are all that counts as far as computers are concerned.
> You obviously should realize this.
> You should also quit looking behind you. Keep your eyes to the front and on the prize.



Obviously you don't have any idea of the purpose of my post, so, i suggest not to talk of what you don't know.

Ancient history? 

Bottom line: AMD, can design a better card(maybe next series), and for all of our sakes they must, or you want only one graphic cards company?
They have more resources than the first time they did.


----------



## sergionography (Mar 30, 2012)

kzinti1 said:


> They already know Nvidia will always be able to beat them.
> Just as AMD knows that they're fighting a losing battle against Intel.
> It's really a shame, all around. Everybody, especially the consumers, will never, ever get the best possible equipment.
> Intel and Nvidia has no reason to do the best they possibly can since they have exactly zero competition.
> ...



what in the world are you talking about?? 3 month of extra time after AMD release to come up with 6% better performance on average for gaming but with weaker compute capabilities and weaker scaling, how on earth is that humiliating AMD LOL
AMD is still very much in the game, even against Intel, maybe not in Raw x86 performance but they have the edge in multimedia and the apus and are sure giving Intel a run for its money.
Not to mention both upcoming Xbox and ps4 will use AMD based solutions with ps4 being an AMD apu with gcn, just imagine how much advantage AMD. Will have when console ports were amd based from the start, hardware isn't always everything you know, its about creating a whole ecosystem, amd has always been good at that, remember when they introduced x86-64 as we know it today?well lets just say the whole industry followed and AMD. Was the leader in that aspect


----------



## xenocide (Mar 31, 2012)

sergionography said:


> what in the world are you talking about?? 3 month of extra time after AMD release to come up with 6% better performance on average for gaming but with weaker compute capabilities and weaker scaling, how on earth is that humiliating AMD LOL



When it's priced lower, runs quieter, runs cooler, and uses less power, it's a pretty big upset.  It beats AMD in everything but Compute, which a fraction of even the enthusiast market needs.  By your own definition the HD7970 is a one trick pony--Compute.  Do you really want to pay $75 more for a card that is better in Compute tasks alone?  As well as eating more Power, running several degrees hotter, and is louder?  I don't.



sergionography said:


> AMD is still very much in the game, even against Intel, maybe not in Raw x86 performance but they have the edge in multimedia and the apus and are sure giving Intel a run for its money.



What multimedia?  The i7-2600k beats the FX-8150 in everything but 7-Zip.  As you go down the line the FX-6xxx series is vastly inferior to the i5 lineup, and the FX-4xxx series is--to be honest--awful.  APU's are AMD's only real competitive market.  Intel is expanding into the Mobile market as well, something AMD still has no answer to, and with their manufacturing capabilities, will be able to conquer that in I'd say 2-3 years time.  AMD isn't on life support, but they are hardly a dominating force.  Their only competitive CPU's are basically propped up by their GPU's.



sergionography said:


> Not to mention both upcoming Xbox and ps4 will use AMD based solutions with ps4 being an AMD apu with gcn, just imagine how much advantage AMD. Will have when console ports were amd based from the start, hardware isn't always everything you know, its about creating a whole ecosystem, amd has always been good at that, remember when they introduced x86-64 as we know it today?well lets just say the whole industry followed and AMD. Was the leader in that aspect



Rumors are not facts.  The rumors are full of tons of holes.  I have severe doubts both companies are trying to crush the used game market like they are alleged to, and although I love the idea, I am not sure an x86-based console is the cards for Sony, I know they are having... disagreements with IBM, but I don't know that they will abandon PowerPC-based consoles entirely.  I'm pretty sure that would make backwards compatibility with PS3 games near impossible, and that would severely cripple them out of the gates.

AMD cannot ride their one major victory forever.  Yes, Athlon 64 and the introduction of x86-64 was a huge accomplishment, but that was what?  Almost a decade ago?  What huge innovations have they done since that?  They were poised to capitalize and never managed to do it.  They were offering superior products, that were years ahead of Intel, at lower price points for a couple years back then.  They should have been able to ride that momentum way better than they did.

But we're all getting derailed here.  This is about the Nvidia GeForce GTX680, which is in fact a phenomenal card.


----------



## RigRebel (Apr 1, 2012)

sergionography said:


> i dont think they mean clock for clock, i think what they mean is how much performance can you squeeze out of both cards for the end user who is interested in overclocking.
> im not sure on the top overclocks records but i know some people got real high overclocks with the hd7970.
> of about 1180 or something, so while that is still lower than kepler, it is like 20% from stock, 1340 for kepler is also about 20% off from stock(since kepler already clocks to 1100 when needed) yet it doesnt scale well(because overclocking kepler is complex and it pretty much makes the max boast 1340 rather than making it native)
> but i get what you mean tho, there is no such thing as "fair"
> ...





N3M3515 said:


> And yet another AMD vs NVIDIA thing...........



Guys, please be more carefully and read fully when quoting me.. I said "I've read and *the first one. *said same thing but went on to further say something like "the only fair way to tell is to compare clock to clock"  
I said I read a couple of reviews about it.. .the "clock for clock" refers to the first article I read. Also in that ariclet they say they turned off the Nvidia turbo or something to that nature. And that's the same one I first saw that showed the 3-way and 4-way sli figures with the xfire beating it. My co-worker showed it to me and sent me the link to my work email I belive. I don' t remember where the article was from he found it not me. I think I have the link at work. If I can find it i'll post it. 

PS N3M3515...  it's the search for the truth thing for me and the truth is AMD hates to admit when they're wrong or when they've been beat and the AMD crowd loves to think that the GNC thing is AMDs crowning jewel and huge victory over Nvidia when in fact it's nothing more than a re-vamped Fermi; but, Kepler is a Fermi/GNC hybrid so there technology evolves no biggy but at least I can call it like it is unlike some AMD  fan boys and start saying "yeah the 7970 is the best single fastest processor" before Nvidia even had the time to  bring their next gen GPU to the table. The 7000 was next gen so AMD should have waited for Nvidia's next gen 600s to show up before they went around bragging cause uh.. what now ? lol 

If it's an AMD vs Nvidia thing it's cause AMD fans think they are the rebel forces and Nvidia the big bad evil tyrant and personally I believe Nvidia is not the Darkside. 
Sorry for late posts.. .rather busy lately.
PSS> Doesn't surprise me the GTX 680 is not as scalable, neither was the 580 or 570. The 560 was the SLI beast on scalability IMO and the 660 or 660ti is the one I'm planing for  
 No I didn't read much of your post today either but I'm only commenting on the parts were you replied about my post so there  lol jk.  ... swamped about to transfer data and wipe drive as we speak. peace


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## N3M3515 (Apr 1, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> PS N3M3515... it's the search for the truth thing for me and the truth is AMD hates to admit when they're wrong or when they've been beat and the AMD crowd loves to think that the GNC thing is AMDs crowning jewel and huge victory over Nvidia when in fact it's nothing more than a re-vamped Fermi; but, Kepler is a Fermi/GNC hybrid so there technology evolves no biggy but at least I can call it like it is unlike some AMD fan boys and start saying "yeah the 7970 is the best single fastest processor" before Nvidia even had the time to bring their next gen GPU to the table. The 7000 was next gen so AMD should have waited for Nvidia's next gen 600s to show up before they went around bragging cause uh.. what now ? lol
> 
> If it's an AMD vs Nvidia thing it's cause AMD fans think they are the rebel forces and Nvidia the big bad evil tyrant and personally I believe Nvidia is not the Darkside.



fyi, nor nvidia or amd like to admit defeat ....duh!
if it's an amd vs nvidia blah blah blah, both sides always come up with idiotic fanatical stuff to defend their brand......that's old news, it's not exclusive to any brand they both do the same thing, what every fanboy should try is OBJETIVITY.

cheers


----------



## RigRebel (Apr 2, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> fyi, nor nvidia or amd like to admit defeat ....duh!
> if it's an amd vs nvidia blah blah blah, both sides always come up with idiotic fanatical stuff to defend their brand......that's old news, it's not exclusive to any brand they both do the same thing, what every fanboy should try is OBJETIVITY.
> 
> cheers



EXACTLY, which is why I simply point out the truth when the AMD side wants to over exaggerate...Duh  ! you're not telling me anything I don't know. I had AMD in the day. I thought the K5, the Duron and the K-7 thunderbird was awesome. I even had an old 2600 pro (not a great card but nice) back in the day.  I leaned more to the 500 series because it had better tessellations. I'm not even opposed to owning AMD now if they can show me something better in the same category and same price I'd buy it... Right now for me though, the GTX 600 "possibly" looks like a the best platform for me and' I'm waiting on the 660 cards.  

Ps... for someone that comments on "another forum for AMD vs Nvidia" seems like you're getting in on it or caught up in it too, perhaps on the AMD side ?  Maybe that's why the multiple rants/ (snide) posts. OBECTIVITY ? lol  This is actually just another case to prove my point that I mention AMD skewing things cause they can't admit defeat and now someone jumping in to defend them with articles from years ago that are off TOPIC a.k.a not related to Kepler (which is what this thread is about) and that old reviews none keeps! lol. Real objective there huh ? *My posts were about Kepler (which the thread title states is the topic) and you're pulling the 9700 out the closet to defend AMD ? lol..* Objective ? Not even close. Seems like you're the one turning this into an off topic AMD vs. Nvidia thing. My posts where 100% on topic about Kepler as it relates to those reviews stated... again, OBECTIVITY?? where's yours? 




N3M3515 said:


> Do you even remember Radeon 9700 ?? LOL
> You think nvidia has always had the better performing card? LOL
> Ati being a MUCH smaller company than nvidia, put the Geforce Ti4600 to shame with the Radeon 9700, and from there ati had always the better performing single gpu card until Geforce 8 series arrived.
> 9700 pro > Ti 4600 http://www.anandtech.com/show/970 (lol, with aa and as it was like 100% better sometimes more)
> ...



No I don't remember the 9700, must not have been worth remembering. lol
Ps AMD bulldozer CPUs suck but it's off topic. I've already posted on that s3v3ral s3v3ral pages ago. (needed a patch for single threading, FX 6100 bad batches, hyperthreading pipes so big you could fit a truck through but who cares for gaming because only 2 hyperthreading games on the market, civ 5 and Oblivion, a.k.a it's a gimic...> "the truth will set you free"> my point... yadda yadda bla bla)


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## N3M3515 (Apr 2, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> EXACTLY, which is why I simply point out the truth when the AMD side wants to over exaggerate...Duh  ! you're not telling me anything I don't know. I had AMD in the day. I thought the K5, the Duron and the K-7 thunderbird was awesome. I even had an old 2600 pro (not a great card but nice) back in the day.  I leaned more to the 500 series because it had better tessellations. I'm not even opposed to owning AMD now if they can show me something better in the same category and same price I'd buy it... Right now for me though, the GTX 600 "possibly" looks like a the best platform for me and' I'm waiting on the 660 cards.
> 
> Ps... for someone that comments on "another forum for AMD vs Nvidia" seems like you're getting in on it or caught up in it too, perhaps on the AMD side ?  Maybe that's why the multiple rants/ (snide) posts. OBECTIVITY ? lol  This is actually just another case to prove my point that I mention AMD skewing things cause they can't admit defeat and now someone jumping in to defend them with articles from years ago that are off TOPIC a.k.a not related to Kepler (which is what this thread is about) and that old reviews none keeps! lol. Real objective there huh ? *My posts were about Kepler (which the thread title states is the topic) and you're pulling the 9700 out the closet to defend AMD ? lol..* Objective ? Not even close. Seems like you're the one turning this into an off topic AMD vs. Nvidia thing. My posts where 100% on topic about Kepler as it relates to those reviews stated... again, OBECTIVITY?? where's yours?
> 
> ...



Give it a rest, you didn't understood my post.
(long story short, the dude was saying nvidia is inmortal and amd never would be able to bring a faster graphic card, so i said it is highly probable, because they have done it before and with less resources, and also i posted the evidence in the links.)
9700 not worth remembering, man you hit it out of the park LOL
GTX680 is a very good card, cheers.


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## RigRebel (Apr 2, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> Give it a rest, you didn't understood my post.
> (long story short, the dude was saying nvidia is inmortal and amd never would be able to bring a faster graphic card, so i said it is highly probable, because they have done it before and with less resources, and also i posted the evidence in the links.)
> 9700 not worth remembering, man you hit it out of the park LOL
> GTX680 is a very good card, cheers.



ah ok, well in that case, my appologise for taking you out of context. Agreed, I think his statement is inaccurate, can't predict that far ahead, AMD has had a good product in the past and still does although their prices need to come down to compete with Kepler atm. I will tell you back in the day (i don't know if this is still true) that because AMD (AIT at the Time) had onboard encoding and decoding versus Nvidia driver based decoding... the AMD/ATI could reach 16million colors and (although a couple frames slower) ALWAYS looked better to my eyes. 

:handshake: thank you, 

PS. (off topic) Hey since you seem to have a good grasp on the AMD side (no diss intended) what have you heard about an AMD PCI-E 3.0 compatible chipset ? Is one coming out yet ? Are the 7000s 3.0 compatible? 

The reason why I ask is that the FX6200 is out and (although still behind the 2500k) it's priced nice and I heard the windows patch fixed single threaded gaming quite well. I'm wondering just now if they have a chipset and card that will do the 3.0 .. got a NZXT Vulcan case I don't know what to do with and I'm not going Ivy Bridge now that Hawell is due next year.
Peace. sorry for the little "competition"


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## N3M3515 (Apr 3, 2012)

RigRebel said:


> ah ok, well in that case, my appologise for taking you out of context. Agreed, I think his statement is inaccurate, can't predict that far ahead, AMD has had a good product in the past and still does although their prices need to come down to compete with Kepler atm. I will tell you back in the day (i don't know if this is still true) that because AMD (AIT at the Time) had onboard encoding and decoding versus Nvidia driver based decoding... the AMD/ATI could reach 16million colors and (although a couple frames slower) ALWAYS looked better to my eyes.
> 
> :handshake: thank you,
> 
> ...



Afaik, pci express 3.0 support comes Q3 this year, and this: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-1090FX-1070-SB1060-pcie-3,13918.html
I also read, i think in hard forum, that the radeon 7xxx series have to be more than double the bandwidth of the 6xxx series cards to saturate pcie 2.0 16x. You probably will not be seeing any advantage of using pcie 3.0 over pcie 2.0 in the next generation of cards unless they can make that unlikely jump.


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