Friday, March 16th 2012

GTX 680 Generally Faster Than HD 7970: New Benchmarks

by
btarunr
 Discuss (273 Comments)
For skeptics who refuse to believe randomly-sourced bar-graphs of the GeForce GTX 680 that are starved of pictures, here is the first set of benchmarks run by a third-party (neither NVIDIA nor one of its AIC partners). This [p]reviewer from HKEPC has pictures to back his benchmarks. The GeForce GTX 680 was pitted against a Radeon HD 7970, and a previous-generation GeForce GTX 580. The test-bed consisted of an extreme-cooled Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor (running at stock frequency), ASUS Rampage IV Extreme motherboard, 8 GB (4x 2 GB) GeIL EVO 2 DDR3-2200 MHz quad-channel memory, Corsair AX1200W PSU, and Windows 7 x64.

Benchmarks included 3DMark 11 (performance preset), Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Lost Planet 2, and Unigine Heaven (version not mentioned, could be 1). All tests were run at a constant resolution of 1920x1080, with 8x MSAA on some tests (mentioned in the graphs).

More graphs follow.

Source: HKEPC

Related News

Add your own comment

273 Comments on GTX 680 Generally Faster Than HD 7970: New Benchmarks

#252
skullforge
Crap DaddyBefore you spread innacurate information and off-topic you should check better your source.
The reviewer used a Thermalright Spitfire so it's not stock cooling. Oh, and the ambient was a few degrees above 0 Celsius
Haha yes... guess I missed the details.Sorry:respect:
Posted on Reply
#253
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
techtardI don't think AMD is going to release a magic driver to boost performance. They are notorious for having shoddy drivers.
Unless their new president personally fires their whole software team and hires better software engineers, they will continue to have excellent hardware that is saddled with inferior drivers.
driver issues go back and forth dude for both companies:nutkick:

and honestly driver issues i havent had nor my customers since before cat 4.3 were launched
Posted on Reply
#254
cadaveca
My name is Dave
eidairaman1and honestly driver issues i havent had nor my customers since before cat 4.3 were launched
Good for you, i've been delaing with flickering secondary monitors since the 5-series launch. it took AMD 6 months to get rid of cursor issues on multi-monitor 5-series, even. Drivers issues DO persist on either side, and you're very fortunate to not run into any no matter what brand of GPU you use.
Posted on Reply
#255
N3M3515
I'm still scratching my head on why 7870 beats 7970 on crysis 2.

The only way those drivers are for real is that amd had done it on purpose so nvidia saw fake results.....still i call it BS.
Posted on Reply
#256
Crap Daddy
amdftwInside beta drivers, tested with 7970 which will be the base of a 12.4 driver.
This driver has not available yet for users.
It might be AMD will release beta performance driver in next 1 or 2 weeks, the final will arrive in april.

Watch this bench: www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/13.html
7870 beat the 7970? YES!
That was because the 7870/50 was tested with the very early performance driver which was the very early base of the final perf. driver.
The 7970/50 results only made with the 2 months old driver.

Just look everybody when the 7970/50 get the final perf. driver!
So, you're saying that AMD has no respect for the faithful followers who bought with hard earned cash their high-end cards and deliberately did not release a driver for the 7970/50 cards just to launch it in time to spoil Nvidia's expected success with Fermi?

Do you know that as we speak the cards are probably benched against the GTX680? Do you think that the reviewers already have this magical driver and what makes you think that NV will not release an equally magical driver in the close future?
Posted on Reply
#258
Aquinus
Resident Wat-man
xenocideThat's very interesting...
I agree, that is very interesting. :)
Posted on Reply
#259
xenocide
AquinusI agree, that is very interesting. :)
2 Things I found most interesting;

1. That Temperature Graph, barely breaks 40-45c.
2. On the GPU-Z reading it doesn't list PhysX as supported.
Posted on Reply
#260
Xaser04
A "performance" driver from AMD isn't that far fetched once you factor in the immaturity of thr GCN architecture but whether it will happen or not is complete guess work.

I have personally seen reasonable boosts in Eyefinity from the Launch driver to the RC11 driver so it is possible under the right conditions.

Of course the same could be said for Kepler.

We will simply have to wait for proper reviews before drawing any conclusions.

I for one am only interested in Eyefinity / Surround resolution results on a single card.
Posted on Reply
#261
leonard_222003
Don't you love new members that made an account just to flame here about Nvidia and AMD ? browsed the topic and found a few 2012 march members :) .
Posted on Reply
#262
Shurakai
Xaser04A "performance" driver from AMD isn't that far fetched once you factor in the immaturity of thr GCN architecture but whether it will happen or not is complete guess work.

I have personally seen reasonable boosts in Eyefinity from the Launch driver to the RC11 driver so it is possible under the right conditions.

Of course the same could be said for Kepler.

We will simply have to wait for proper reviews before drawing any conclusions.

I for one am only interested in Eyefinity / Surround resolution results on a single card.
Very true, RC11-12.2 are fantastic boosts compared to launch, but the same can be said for Nvidia's drivers, its not like they won't tweak performance with future driver releases as well.
Posted on Reply
#263
sanadanosa
Capitan Harlockyou have to make example with a 6970 vs gtx 580 not a a gtx 570,but why they dont make the benchmark with same clock on the 7970? this is what i wanna know ,nvidia make the "stock" clore at 1000mhz after amd comes out with preoc card with 1000mhz = its same like make a benchmark with an oc card vs stock clock card, if you are NVIDIAFANBOY its not my fault, i wanna see real benchmark with the card out not make from nvidia with stupid result manipolated,is like the benchmark making from amd with the fx series vs the first 6 core intel , please use the mind not the eyes for think is true only thing you see
yes I'm an NVfanboy, but I try to be neutral here. HD6970 is against GTX 570 both price and performance (although 6970 is slightly faster). You better see this chart.
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html
Posted on Reply
#264
Jon A. Silvers
nvidiaintelftwokay and then nvidia could do the same?
hope they do drop prices of gtx 570 to that point. I am not amd guy,like them more than nvidia by miserable small margin,cause they always had better price performance ratio,nothing more.
Posted on Reply
#265
MxPhenom 216
ASIC Engineer
Jon A. Silvershope they do drop prices of gtx 570 to that point. I am not amd guy,like them more than nvidia by miserable small margin,cause they always had better price performance ratio,nothing more.
I take nvidia almost always. Mainly because of the features they have for the games I play. Mainly good AF and Ambient Occlusion for games like Skyrim
Posted on Reply
#266
Jon A. Silvers
nvidiaintelftwI take nvidia almost always. Mainly because of the features they have for the games I play. Mainly good AF and Ambient Occlusion for games like Skyrim
its a little off topic but...
I will go with some of these 7870,7850,gtx570,6970,6950,gtx560ti,depending on the price/performance in my country at the time of my purchase (250e max).

about gtx680 vs 7970 it a very tough competition ,cant wait to see real review and a nice price drops. :)
Posted on Reply
#267
r9
Once upon a time the game developers were pushing the boundaries of graphic quality and performance capability of graphic cards and then Xbox360 and PS3 came up and than the progress stopped.
I don`t care if they invented eternity without software hardware is nothing. There is not a game that can`t be maxed out with three generation older graphic card.
Posted on Reply
#268
Shurakai
BF3 would make that statement crash and burn. So some developers are still pushing the limits of PC hardware.
Posted on Reply
#269
MxPhenom 216
ASIC Engineer
ShurakaiBF3 would make that statement crash and burn. So some developers are still pushing the limits of PC hardware.
no. Battlefield could be pushed even harder with better optimizations.
Posted on Reply
#270
xenocide
nvidiaintelftwno. Battlefield could be pushed even harder with better optimizations.
BF3 is already optimized to high hell. It runs better than most DX11 games and looks gorgeous. BF3 on low still looks better than most other DX11 games on high, while giving a comperable or better frame rate.
Posted on Reply
#271
GC_PaNzerFIN
There is something interesting in this gallery ;)

imgur.com/a/ZFVDq

Thanks to the person who grabbed these off the gallery before they went offline (not me). :respect:

e: something to get your attention
Posted on Reply
#272
FreedomEclipse
~Technological Technocrat~
and how does the 7950 perform faster then the 7970 unless the 7950 was OC'd???

ahhh i see.... its performance per watt not performance vs other cards.
Posted on Reply
#273
GC_PaNzerFIN
And disclaimer: those are off TH site directly. Personally I think their reviews are a bit off always. Perf/w difference between tahiti and gk104 is probably smaller with large game selection and higher resolution.
Posted on Reply
Add your own comment
Mar 29th, 2025 00:37 EDT change timezone

Latest GPU Drivers

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts