Saturday, April 28th 2012
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Launched
NVIDIA today announced the GeForce GTX 690, the world's fastest consumer graphics card -- with a bold industrial design to match. Powered by dual Kepler architecture-based GeForce GPUs, the GTX 690 is meticulously designed -- inside and out -- to deliver the most refined, elegant and smooth PC gaming experience possible.
The surprise announcement was made by NVIDIA CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang during his keynote address at the NVIDIA Game Festival in Shanghai, which is being attended by more than 6,000 gamers from across China.
Engineered to reach a new threshold in gaming performance, the GTX 690 also looks the part. Its array of innovative technologies is complemented by sleek materials that contribute to the exotic design of the card, including:
"The GTX 690 is truly a work of art -- gorgeous on the outside with amazing performance on the inside," said Brian Kelleher, senior vice president of GPU engineering at NVIDIA. "Gamers will love playing on multiple screens at high resolutions with all the eye candy turned on. And they'll relish showing their friends how beautiful the cards look inside their systems."
The GTX 690 graphics card is designed using GeForce GPUs based on NVIDIA's 28-nanometer Kepler architecture, following the introduction late last month of the GTX 680.
Availability
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 GPU will be available in limited quantities starting May 3, 2012, with wider availability by May 7, 2012 from NVIDIA's add-in card partners, including ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit and Zotac. Expected pricing is $999.
The surprise announcement was made by NVIDIA CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang during his keynote address at the NVIDIA Game Festival in Shanghai, which is being attended by more than 6,000 gamers from across China.
- An exterior frame made from trivalent chromium-plated aluminum, providing excellent strength and durability
- A fan housing made from a thixomolded magnesium alloy, which offers excellent heat dissipation and vibration dampening
- High-efficiency power delivery with less resistance, lower power and less heat generated using a 10-phase, heavy-duty power supply with a 10-layer, two-ounce copper printed circuit board
- Efficient cooling using dual vapor chambers, a nickel-plated finstack and center-mounted axial fan with optimized fin pitch and air entry angles
- Low-profile components and ducted baseplate channels for unobstructed airflow, minimizing turbulence and improving acoustic quality
The GTX 690 graphics card is designed using GeForce GPUs based on NVIDIA's 28-nanometer Kepler architecture, following the introduction late last month of the GTX 680.
Availability
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 GPU will be available in limited quantities starting May 3, 2012, with wider availability by May 7, 2012 from NVIDIA's add-in card partners, including ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit and Zotac. Expected pricing is $999.
111 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Launched
Not even a paper launch. This is just a grab at news headlines by Nvidia. Reviewers dont have card, and 680s are hard to come by so why would this card be available in the forseeable future.
The only thing they have done is to allow ATI enough time to tweak the final specs on the 7990 to beat or match the performance.
"Jen-Hsun Huang , president and CEO of NVIDIA, sent his best on a mission. That mission was to build the best dual GK104 video card they could. That mission has been successfully executed and what we have here today is the GeForce GTX 690.
GeForce GTX 690
Can you imagine a video card without any flimsy plastic parts? Now you can because the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 will not be composed of any cheap plastics. A heavy duty dual vapor chamber cooling system relying on heavily nickel plated finstacks will sweat what little heat these GPUs pump out. A cast aluminum frame with trivalent chromium plating gives the card a unique look and tremendous rigidity. An injection molded magnesium fan housing adds to the formidable stiffness of the card. A brand new thixomolding process was used to get the required part precision.
The fan housing is made from injection molded magnesium alloy. Magnesium alloys are used throughout the automotive and aerospace industry (including the engines of the Bugatti Veyron and F-22 Raptor) for their light weight, heat dissipation and acoustic dampening properties - which is the same reason we use it in the GTX 690.
Clear polycarbonate windows that let you peer inside. A center mounted axial fan with optimized fin pitch and air entry angles is a top quality unit used to move cool air through the finstack. While we have not gotten to hear the fan yet, we are told its controller is top notch, which will be underlined by the decibel specs below. A ducted baseplate works with the low profile PCB components. And that is just the cooling system. The GeForce GTX 690 thermal unit cost more than 3X more than NVIDIA has ever spent on thermal system for a retail video card before.
The PCB and its components were not overlooked in the process either. A 10 layer, 2oz. copper PCB is supplied sporting dual 1536 core GK104 "Kepler" silicon all being pushed by a 10 phase "heavy duty" power supply, all in a 300 watt TDP package. If you take a closer look at the PCB you will notice that all usually protruding components have been "shaved" to cut way down on turbulence, allowing better airflow throughout the GTX 690. Also the less turbulence we have, the less noise we have. An on board SLI bridge logic provides independent PCI-e 3.0 x16 access to both GPUs.
Clocks - Noise - RAM
NVIDIA tells us the sound profile of the GeForce GTX 690 will be 36db at idle and a mere 46db under full gaming load.
Base clock on the GeForce GTX 690 is what will be considered "low" by most [H]'ers at just 915MHz Base and 1015MHz Boost, but don't get your panties in a wad just quite yet. Here is the kicker. Being that this is the most expensive and exotic cooling system ever sold by NVIDIA, you think you would expect great overclocking and we are told that you exactly should expect great overclocking. 1300MHz was thrown around more than once while discussing this new GTX 690's overclocks.
Finally this will be the one specification that some will shake their heads at, but from what we have seen in our testing, RAM has not been bottleneck for the most part except in very stressful situations as you can see here in our GTX 680 SLI Review. The GeForce GTX 690 will carry with it 4GB of RAM utilizing a 512-bit GDDR5 infrastructure."
Source: www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/28/geforce_gtx_690_perfection_inside_out
This is like saying we have the fastest veyron, but you cant have one until the ultr rich have had thwm and moved on to something else, now be hally with just drooling over the specs and flamebaiting with news marks.
Watch out from behind ATI!
Let the flame WARS begin!
What an overpriced, overheating, wasted of money. Seriously $1000 USD, here in Australia that will be more like $1200 + $$$$ what a bloody rip off.
This is just too expensive and even if I have enough money to buy this I won't get this and just wait for GK112-110 or whatever upcoming next gen gpu...