NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Kepler 2 GB

[MxPhenom 216]

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]

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]

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]

new drivers have released for teh 680

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

 

[Melvis]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

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]

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]

I feel somewhat sorry for those who already got the 7970

 

[Melvis]

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]

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]

I feel somewhat sorry for those who already got the 7970

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

 

[Melvis]

^^ 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.

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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 HD7950.

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.

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]

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 HD7950.

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]

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.