ASUS GeForce GTX 680 SLI Review

Name: ASUS GeForce GTX 680 SLI
Brand: ASUS

W1zzard

on Mar 23rd, 2012,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: ASUS

(75 Comments) »

Introduction

NVIDIA launched its newest, most advanced GPU, the GeForce GTX 680, on March 22. The card wiped the floor with other single-GPU cards, but there's a lot more to it than its performance, so before you proceed with the GTX 680 SLI review, please make sure you've read our NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Launch review, because we took the pains to explain a lot of new concepts introduced by the GTX 680, in detail.

The GeForce GTX 680 can pair with up to three more cards of its kind, to step up performance to unprecedented levels. We got two cards to run in 2-way SLI mode, today, thanks to ASUS. We wish we had this in order yesterday, but our shippers took a hollow-point to the knee. We also got a hold of the latest GeForce 301.10 WHQL drivers, and put both the 2-way SLI and single-card through our test suite, driven by them.

NVIDIA surprised us with its US $499 pricing, which beats competition heavily at Performance per Dollar. It also drives the price of GeForce GTX 680 SLI under US $999. In this review, we will evaluate the performance of GeForce GTX 680 SLI, and compare it with standalone GeForce GTX 680, and other contemporary graphics cards, including dual-GPU cards that cost well over $700. The performance figures should give you a rough idea if two GTX 680 cards in SLI are sufficient for gaming at very high resolutions.

GeForce GTX 680 SLI Market Segment Analysis
	Radeon HD 7870	GeForce GTX 580	Radeon HD 7950	Radeon HD 7970	GeForce GTX 680	Radeon HD 6990	GeForce GTX 590	GeForce GTX 680 SLI
Shader Units	1280	512	1792	2048	1536	2x 1536	2x 512	2x 1536
ROPs	32	48	32	32	32	2x 32	2x 48	2x 32
Graphics Processor	Pitcairn	GF110	Tahiti	Tahiti	GK104	2x Cayman	2x GF110	2x GK104
Transistors	2800M	3000M	4310M	4310M	3540M	2x 2640M	2x 3000M	2x 3540M
Memory Size	2048 MB	1536 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB	2048 MB	2x 2048 MB	2x 1536 MB	2x 2048 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	256 bit	2x 256 bit	2x 384 bit	2x 256 bit
Core Clock	1000 MHz	772 MHz	800 MHz	925 MHz	1006 MHz+	830 MHz	607 MHz	1006 MHz+
Memory Clock	1200 MHz	1002 MHz	1250 MHz	1375 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	855 MHz	1502 MHz
Price	$360	$390	$450	$550	$499	$700	$750	$999

Test System

Test System - VGA Rev. 16
CPU:	Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache)
Motherboard:	Gigabyte X58 Extreme Intel X58 & ICH10R
Memory:	3x 2048 MB Mushkin Redline XP3-12800 DDR3 @ 1520 MHz 8-7-7-16
Harddisk:	WD Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500 GB
Power Supply:	Antec HCP-1200 1200W
Software:	Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1
Drivers:	NVIDIA: 285.62 ATI: Catalyst 11.12 HD 7950 & 7970: 8.921.2 RC11 HD 7750 & HD 7770: 8.932.2 GTX 680 & GTX 680 SLI: 301.10 WHQL
Display:	LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600

Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when exactly the same hardware & software configuration is used as in this review.

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
AA and AF are applied via in-game settings, not via the driver's control panel.

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Aliens vs. Predator

Aliens vs. Predator is based on a merger of the Aliens and the Predators franchise: two legendary alien species that are in conflict with each other, fighting to the death with human marines caught in between. The first person shooter game was developed by Rebellion Studios, who also developed the first AVP PC title and released in February 2010. It is one of the first DirectX 11 games with support for new features like tesselation, which is why AMD heavily promoted it at the time of their DX 11 card launches. We use the AVP benchmark utility with tesselation and advanced DX11 shadows enabled.