Nvidia GTX680

[Winnow]

Looks pretty good:

http://gizmodo.com/5895491/nvidias-gtx- ... o-the-hype

I like the lower power consumption effort. Its 100.00+ cheaper than AMDs HD7970 best offering as well

[Winnow]

Above link has more in depth review but here's a roundup from Engadget:

We've already been hands-on with NVIDIA's first Kepler GPU, but all those fancy features count for nuthin' if the benchmarks don't back them up. So do they? Huh? Do they? NVIDIA told us to expect a 10 to 40 percent performance boost from the $499 GTX 680, versus AMD's pricier Radeon HD 7970, and it appears that was no exaggeration. If you've bought yourself a high-end 28nm AMD card recently, try to hold back those tears until you've glanced over the reviews after the break. Let's just hope for a fairer fight when NVIDIA's mainstream and low-end cards come out to tackle AMD's 7800- and 7700-series -- and hey, some timely price drops could help to balance things too.

AnandTech -- gave the GTX 680 a clear 5-20 percent edge against the HD 7970 in most recent games, with "wholly unexpected and completely stunning" leads as high as 28 percent in games like Battlefield 3 and Portal 2. The card even kept pace with the Radeon HD 6990 and GTX 590 -- not bad when you consider that those dual-GPU cards burn around 30-50 percent more watts. Overall, AnandTech says "this is by far the easiest recommendation we've been able to make for an NVIDIA flagship video card."

HotHardware -- showed that the new NVIDIA could only be beaten by dual-GPU cards in 3DMark11, had lower power consumption under load (and similar consumption at idle) compared to the 7970, and concluded the GTX 680 was "the fastest single-GPU based graphics card we have tested" and "another win for the consumer".

The Tech Report -- put the GTX 680 "just a couple of ticks" below the HD 7970 in its particular "99th Percentile Frame Time" test, due to higher frame latencies in some titles, but indicated that the $50 price advantage, lower power and quieter operation more than make up for it.

Hexus -- gives props to the GTX 680's "super-funky" GPU Boost technology "that helps keep the card working at near-maximum potential at all times", and also points out that the card readily overclocks to deliver a 15 percent lift above stock performance in Crysis 2, leaving the GTX 590 in a cloud of dust and the 7970 in quicksand. On the other hand, "AMD's not far behind" and "we eagerly wait to see what happens to Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950 pricing in the next few weeks."

[Aslanna]

People still buy $500+ video cards? We're in a recession, people!

[Leonaerd]

Indeed. I recently built my new rig for about $400, including an XFX 6750, and it runs SC2 flawlessly.

[Fairweather Pure]

My ATI Radeon 5970 HD Sapphire Hemlock from 1.5 years ago still sells from $700-1,200!

[Aslanna]

Your wife can afford it!

[Winnow]

This looks like the card for me. It's one of the first top cards so be offered cheaper than the competition's best card right off the bat, they worked on the power consumption, and it's quiet or will be at least as quiet as my current card. I like that it supports 4 monitors although I don't think I'd go over 3. Maybe three plus TV.

I want the blow dryer gorilla fur effect in the video!

http://youtu.be/HxXk-iXLjiY

[Kluden]

I'm in the market too, but not sure what I'm going to do. May just swap up two 580's from people selling to get this card. Or I'll wait for the 660/670's to come out too, for comparison and more price waring. I'm running 2x260's now, and i can't max out a fkn thing anymore.

[Funkmasterr]

People still buy $500+ video cards? We're in a recession, people!

Rich people or shut ins, apparently.

[Fairweather Pure]

Your wife can afford it!

My wife has been unemployed for almost 6 months! Thankfully I have a good job too

[Winnow]

Moving my new GTX 670 comments to this thread to keep from flooding the PC build thread.


Here are the core speeds for the 670 and 680:


GTX 680:

Core Clock: 1006MHz
Boost Clock: 1058MHz

GTX 670:

Core Clock: 915MHz
Boost Clock: 980MHz

I used EVGA's Precision X GPU Monitoring/OC'ing App to check out my card.

Amazingly, my 670 Boosts to 1123MHz right out of the box. No OC'ing required.

Boost is not a gimmick. It's pretty damn cool. I loaded up TERA which is a graphics rich MMO on Ultra settings

When watching an HD movie, for example, the 670's GPU cruises along at 324MHz. I think that's actually as low as it goes.

As I ran through Tera, the boost would kick in when needed. It topped out at 1123MHz several times and stays there so it appears that's my card's max (every card is different) which tops even the 680's default boost of 1058MHz. Of course, during this time my fps was always 60+.

In addition to this boost, you can also set your vertical sync to "adaptive", What this does is keep your FPS at ~60FPS in games. This is also beneficial because you don't need off the charts 100-200+ FPS in some games that you can get with this card so it also saves on power keeping it down to 60FPS.

Reading through the tech forums, it looks like just about all 670's are boosting higher than their ratings. Most are 1000MHz+ but a a lot are getting the 1100-1180 range without having to OC at all.

I remain highly impressed with the tech behind the kepler chips and I'd also be kinda pissed if I was a GTX 680 owner considering how close the 670 comes (3% or even better than the 680) to it with no OC'ing.

Even more interesting is the 670 bests the 680 in many games because the only thing it really lacks is a few cores. (1344 vs 1536 CUDA cores) For games that aren't shader heavy (and there are a lot), the 670 actually performs better because it runs cooler and can clock higher than the 680 with it's fewer cores. If you look at the Anandtech benchmarks, I posted a link in the other thread, the 670 posted higher benches in more games than the 680. I think there's some driver optimizing involved with that as well though.

[Aslanna]

I remain highly impressed with the tech behind the kepler chips and I'd also be kinda pissed if I was a GTX 680 owner considering how close the 670 comes (3% or even better than the 680) to it with no OC'ing.

Eh. That's the price they pay for being an early adopter. The 680 people aren't cheated they got what they paid for.

[Winnow]

For anyone interested in fan noise, this is from the [H]ardocp review:

Fan noise is not to be worried about, on our reference video card it was not audible even at full-load overclocked.

Another bonus by getting the GTX 670 is that my Audio over HDMI is actually working. It never worked with the 285. It's kinda nice to pump out the audio from my PC to my TV once in awhile when watching movies, etc.

[Boogahz]

For anyone interested in fan noise, this is from the [H]ardocp review:

Fan noise is not to be worried about, on our reference video card it was not audible even at full-load overclocked.

Another bonus by getting the GTX 670 is that my Audio over HDMI is actually working. It never worked with the 285. It's kinda nice to pump out the audio from my PC to my TV once in awhile when watching movies, etc.

I've never had a problem with the audio over HDMI on my 5770. Was it a card or cord issue?

[Winnow]

I've never had a problem with the audio over HDMI on my 5770. Was it a card or cord issue?

Don't think it was a cable issue because just installing the new video card/drivers enabled the HDMI audio. I'm guessing it was a defect with my 285 card. I'm glad it's working now though. I had tried several times to get it to work with the 285.

[Funkmasterr]

For anyone interested in fan noise, this is from the [H]ardocp review:

Fan noise is not to be worried about, on our reference video card it was not audible even at full-load overclocked.

Another bonus by getting the GTX 670 is that my Audio over HDMI is actually working. It never worked with the 285. It's kinda nice to pump out the audio from my PC to my TV once in awhile when watching movies, etc.

I've never had a problem with the audio over HDMI on my 5770. Was it a card or cord issue?

I've just started having that issue recently. Pretty sure I have a HD 5770. The ATI hdmi audio device will show not connected. If I restart the computer it will work, even for hours of playing Diablo, but after a while of it sitting idle it will go back to not working. It also seems that if I switch my audio to use my optical connection for my Turtle Beach it causes this to happen too.

I did a little searching around about it and it seems to be a fairly common issue. Apparently if you have a realtek sound card built into the motherboard (pretty sure I do) you can download a ATI specific driver from realtek that takes care of the issue. Once I verify that I have a realtek sound card, I'll give this a shot and see if it takes care of the issue.