Nvidia GTX 680 2048MB Released!

[V_R]

So today's the day its been released, Looks to be a very good card with some great performance, but as you'd expect it has a price tag to match with the cheapest starting at around the £420 mark, from the likes of OcUK and Aria.

Reviews...



TweakTown

From our introduction it's obvious our personal feelings towards NVIDIA. With that said, though, it wouldn't take away from us looking at a product objectively and the GTX 680 is just an awesome video card. The performance really is quite amazing and you can see that at times it has no issues competing with the dual GPU Radeon HD 6990 video card from AMD. While that might be a card based on the last generation core from AMD, it's still considered the fastest on the market.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/46..._reference_card_video_card_review/index1.html



Guru3D

So with all that said it's time to wrap up the review and dive into the conclusion. We certainly like the GeForce GTX 680, it is quite amazing what NVIDIA is able to do with the GK104 which we still think was intended to be the mid-range chip. Hey -- it works for them and for you as well as the performance level of the GTX 680 definitely is grand. Whether or not it's a big enough gap for you to opt the Radeon HD 7970 we'll leave into your capable hands. It's good to see that the GTX 680 now supports gaming with three monitors with one card, here we do think that 2 GB of graphics memory would be on the shy side though. Well, a little birdie told us that a 4 GB model is in the pipeline as well. The new TXAA mode is something to be further explored in the future, and if the NVENC gets as widely supported in other software as we have tested with MediaShow Espresso, it can haul the proverbial toosh.

As always the biggest gripe for any high end range product is pricing, currently the indication for the GeForce GTX 680 2 GB is around the 500 USD marker, roughly 469 EUR, and if we take out pricing of the equation then the GeForce GTX 680 is a solid contender in today's graphics card arena. Definitely recommended.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/



Techpowerup

NVIDIA clearly has a winner on their hands with the GTX 680. The new card, which is based on NVIDIA's GK104 graphics processor, that introduces the Kepler architecture, is a significant leap forward both in terms of performance and GPU technology. Technically GK104, as its name reveals is an upper mid-range GPU, not a pure high-end part. Following NVIDIA's naming convention such a chip would be called GK100. This subtle difference makes the GeForce GTX 680 even more impressive. Technically we'd have to compare it to GTX 560 Ti, not GTX 580. Even when compared to GeForce GTX 580, the performance improvement of GTX 680 is excellent. Averaged over our testing it increases performance by 16% (+37% vs. GTX 560 Ti!), and easily beats AMD's HD 7970. Achieving such performance levels nowadays has to go with improved performance per Watt, as modern high-end graphics cards are limited by power consumption and heat output.
NVIDIA claims massively improved power consumption with their latest architecture, which is confirmed by our testing. Compared to previous-generation cards, we see over 30% performance per Watt improvement. Every power measurement has gone down, yet performance has gone up. Very nicely done.

Pricing of the GeForce GTX 680 is reasonable, with $499. When compared to AMD's $549 HD 7970, the GTX 680 is the clear winner. It offers better performance at similar power consumption and comes with more features. Looking at the board design I am sure that there is still plenty of headroom for price reductions - a price war with AMD would be great for customers, resulting in better pricing in these tough economic times. Let's hope it happens.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_680/



AnandTech

What makes this launch particularly interesting if not amusing though is how we’ve ended up here. Since Cypress and Fermi NVIDIA and AMD have effectively swapped positions. It’s now AMD who has produced a higher TDP video card that is strong in both compute and gaming, while NVIDIA has produced the lower TDP part that is similar to the Radeon HD 5870 right down to the display outputs. In some sense it’s a reaction by both companies to what they think the other did well in the last generation, but it’s also evidence of the fact that AMD and NVIDIA’s architectures are slowly becoming more similar.

In any case, this has ended up being a launch not quite like any other. With GTX 280, GTX 480, and GTX 580 we discussed how thanks to NVIDIA’s big die strategy they had superior performance, but also higher power consumption and a higher cost. To that extent this is a very different launch –the GTX 680 is faster, cooler, and quieter than the Radeon HD 7970. NVIDIA has landed the technical trifecta, and to top it off they’ve priced it comfortably below the competition.

Looking at the bigger picture, I think ultimately we still haven’t moved very far on the price/performance curve compared to where we’ve gone in past generations, but even with NVIDIA’s conservative pricing we’re finally seeing 28nm translate into more performance for less. Based on GK104’s die size I’m left wondering where GTX 680 is going to be sitting by the end of the year as 28nm production improves, as there’s clearly a lot of potential for price cuts in the future

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review/1

 

[Ian]

Thanks for the head up on this one V_R! Just had a read of the AnandTech review and it looks like a tasty graphics card - although way out of my budget!

Do you know if there will be a 660 coming along soon?

 

[V_R]

I think there is yes, a 660 and a 670 i think i read...

 

[Ian]

Excellent . I'm upgrading my PC later on this year (and Bex is having the Q6600/GTX560), so I may go for the 660 if it's a decent price.

 

[V_R]

I must confess.... After seeing the benchies for the 680 on BF3, i really want one....!

Will see what happens with custom version of it, ala the Twin Frozr's etc first though...