NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Prior to the launch of our new benchmark suite, we wanted to include The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is easily the most popular RPG of 2011. However as any Skyrim player can tell you, Skyrim’s performance is CPU-bound to a ridiculous degree. With the release of the 1.4 patch and the high resolution texture pack this has finally been relieved to the point where GPUs once again matter, particularly when we’re working with high resolutions and less than high-end GPUs. As such, we're now including it in our test suite.
Skyrim presents us with an interesting scenario. At anything less than 2560 we’re CPU limited well before we’re GPU limited, and yet even though we’re CPU limited NVIDIA manages to take a clear lead while the 680 still finds room to push to the top. For whatever the reason NVIDIA would appear to have significantly less driver overhead here, or at the very least a CPU limited Skyrim interacts with NVIDIA’s drivers better than it does AMD’s.
In any case 2560 does move away from being CPU limited, but it’s not entirely clear whether the difference we’re seeing here is solely due to GPU performance, or if we’re still CPU limited in some fashion. Regardless of the reason the GTX 680 has a 10% lead on the 7970 here.
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jmpietersen - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
This is very impressive, Nvidia has taken the crown again, nicely done, but remember, if you have read what the claims were and what has been said?Essentially, what Nvidia has, is 3 x GTX580's in "CORE" count and yet they only managed a mere 15 - 25% improvement, not exactly first class if you ask me??
If this card beat, and it should have easily have done it, if you take into account the amount of CUDA cores it has, the GTX590 and should have given the ASUS MARS a run for its money too? Which now in turn shows that the kepler cores are not as good as the Fermi cores.
I hope for Nvidia's sake its a mere driver issue and there will be further GREATER gains, if not, the essentially, they are going backwards. AMD has at least continuously improved and lets face it, AMD's 7 series, really shines compared to the 6 series??
Oh and before you all jump the gun, I have a Nvidia GTX 560ti card, love it, but i am not so sure about the new cards??
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
FXAA is what was used on the single 680 bench that matched 3x580 using 4xmsaa (though we never heard framerates).No one claimed 680 was 300% faster than 580 sir. No one.
Well, amd fans claim it should be, as you just did.
AMD claims a very high shader count by counting a 5 superscalar (or 4 now) cluster as 5 shaders not 1. Nvidia for years counted their shaders as 1/5th that number, hence the 5870 has "1600 shaders" and cannot beat a 320 shader 570.
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It appears Nvidia has no longer sat idly by, and decided to start counting 5x per cluster as well.
Hence, 1538 shaders is now that instead of 1/5th that number which would be 307 shaders.
So if you go with the old way of counting, 307 shaders would be beating the 580's higher shader count by a lot.
jmpietersen - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Just Quoting original text?Game Developers Conference 2012 attendees were first in the world to bear witness to the power of our next-generation ‘Kepler’ graphics card at an invite-only Unreal Engine 3 Samaritan demonstration. When previously shown, the same demo required the use of three GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards.
http://www.nvidia.com/content/newsletters/web/gf-n...
Yes i know what you saying, but according to this statement, on the nvidia site, the performance should have somewhat beaten the GTX590, just saying, thats what they had us believe?
So i am a little taken back, but you just answered my original statement, they have gone backwards?
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I think you should believe yourself and stay wondering, and claim "they've" gone backwards. That's brilliant indeed. (that was sarcasm guy)Now you've gone to beating 590 - whatever, it is does in some tests....
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Clearly you want to believe they've gone backwards and lied to you so feel free to do so forever.
silverblue - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
By providing no information whatsoever on the demo's framerate, it is entirely possible that somebody would indeed believe the 680 is three times faster than a 580. Of course, we know it's not (and jmpietersen certainly knows) - it's just far better and more efficient anti-aliasing that's being employed. Win-win for anybody going with the 680 and wanting exceptional image quality.The lack of information about the framerates produced by the 580s as compared to the sole 680 is the key to what jmpietersen is arguing about.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Yes, but I think what's left out is context since they were bragging out the new TXAA or FXAA - so we get a clipped statement after the fact...Then we're told we were lied to, when really it is the statement clippers that are lying, and a bunch of the rest of us tricked and angry.
KamikaZeeFu - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Cared to read the article? Nvidia changed the way they operate their Cuda cores. Previously, they were run at twice the frequency of the rest of the core (core clock vs shader clock).Now shader clock is gone, shaders operate at the same frequency. So roughly, 1 fermi shader core is 2 kepler shader cores.
Suddenly, your 3 x GTX580 core count actually means 1,5 x GTX 580 core count.
jmpietersen - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Thanks, you also answered my original statement, they have gone backwards?But again, read what "THEY" said, not me, i am just disappointed, thats all, i really was hoping it would have been a little more than what it is.
But i will upgrade to the GTX680, depending on what AMD does in terms of pricing. then i will weigh up my options.
blanarahul - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
you didn't read the article i guess. they had to double the CUDA cores since they did away with the shader clock.Ananke - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
This card is impressive, probably worth $249 at launch. Same with the Radeon 7850/7870. I will definitely consider it when it goes under that magical price level.In my opinion, NVidia and AMD totally missed the market this year. General consumer will just save and buy iPads, and when MS comes out with Windows tablets it will get even worse.
Impressive hardware, but it is pricing out almost all of its targeted market. These will sell in a very limited number. I guess they don't care about the GPU business anymore, but such thinking leaves them vulnerable to ARM hybrids with GPU integration from other parties.