NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Its popularity aside, Battlefield 3 may be the most interesting game in our benchmark suite for a single reason: it’s the first AAA DX10+ game. It’s been 5 years since the launch of the first DX10 GPUs, and 3 whole process node shrinks later we’re finally to the point where games are using DX10’s functionality as a baseline rather than an addition. Not surprisingly BF3 is one of the best looking games in our suite, but as with past Battlefield games that beauty comes with a high performance cost
NVIDIA’s cards have always done well at Battlefield 3, which puts the Radeon HD 7900 series in a bad position from the beginning. Short of the GTX 680’s massive lead in the Portal 2 bonus round, this is the single biggest victory for the GTX 680 over the 7970, beating AMD’s best by 28% at 2560, and by continually higher amounts at lower resolutions. Based on our experience with BF3 I’d hesitate to call the 680 fully fluid at 2560 as large firefights can significantly tear into performance relative to Thunder Run, but if it’s not fully fluid then it’s going to be very, very close.
What’s also interesting here is that once again the GTX 680 is doing very well compared to the dual-GPU cards. The GTX 590 and 6990 never pull away from the GTX 680, and at 1920 with FXAA the GTX 680 finally squeaks by and takes the top of the chart. Performance relative to the GTX 580 is also once again good for that matter, with the GTX 680 beating its predecessor by 48% at almost every resolution.
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Wreckage - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Impressive. This cards beats AMD on EVERY level! Price, performance, features, power..... every level. AMD paid the price for gouging it's customers, they are going to lose a ton of marketshare. I doubt they have anything to match this for at least a year.Creig - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
The review has been up for less than a minute so you couldn't possibly have read it already. How pathetic is it that you were sitting there hitting F5 repeatedly just so you could get in another "First post! Nvidia is uber!" comment.Get a life.
Grooveriding - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Haha Creig,Good observation, he must of been sitting there spamming to get in that first comment, before he read a word of the review.
Sour grapes at being banned much, Wreckage ?
nathanddrews - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
... but he's correct. The 680 does dominate in nearly every situation and category."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."
Obvioulsy Wreckage's analysis of AMD's "price gouging" and prophesies of doom are farfetched...
N4g4rok - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Well, yeah, the card does well in most of those tests, but i think it might be a little too far to say that it dominates the 7970 on every level.cactusdog - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Just finsished looking around various sites and the 680 isnt as good as was suggested.Dont forget, you're basically comparing an overclocked Nvidia card to a stock AMD card, and even the base clock is much higher on the nvidia card.
At the same clocks the results will look much better for AMD. Also, 3 monitor gaming could favour AMD with 3GB of vram.
Seems like Nvidia really wanted to target the 7970 and the price/performance tag this time, by building a souped up, overclocked Gk104 but its not a 7970 killer. AMD will just need to sell them for $449.
AMD can stay with the 7970 as planned until Q4 and the 8 series.
gamerk2 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
You know clocks aren't the only thing that determines speed? Couldn't one just as easily argue that AMD cards were better because they basically clocked their RAM so high?Fact is, at stock, the card beats the 7970 at a lower price. Period.
Meaker10 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
You're ignoring the host of factory overclocked models out there that will be quieter than the 680M and perform on a similar level, the price just needs to be dropped.Kakkoii - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Herp derp, the same can be said about Nvidia cards as well. The 680 has tonnes of OC'ing headroom. The GPU boost it has is a messily overclock.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I guess the lower clocked cores of 470, 480, 570, 580 , and many other Nvidia cards were greatly cheated in all benchmarks because the amd cores were often well over 100mhz higher at stock....So we have had at least 3 years of lying benchmarks in amd's favor.
I'd like to personally thank gamerk2 for this very astute observation that sheds the light of Nvidia asbolutely winning in all the above mentioned nvidia cars for the past couple of years.
Thank you... (sarc/reality check is free)