NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTThe Test
For the GTX 680 launch, the press review driver is 300.99, while the launch driver is 301.10. This driver currently only works with the GTX 680, but NVIDIA will eventually be rolling out a version of the driver that includes support for older cards, which will bring with it official support for driver forced FXAA on Fermi cards. 300.99 is otherwise identical to the 290 series, and has no other changes or new features that we haven’t otherwise mentioned.
CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.2.3.1022 |
Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 7950 AMD Radeon HD 7870 AMD Radeon HD 7850 AMD Radeon HD 6990 AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 6950 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 4870 AMD Radeon HD 3870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT |
Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 296.10 NVIDIA ForceWare 300.99 AMD Catalyst Beta 8.95.5 |
OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
404 Comments
View All Comments
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)