HI guys since i moved to a triple 24" 1920x1080 monitor my faithful GTX560 is starting to show some weakness ( works ok with older games but stutters a bit and cant keep vsync) im considering GTX680 or even a 690 but in not sure if the performance justifies the cost. I normally change VGA every year with a 250€ one but this time i was wondering f spending more money would benefit in the long run (this means that if i buy a 690 i have to kee pt for alt least 4 years maybe moving it on my next gaming rig) , adopting a SLI configuration is really not an option for me (onlu one 16x PCIE slot). can you give me your opinion on the 680 or 690 s cards?

Thanks in advance

Based on my experience with HD7970, the new cards HD79xx, GTX680, GTX670 are roughly twice as fast as the previous generation in high pixel count situations (like triple monitor). They make triple monitor completely practical on a single card (previously one needed CrossFire or SLI to be completely happy with every game).

If one is going triple monitor for sure, then AMD HD7970 is the way to go -- as it outperforms the GTX series at high pixel counts and in triple monitor settings (according to test reports). However, if one is an Nvidia fan one wants Nvidia

The GTX690 dual-GPU single card would beat HD7970 of course -- but at $1000 .... hmmmmm....

I'm going to consolidate my music making PC and my gaming PC into a single machine, trying to sell the music one to raise part of the money needed for the new card, this leave me with a more acceptable half of the cost remaining to be pulled out to pay for the 690.

I switched back and forth ATI and NVidia based on what I preferred at the time in the past, 680 sounds tempting but i was wondering if i should go a step further, i considered 7970 also but I still need more data on it also i need to keep a secondary PCIe X1 card, which is currently a gtx210 with sawed off connector to display gauges on the 4th monitor. I could go fora 30€ low end Radeon to keep consistency between cards. I'm afraid that AMD and Nvidia drivers will clash, is this an issue or they can coexist?
If the later is valid i could use the 210 as physical accelerator when 4th screen is not in use, any one knows if "it could work" (Yelled as Gene Wilder in "young Frankenstein" )

If one can afford GTX690, why not Rumor is, it will be in extremely short supply -- perhaps less than 1000 made worldwide. That's due to manufacturing issues -- some blame TSMC, some blame Nvidia.

There is also an HD7990 dual-GPU card "waiting" to be released shortly. Competition may lower the prices. Rumor is, AMD was just waiting to see what Nvidia would do -- dual-GPU wise.

I would question mixing AMD and Nvidia -- but, I've never tried it. So, others are more qualified than I.

Don't know how your "physical accelerator" works; so, my comments are FWIW. I'm an AMD fan, but actually own a 210. Its very weak so, almost anything at all would substitute as a side-card for calculations. The AMD HD77xx and up cards have shaders optimized for compute. Nvidia and AMD's latest offerings roughly "tie" on graphics benchmarks -- with Nvidia winning more at lower resolutions and AMD winning more at higher resolutions -- however, Nvidia downplayed computations in the GTX6xx series (compute was a strength in GTX5xx cards). The latest AMD does some compute operations 5 times as fast. Don't know if that applies to your setting.

Anyhow, not actually "selling" AMD cards. One can't really go wrong anymore -- buying either Nvidia or AMD. Comes down to price that day -- or being a fan of one or the other

i was referring to Nvidia physics libraries, they should be independent from the actual video card used to display the game graphics but a CUDA card is needed to do the physics calculations in hardware AFAIK (but my knowledge could be outdated) none of the AMD/ATI card are supporting thees libraries, since i use the gtx210 only for soft th amd 2d, the 3d performance of the card does not concerns me and i can use it just for physycs, but i can buy buy a cheap lowend ati to use it for the gauge display and just forget the nvidia physics if buying an 7970 as main card justifies that (still waiting to understand between 680 and 7970 which one is the best).

Given that I've not tried Nvidia and AMD in the same box, this is what I've read in the past.

At one point in the last two or three years, Nvidia coded its drivers to preclude use of an AMD GPU for graphics with an Nvidia GPU for CUDA. So, risky to use AMD and Nvidia like that -- if the prohibition is still there.

CUDA is Nvidia-only for practical purposes. AMD does not support it (the industry is going to OpenCL and other open compute standards which both Nvidia and AMD support -- but, AMD supports better in the current generation as noted previously).

Many flight sim folks seem to think their Nvidia cards generally do better than AMD in the older flight sims. Don't know if they've tried both AMD and Nvidia recently. I think AMD is fast enough -- and better than Nvidia at OpenGL now. Still, some feel its Nvidia for flight sims. Might ask on the different SimHQ flight-sim forums what works well for those particular sims.

Given all that, then Nvidia seems like the safer way to go -- in your particular case -- provided you don't find some convincing evidence to the contrary.

you can Run a Low End nVidia Card and Set it as the Dedicated PhysX processor,
but its a pain in the who to get it to work when using AMD Cards for Graphics
as you have to use special "hacked"/re-coded/rebuilt nVidia driver to get it to work.

and i think a 210 might not have enough "muscle" to do you any good, i think a 250+ was recommended

http://www.wsgf.org/forum/forums/multi-m...nvidia-card-phy


I was running my 8800GTS 640 as the PhysX Processor and it provided a NICE boost in PhysX enabled titles, but i dont own any "Full" versions of them, just Demos, so when my replacement from Sapphire comes back, i may end up re-tiring out the 8800GTS as PhysX processor.

I am able to run BF3 on Ultra w/ no Deferred FSAA on my eyefinity setup at 35-45 Fr/sec, i tend to lower the res like 15% to get it to 45-55 Fr/sec on outdoor maps. and it still looks good,

Get a GTX670. Almost as fast as the 680 and a lot cheaper. Some of the OC models are just as fast if not faster than the stock 680 if I am not mistaken.

only 4% slower on benchmarks

If you aren't willing to overclock, 670 is the way to go.