http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_kepler_gpu_geforce_gtx_680_video_card_review

Even at Triple Screen resolution the GTX 680 beats the 7970....and it does it with a smaller framebuffer and less memory bandwidth. In most tests, it looks like the GTX 680 is beating up on the 7970....and it does it for less money I believe.

WOW!

I wish the 4GB model was out. At 2560x1600 with high settings, X-Plane 10 is getting pretty close to 2GB.

*EDIT* Looks like it uses less power and produces less heat than the previous generation as well. It seems like the GTX 680 is the ideal card, especially if you don't run at 2560x1600.

Good review of 3 monitor performance. Eyefinity performance is important to me. Thanks for the link.

At the end of the day, Nvidia fans can justify GTX680 and AMD fans (like me ) can justify HD7970. Hopefully, this will lead to a price war benefiting all of us

FXAA.... the Image Anti-Aliasing Engine is that Much faster on a Single Screen, times that by 3...

not to mention the auto overclocking to 1.1/1.2Ghz, which cannot be disabled.

when the HD8000 Series comes out later this year with FXAA instructions, AMD will take it back.

Great review, thanks for passing that on, really surprised that the 2GB VRAM did not bottleneck at 5760x1200, they must have some better way to move textures in and out of VRAM so it is not as big a deal as before.

Very interesting info after all the months of rumors and leaks.

looking at the graphs, they trade blows in some games either card being 5 to 10 frames better,

but the games/scenerios the 680 wins, it wins by 10-15% (15-30 frames/sec)

that gap would be smaller had they overclocked the 7970 to 1.1Ghz to match the turbo of the Kepler.

once you hit the games that dont like FXAA, AMD matches and beats kepler at 300Mhz lower clock.

Most of the games are even in 3 screens (within 5 frames/sec of each other.)

except for Elderscrolls,
DeusEx had higher numbers, but wasnt able to run max settings, where as the AMD card was.

they trade blows in the power consumption and are about the same temperature wise.

Basically nVidia waited to see what AMD had and setup their GPU to beat it, which it does in tesselation and FXAA.

Hopefully AMD realizes this and lowers prices..

ps 170 frames/sec vs 180, you wont notice as most LCD screens are 60/75Hz (unless they are 3D, in which case they are 120)

I think it is pretty significant for the 680 to match the 7970 in 3 screens resolutions.

I was hoping for single card support but expected NV to lag behind on ATI on 3 screen gaming without SLI due to their late arrival at the party. But the fact that they can go toe to toe and both cards do a good job is really great news overall for all of us who desire 3 screen support but the developers of games always saw it as some niche ATI Eyefinity feature.

Starting today this is now a standard feature of both companies and I bet it will really become much more mainstream, woohoo! really good news for those of us who like driving and flying sims, iRacing on 3 screens is awesome and I can only hope more to come from other sims.

its good news as both cards are basically equal, one does better in some games, while the other does better in the other games...

bring on the Price wars, my rig is crying for a 2nd 7950 for SLI, haha

Or bring on the Atomic, or Lightning, or whatever 1.3GHz clocked cards are hiding in the wings.

when I saw that the 680 is doing 2x FPS than my 6970 in BF3 I was


*must.... resist... again... credit card.... *

MSAA isnt bottle necking the frame rate anymore.

Also, i was told by ATI that the 7000 series does do FXAA, not efficiently until Cat 12.4 though. (maybe in cat 12.3 Beta)

I've gathered 'a few' review links in this thread:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3543586/nVidia_680_review_links.html#Post3543586

Top link in that thread is to the discussion here.

Wow thanks JAMF, will keep me busy reading those

The GTX 680 is not the "Powerhouse" card Nvidia is releasing. The GTX 680 is actually supposed to be the more mainstream/midrange. I predict that Nvidia will continue their ATI beat down for the forseeable future. lol

I honestly can't see why anybody would buy an ATI card, but that is just me. I stopped using ATI some time after my 9700 Pro.

Hopefully the competition drives prices down.

Well the easy reason for the last two generations was triple monitor on single card, but now that playing field is leveled.

ATI has been enjoying the lack of competition the last 3-4 months price wise, I'm guessing now they will need to adjust prices unless Nvidia can't produce enough 680s to meet demand.

Its probably still AMD for 3 Monitor gaming -- but, by a smaller margin. For example, AMD does have the wide memory bus and the 3GB memory needed for 3 big monitors. The test data shows that as Pixels increase, the GTX680 lead decreases (and AMD wins some from the getgo). AMD can also up clock their GPU and memory as did Nvidia.

Of course, Nvidia beats AMD -- as they waited until they could before they released -- its literally their business plan. AMD has stated that beating Nvidia in FPS is not the goal -- they know Nvidia will do whatever it takes (including engineering shortcuts and deals with game developers). There's more to a complete GPU product than FPS -- in almost every case, the FPS difference will not be visible (only measurable).

Where FPS actually matters is 3 monitor gaming where FPS tends to be marginal -- again, AMD still has that crown -- and, its the "meaningful" FPS crown.

Nvidia and AMD have good cards on the market. I'm await AMD's response (technical and price). Which, of course, Nvidia will counter. Its what keeps the hobby interesting

AMD shot themselves in the foot, both with the clockings of the 7970 and its price.

On the other hand, it seems like Crossfire scales better than SLI, as I've seen in the only review I could find that had both of the cards (Guru3d had an SLI review, but I think I'm gonna stop visiting that site as they didn't have any 7970 in crossfire in that review). HardwareHeaven didn't even use overclocked 7970s in crossfire in their review, and it still seems like it's the better choice for Eyefinity.

Anyway, this is a very good release for Nvidia, probably their best since 8800.

BTW, in looking at the direction Nvidia took, the HD7870 is the more comparable technically. But, the HD7870 has fewer shaders (and a much lower price). Parenthetically, the HD7950 is not comparable because its a "fused off" HD7970.

The GTX680 is not evidence for a genuine Nvidia technical lead.

Looking at test data, if the HD7870 had bumped up its shaders to the same count as GTX680 (that won't happen), the performance would be similar to GTX680.

Thus, Nvidia merely went into a different "window" between HD7870 and HD7970. That plus an overclock put them in the "sweet spot" for price and power use at a good performance level. We must congratulate them for that (even if we are AMD fans ).

Still wondering why AMD hasn't produced a big gaming-oriented GPU. 7970 isn't that exactly, because of all the compute stuff it has, and as you say the 7870 is comparable to the 680 in everything except the size, and the memory of course.

I think the 670/660 GPU was promoted to 680 status because:
A. Yeilds for the 680 GPU were incredibly bad
B. Temperatures, Power and Stability of the GPU were bad

And
C. No Competition from AMD at that level

nVidia is claiming that its just because of no comp. from AMD, i dont buy that as the reason.

the 600 series is already resembling the promblematic 400 series in delays, power consump., and temps.

but at least the 680s are quiet!