First: GTX 680 review !!!

[Atreidin]

Lowering prices would make them sell out faster, but they don't have any more to sell. It wouldn't make sense to lower the price until they have more to sell. Whining about it doesn't change basic economics.

 

[blackened23]

I'm flattered. I didn't even see your post until the picture. I had to back up to realize what was going on. I was genuinely interested, as the only error I noticed was Tahiti's die size.

Just to clarify, maybe I overstated things a bit but die size, ROPs (580), TDP, and tflops were wrong on first glimpse.

 

[Grooveriding]

Lowering prices would make them sell out faster, but they don't have any more to sell. It wouldn't make sense to lower the price until they have more to sell. Whining about it doesn't change basic economics.

Have you been around here since the 7970 launched ? Many members here whined so much you'd think they thought it would change pricing. I guess we are in for more whining with the 680 release and its rumoured pricing, if it is not at least 50% faster than a 580. ()

 

[X98]

nVIDIA has some damn fine engineers, credit to team they are.

Kepler is going to be epic win

 

[Elfear]

Funny!

About the pricing, these are high end cards and if it performs equivalently to the 7970 which is pushing 600 bucks now, and people are buying them, that is what the market is willing to bear. Of course we all wish they were half that for this level of performance.

Huh? $550 :hmm:

Come on Keys, that search took me 10 seconds.

Any rumors of whether there will be availability at launch? If the 680 is really 25% faster than Tahiti and OC's like stink, I may switch to the green team this round.

 

[lavaheadache]

GTX 680's will be faster than 7970's. Why you ask? Because nVidia has the liberty of clocking the 680 to whatever speed it needs to in order to claim this victory. One of the joys of being released months later.

I care not what the stock performance of this card is but more so what the average Joe can get for an easy overclock since that is truly going to dictate the better card. 7970 headroom is silly to say the least and the 680 still has yet to show it's face.

I've tried my best to not reply to any of these speculation threads (and have succeeded for the most part) because the sheer fanboyism has been sickening. I really feel like I am watching the superbowl and seeing fans getting in fights over who's team is better ( as if they "had" a team).

 

[MrK6]

GTX 680's will be faster than 7970's. Why you ask? Because nVidia has the liberty of clocking the 680 to whatever speed it needs to in order to claim this victory. One of the joys of being released months later.

I care not what the stock performance of this card is but more so what the average Joe can get for an easy overclock since that is truly going to dictate the better card. 7970 headroom is silly to say the least and the 680 still has yet to show it's face.

I've tried my best to not reply to any of these speculation threads (and have succeeded for the most part) because the sheer fanboyism has been sickening. I really feel like I am watching the superbowl and seeing fans getting in fights over who's team is better ( as if they "had" a team).

I agree and I'm in the same boat. If the GK104 can bang out 1400MHz+ on water, then it'll be in the same boat as my 7970 and will get me interested in GK110. However, if it can only hit 1200MHz or something, or the performance simply isn't there even once it's overclocked, then I'm not really going to be impressed. At best, it seems the GK104 will just offer an alternative to the 7970 at the $550 price point.

 

[3DVagabond]

I agree and I'm in the same boat. If the GK104 can bang out 1400MHz+ on water, then it'll be in the same boat as my 7970 and will get me interested in GK110. However, if it can only hit 1200MHz or something, or the performance simply isn't there even once it's overclocked, then I'm not really going to be impressed. At best, it seems the GK104 will just offer an alternative to the 7970 at the $550 price point.

Which, I believe, is exactly the point. They're tired of beating each other up and watching someone like Apple get what they want for their products and grow to in excess of half a trillion dollars in market cap.

This might backfire on AMD though. On same perf/$ nVidia will outsell them.

 

[lavaheadache]

Which, I believe, is exactly the point. They're tired of beating each other up and watching someone like Apple get what they want for their products and grow to in excess of half a trillion dollars in market cap.

This might backfire on AMD though. On same perf/$ nVidia will outsell them.

I agree with that. NVidia is definately the popular choice. Heck, even the most casual of gamers get TWIMTBP burned into their retinas at the un-skippable intro to many modern games.

 

[FalconHorse]

I've tried my best to not reply to any of these speculation threads (and have succeeded for the most part) because the sheer fanboyism has been sickening.

It really is something to behold. That adults (I assume) can behave that way is mind-boggling to me.

 

[Meghan54]

Huh? $550 :hmm:

Come on Keys, that search took me 10 seconds.

How true. While I'm not one to involve one's self in the endless wars about video card brands, I do tire of people completely and purposely misrepresenting the prices of some cards. Guess it suits their own ends to do so.


Meh.........

 

[BoFox]

How true. While I'm not one to involve one's self in the endless wars about video card brands, I do tire of people completely and purposely misrepresenting the prices of some cards. Guess it suits their own ends to do so.


Meh.........

That was from a week or two ago, when stock was more limited on Newegg - most of the remaining 7970s were well over $550 (with only one model left at $549). Keys must've thought that the 28nm supply was still constrained, but it seems to be a lot more plentiful on newegg right now.

It's tiring when there's such an imbalance of fervent AMD supporters being more on the aggressive or criticizing side.. it does seem that there are less than half of Nvidia supporters compared to AMD supporters on the forums, yet well over 60% of the discrete GPU marketshare goes to NV. I guess NV card owners are just more content, feeling less of a need/pressure to hold a contention on the forums. Contending for the underdog is probably more exciting, after all, and it's very easy to feel threatened all the time by an arguably better choice for gaming overall - an excellent solution for Stereo 3D and PhysX.

That's just my opinion as a gamer. Some of the AAA games look utterly awful without PhysX (Batman AA, AC, Mirror's Edge, etc..). Ultimately, it's fun to play 60% of the games in STEREO 3D with unprecedented quality (maximum depth, user-configured convergence so that it feels natural and I can game for hours and hours without ever getting a headache)- unlike AMD's horrible HD3D (TriDef) support for most games. Now AMD will no longer hold the advantage of Eyefinity on a single GPU card - NV is going to feature 3-panel support too. Then there's IQ.. is there anything like 32x CSAA on alpha (transparent) textures in DX10/11 games? AMD is finally doing SSAA for DX10/11 games with the 7xxx series, but it's not such a practical option for 90% of these games at a high resolution.

I've had an AMD card and an NV card in my 2 rigs for many years until Stereo3D finally won me over. I cannot even start to explain the awesome-ness of S3D in this post - it'd be an essay. Kudos to NV for working hard to push 3D technology despite the predominance of 60Hz LCD panels during the 2000 decade - the effort is personally appreciated despite some shortcomings/difficulties (where I had to hack some stuff for 3D with my old 8800GTX when NV tried to make it proprietary for polarized Zalman monitor and then for 3D Vision when I wanted to keep on using my wired glasses).

It'd be interesting to see how many of those who post here in this Kepler thread are on AMD's side, compared to those who are on NV's side. I used to be neutral for many years, loving the fact that I had both to play with and enjoy, but yeah I'm favoring NV more right now until Windows 8 with DX11.1 makes S3D a standard for games supporting it. Arguing about 3GB might soon be a moot point as a 4GB version of 680 comes out maybe 1-5 months down the road. It's funny how many were arguing that 1GB was enough for HD 5870/5970's Eyefinity resolutions during the 40nm round.

Those who game in 3D are usually the most content ones, looking back and seeing those who argue about 2D quality as silly as those who argued about black-and-white quality while completely ignoring the added dimension of color.

Anyways, for those who were unable to view the translation due to the website being down, grstanford captured the translated pages of that GTX 680 review into the .pdf's with all full-size pictures intact (the translation was easy to understand):
http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24350&start=580#p60717

 

[Joepublic2]

Idle power is interesting in this bench (Again - best scenario most likely)

Traditionally, Nvidia hasn't been as aggressive with their downclocking as ATI has been.

 

[Grooveriding]

**snip**

If you happened to see that this post amounted to an opinion piece let me summate for you.

If you don't think gpu physx is great, that in almost five years game devs have only seen fit to put in 18 games, of which only 20% are not trash; you must be AMD biased.

If you don't like 3DVision, no it's not important that you don't like AMD's HD3D either - you still don't like 3D!; you must be AMD biased.

If you don't only buy the fastest single-GPU card out for a given generation, because that is the only bracket nvidia has the best performance in historically; you must be AMD biased. What's that you don't ? Well you should buy lesser nvidia cards just because they have that single-gpu halo card!

Hope I saved some others the time I wasted reading that. Perhaps now we can go back to discussing this fake review or looking forward to some real reviews coming soon. Sure beats way over-invested, inflammatory, out-right trolling and cheerleading posts that boil down to opinion at best and troll posts at their worst.

 

[BoFox]

If you happened to see that this post amounted to an opinion piece let me summate for you.

If you don't think gpu physx is great, that in almost five years game devs have only seen fit to put in 18 games, of which only 20% are not trash; you must be AMD biased.

If you don't like 3DVision, no it's not important that you don't like AMD's HD3D either - you still don't like 3D!; you must be AMD biased.

If you don't only buy the fastest single-GPU card out for a given generation, because that is the only bracket nvidia has the best performance in historically; you must be AMD biased. What's that you don't ? Well you should buy lesser nvidia cards just because they have that single-gpu halo card!

Hope I saved some others the time I wasted reading that. Perhaps now we can go back to discussing this fake review or looking forward to some real reviews coming soon. Sure beats way over-invested, inflammatory, out-right trolling and cheerleading posts that boil down to opinion at best and troll posts at their worst.

Nah, my opinion in no way stated that those who don't like PhysX or excellent S3D support are AMD-biased. It's just how fervent you guys are in your arguments here. I just wanted to voice out my opinion as to why I'm looking forward to GTX 680 more than HD 7970 (also why I think that it's a better choice for gamers overall - it's what I'd recommend to my brothers, to my friends.. 32x CSAA on alpha textures in DX10/11 games is something that AMD cannot offer, so that's already much better IQ for 2D by itself. I recently recommended to my 2 friends to buy GTX 560 Ti's (SLI) for 3D Vision (which one did already), and my other friend to wait until GTX 680. The guy who has two 560's is literally enthralled with his 3D Vision kit plus 120Hz clarity/smoothness. It's just my humble opinion - in no way am I trolling in this thread regarding the good stuff of GTX 680.

It's like you expressing why HD 6850 is a better deal than HD 7770. I'm just expressing what I think is awesome: GTX 680 in this thread regarding GTX 680.


Still, I naturally did not appreciate this personally-directed inflammatory post, so I reported it:

 

[blastingcap]

I agree with that. NVidia is definately the popular choice. Heck, even the most casual of gamers get TWIMTBP burned into their retinas at the un-skippable intro to many modern games.

+1

Also, the VRAM amounts are different. PhysX/CUDA support also differ. Noise/temp/power draws may differ. Also, there are differences in UI. For me personally, I'm close to fed up with AMD's 2011-era CCC which screwed up my Eyefinity hotkeys.

 

[Will Robinson]

I just wanted to voice out my opinion as to why I'm looking forward to GTX 680 more than HD 7970 (also why I think that it's a better choice for gamers overall - it's what I'd recommend to my brothers, to my friends..

Let me get this right...you'd recommend an unreleased vaporware card over the actual World's fastest GPU card...wtf

It's tiring when there's such an imbalance of fervent AMD supporters being more on the aggressive or criticizing side.. it does seem that there are less than half of Nvidia supporters compared to AMD supporters on the forums, yet well over 60% of the discrete GPU marketshare goes to NV. I guess NV card owners are just more content, feeling less of a need/pressure to hold a contention on the forums. Contending for the underdog is probably more exciting, after all, and it's very easy to feel threatened all the time by an arguably better choice for gaming overall - an excellent solution for Stereo 3D and PhysX.

That is just hilarious considering we have a fully paid up member of NVDA's "Focus" Group right here at AT...who also moonlights here as a forum mod:\

 

[BoFox]

Let me get this right...you'd recommend an unreleased vaporware card over the actual World's fastest GPU card...wtf

1. We all already know it's not yet released, but if this early review is a truthful indicator of GTX 680, I'd recommend it over the 7970 for the several key reasons mentioned in my second-to-last post.

2. Vaporware? Why do you say that if you do not know for sure yet? It's a very small GPU, less likely to be vaporware in the long run than 7970.

That is just hilarious considering we have a fully paid up member of NVDA's "Focus" Group right here at AT...who also moonlights here as a forum mod

Just curious - not an insult or mockery - are you in "AMD's Focus Group", or anything like that? I know it's not relevant to this thread, but why do you appear to be so agitated with my personal opinion that GTX 680 is awesome?

 

[Itchrelief]

Just curious - not an insult or mockery - are you in "AMD's Focus Group", or anything like that? I know it's not relevant to this thread, but why do you appear to be so agitated with my personal opinion that GTX 680 is awesome?

It's more agitation at the persecution complex people have here. Particularly the pro-NV side. Gets tiring.

 

[Zebo]

Anyone see OC numbers yet? Stock i doubt it even beats my gtx hydrocopper @ 950 clock and 2050 mem. Have to sit this one out if it doesnt clock sky high.

 

[BoFox]

It's more agitation at the persecution complex people have here. Particularly the pro-NV side. Gets tiring.

Excuse me - disagreed with your agitation persecution 100%, and agreed with the tiring part. I hope that my reporting can be viewed as an "advance/supportive" counsel to those who contribute in a negative manner.

Anyone see OC numbers yet? Stock i doubt it even beats my gtx hydrocopper @ 950 clock and 2050 mem. Have to sit this one out if it doesnt clock sky high.

Well, GTX 570 was still able to overclock with just 2x 6-pin connectors fairly well, and ate about the same power as HD 6970 to begin with, which is already just a tad bit more than GTX 680 from the looks of it.

I'm expecting it to be just as overclockable as GTX 570..

And then a version with 6 + 8 -pin (which the board already has support for) should allow for much higher clocks/voltage. Maybe it's what NV is going to allow the AIBs to configure.

 

[krumme]

Funny!

About the pricing, these are high end cards and if it performs equivalently to the 7970 which is pushing 600 bucks now, and people are buying them, that is what the market is willing to bear. Of course we all wish they were half that for this level of performance.

Wellcome to the world of nViDia marketing.

Everyting is twisted, bended, and brought to you by 3dmark in 1080.

 

[Grooveriding]

Anyone see OC numbers yet? Stock i doubt it even beats my gtx hydrocopper @ 950 clock and 2050 mem. Have to sit this one out if it doesnt clock sky high.

OC numbers are what I need to see to form an opinion on the card as well. There was a storm of complaints over the 7970 and its pricing vs its performance increase, it was on average 40% faster than a 6970. The 680 is looking to giving at best the same sort of gains on the 580. It will be faster than your 950core 580, but perhaps only 20% or so.

The early stuff we have seen about the 680 is not looking any better than that 40% and if you want to believe the little we have seen(most is dubious like this obvious fake review), it is less than 40% faster than a 580.

Again, going to have to see OC numbers. At stock, the 7970 did not impress vs a 580, but was respectable against the 6970. With the general 1200core overclock seen on a 7970, it's 50-80% faster than a 580. The 680 is going to need impressive overclocks as well if it just offering 7970+10% performance with the nvidia logo on the box.

I have to assume it is at least 10% better than a 7970 to get the 680 moniker, if it was only equal it would be only 25% faster than a 580 and not well received at all. The die size being in the area of 320mm2 and nvidia having had much worse perf/mm2 than AMD for so long makes it very hard to gauge the card without real benches. Even equal to 7970 is very impressive gains in perf/mm2, 10% faster would be incredible, above that and I just start to doubt it being possible.

With the pricing looking the same as a 7970, if the two cards are so close in perf., whichever card consistently comes out ahead with 'average overclock results' would be the card I would buy.

 

[BoFox]

Wellcome to the world of nViDia marketing.

Everyting is twisted, bended, and brought to you by 3dmark in 1080.

We'll just have to wait and see.. just a few days left. Patience.. patience.. the truth will prevail! If it does beat HD 7970 at 2560x1600, this would be exhilarating for a GK104 card that's mid-range by design!

By the way, the jedi-force of AMD marketing sure is strong in this thread! :sneaky:

 

[chimaxi83]

Still, I naturally did not appreciate this personally-directed inflammatory post, so I reported it:

Lol what was the point of that screenshot? Saying it was a waste of time was his opinion, and I halfway agree. It was an NV cheerleading post, and it was beyond obvious.

in no way am I trolling in this thread regarding the good stuff of GTX 680

Nobody knows anything other than a lot of fake pictures, slides, and a fake review. Great info to base your opinions on, but that's what fanboys do best, isn't it?

That was from a week or two ago, when stock was more limited on Newegg - most of the remaining 7970s were well over $550 (with only one model left at $549). Keys must've thought that the 28nm supply was still constrained, but it seems to be a lot more plentiful on newegg right now.

I'm sure the man can defend his own post, but good effort :thumbsup: The "approaching $600" was disproven and here we go with the retorts, "oh but wait that was from last week, see, and the $550 cards were out of stock." News flash, these cards are available at Amazon too, which has quite a few $550 cards in stock. Newegg is not the end all be all source here, but hey, who wants to check their facts before they spout nonsense?

It's tiring when there's such an imbalance of fervent AMD supporters being more on the aggressive or criticizing side.. it does seem that there are less than half of Nvidia supporters compared to AMD supporters on the forums, yet well over 60% of the discrete GPU marketshare goes to NV. I guess NV card owners are just more content, feeling less of a need/pressure to hold a contention on the forums. Contending for the underdog is probably more exciting, after all, and it's very easy to feel threatened all the time by an arguably better choice for gaming overall - an excellent solution for Stereo 3D and PhysX.

I feel no need/pressure to defend anything on here. I've owned both brands and if the new cards are significantly better than my 7900 series, I'll buy one. It's people like you spouting crap like what I bolded in red, some holier than thou condescending attitude, but you take offense to someone elses post? Hypocrisy bud. Yep, AMD is some underdog alright, with the fastest single GPU card on the market and all. Uh huh

That's just my opinion as a gamer. Some of the AAA games look utterly awful without PhysX (Batman AA, AC, Mirror's Edge, etc..).

Are you kidding me, some games look awful without PhysX? Not sure if serious. Wait, I am sure... that you're trolling. Batman PhysX, oh fuck yea did you see that swirling paper?! Bad ass. Smoke that moves when I walk thru it? EPIC. ok, /sarcasm. Yea, pass. I played Batman AA on my GTX570 SLI and was definitely not wowed by the crappy PhysX implementation. I played all AC games on a console where there was is no PhysX, and I couldn't care less about the gimmicky feature. But hey, just my gamer opinion.

Ultimately, it's fun to play 60% of the games in STEREO 3D with unprecedented quality (maximum depth, user-configured convergence so that it feels natural and I can game for hours and hours without ever getting a headache)- unlike AMD's horrible HD3D (TriDef) support for most games. Now AMD will no longer hold the advantage of Eyefinity on a single GPU card - NV is going to feature 3-panel support too. Then there's IQ.. is there anything like 32x CSAA on alpha (transparent) textures in DX10/11 games? AMD is finally doing SSAA for DX10/11 games with the 7xxx series, but it's not such a practical option for 90% of these games at a high resolution.

You're right, I've heard a lot of bad things about AMD's 3D implementation, but I'm in the MUCH larger majority of people who don't 3D game. I couldn't care less either way, and just how many people out there do you think game in 3D? A minuscule amount, but you're using a niche feature to try and promote GTXvaporware? That makes no sense.

Your "friend" with 560Ti's in SLI that you recommended enjoys his 3d gaming at 120Hz clarity, eh? How much smoothness/clarity does he have at the 20-40fps that his SLI 560Ti's are capable of giving him? Let's not pretend that the performance is anywhere close to taking advantage of a 120Hz screen, which you insinuated, but hey, you're a great salesman! Well, unless he's gaming at 1024x768, because at 1080p, the performance is crap.

Yea, Nvidia is finally going to feature 3-panel support too, something which AMD has had implemented and functioning since September 2009 with the release of the 5800 series. Welcome to the party.

Those who game in 3D are usually the most content ones, looking back and seeing those who argue about 2D quality as silly as those who argued about black-and-white quality while completely ignoring the added dimension of color.

Heh, those who argue about 2D quality. Well, most of us discuss it, not argue it, and we far outnumber 3d gamers. Who out there has purchased an Nvidia card because 3d Vision was a valid selling point to you? Anyone? Anyway, you keep praising NV to your one 3D vision gamer friend, as I'm sure its the two of you that you're basing your "usually the mot content ones" opinion on... have fun bud :thumbsup:

We'll just have to wait and see.. just a few days left. Patience.. patience.. the truth will prevail! If it does beat HD 7970 at 2560x1600, this would be exhilarating for a GK104 card that's mid-range by design!

By the way, the jedi-force of AMD marketing sure is strong in this thread!

Lol, truth will prevail... that GK104 is their top end? Yep, green team is strong in here. I'm neutral and gray