GTX 680 launch video - Narrated by Ujesh Desai, VP Corporate Marketing - Nvidia

[OCGuy]

To sell or not to sell current card? Interesting...

 

[Ares1214]

To sell or not to sell current card? Interesting...

Why would you sell a 7970...? Odds are, if you game at 1920x1080, your card is more than fast enough, if you game at a higher resolution, it would be better to stick with the 7970 and just OC it. There aren't even any OC reviews on this yet.

 

[Smartazz]

Why would you sell a 7970...? Odds are, if you game at 1920x1080, your card is more than fast enough, if you game at a higher resolution, it would be better to stick with the 7970 and just OC it. There aren't even any OC reviews on this yet.

Unless someone wants Nvidia 3d, I doubt they'd notice an upgrade from a 7970 to a GTX 680.

 

[Chiropteran]

The hair part made me laugh. Did anyone actually think the hair in the video was realistic? It looked "cool", but it was still obviously rendered hair and didn't look realistic at all.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Why would you sell a 7970...? Odds are, if you game at 1920x1080, your card is more than fast enough, if you game at a higher resolution, it would be better to stick with the 7970 and just OC it. There aren't even any OC reviews on this yet.

IMO this gen is going to be about price, features, and what resolution you're using. Performance is nearly identical from what's been seen so far.

 

[f1sherman]

The hair part made me laugh. Did anyone actually think the hair in the video was realistic? It looked "cool", but it was still obviously rendered hair and didn't look realistic at all.

many objects code is there, and that was demonstrated

could proly use a touch of Subsurface Scattering and whatnot

 

[Kenmitch]

The hair part made me laugh. Did anyone actually think the hair in the video was realistic? It looked "cool", but it was still obviously rendered hair and didn't look realistic at all.

Yep....Kinda had that sci-fi channel monster movie look to it

 

[RussianSensation]

It looks like an awesome card. I do not agree with the idea that the 7970 will need a $125 price drop. If the 680 comes out at $499 then I believe the 7970 should be $450-$475. Performance is nearly identical but nvidia is offering a lower power profile and more features such as physX and a easier to use 3D solution.

If GTX680 is 15% faster on average, HD7970 should be at most $450. The highest single-GPU card has never had problems being sold with a $100 price premium (see HD4890 vs. GTX285, HD5870 vs. GTX480, HD6970 vs. GTX580). If HD7970 is $450, people will pay $50 more to get the best card, especially when you consider all the other features NV brings (TXAA, EVGA Lifetime warranty + transferable warranty, AO in driver panel, 3D gaming, Folding@home performance, lower power (for those who care), etc.)

Also if HD7970 is $450, HD7950 would need to drop to like $370 and HD7870 to $299. I still think even $450 is a bit too high for the 7970, especially if people can hit 1200mhz on reference GTX680s.

 

[blastingcap]

If GTX680 is 15% faster on average, HD7970 should be at most $450. The highest single-GPU card has never had problems being sold with a $100 price premium (see HD4890 vs. GTX285, HD5870 vs. GTX480, HD6970 vs. GTX580). If HD7970 is $450, people will pay $50 more to get the best card, especially when you consider all the other features NV brings (TXAA, EVGA Lifetime warranty + transferable warranty, AO in driver panel, 3D gaming, Folding@home performance, lower power (for those who care), etc.)

Also if HD7970 is $450, HD7950 would need to drop to like $370 and HD7870 to $299. I still think even $450 is a bit too high for the 7970, especially if people can hit 1200mhz on reference GTX680s.

Yes. (They've since taken down the links but I went to their site right before they did so and saw those prices with my own eyes, so the pics are legit.)

As long as the GTX680 can overclock well, I think this cripples AMD's pricing. Good.

Unless you really need that 1GB extra VRAM, it's a no brainer to get the GTX680 if the leaks are true: faster, more efficient, bigger feature set. A 7970 for $400 would be reasonable. $550+ is just ridiculous.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

$50 less for a card that is worse in every facet and has less brand recognition?

I dunno, the new AMD CEO might try for it, but the old AMD would just drop it into the $300's and soak up price/perf users.

It's hard to say where the 7970 fits in here, since unlike the 6970 vs the 580 there is really only area anyone can point to and say "it's better there", which is vram.


$500, wow... That's pretty unexpected tbh... I thought for sure the evil empire's twin would gouge the market badly after AMD did it for two months.

 

[blastingcap]

$50 less for a card that is worse in every facet and has less brand recognition?

I dunno, the new AMD CEO might try for it, but the old AMD would just drop it into the $300's and soak up price/perf users.

It's hard to say where the 7970 fits in here, since unlike the 6970 vs the 580 there is really no area anyone can point to and say "it's better there".

There are but they are minor except for the +1 GB VRAM which could matter to certain high-res users

6 vs 4 monitor support
BIOS switching (unless NVDA has that too now)
possibly greater OC headroom (uncertain)

 

[RussianSensation]

$500, wow... That's pretty unexpected tbh... I thought for sure the evil empire's twin would gouge the market badly after AMD did it for two months.

Well they are making $$ on this sub-300mm^2 chip with only 256-bit pin interface (less complex PCB) and 2GB of VRAM. That's like selling a GTX660Ti sized chip for $500! :hmm:

I don't even know why all 3 console makers went with AMD design for the next round. A mid-range Kepler chip would have been a great fit for consoles launching in 2013-2014.

I need a card with strong DP performance for distributed projects though. So I am prob. going to pass on GTX680. I am hoping AMD releases a much faster version of HD7970 or HD7970 prices fall rapidly in the next 6-8 months to more reasonable levels.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

$450 is just too much and too close to $500. I mean personally it's kind of like pocket change at that point, what's $50 for the better card if you're already spending nine times that much lol?

Either way it will be interesting to see how AMD responds, GK104 is the most clear cut winner we've seen in awhile. Winning in key facets, thermals, noise, power consumption, and performance.

The only unknown is the new AMD CEO, his recent pricing stratagy has pretty much ruined AMD's price/perf reputation as far as I'm concerned with the 7970 @ $550 and 8150 @ $270.

I always thought that was key for AMD, since when I first got back into desktops the first place I went was AMD because they had brand recognition as a leader in price/perf. But hey I'm no CEO, just talking out loud.

 

[ocre]

IMO this gen is going to be about price, features, and what resolution you're using. Performance is nearly identical from what's been seen so far.

just as "identical" as the 7970 = 7950 performance.

 

[tviceman]

I don't even know why all 3 console makers went with AMD design for the next round. A mid-range Kepler chip would have been a great fit for consoles launching in 2013-2014.

I don't necessarily believe all the rumors. I mean, to think the next xbox will have a hd6670-ish GPU.... is really, really awful. That would not give the system any sort of longevity whatsoever. The xbox360 and ps3 both incorporated GPU's that were high end when the systems were first announced. To put it in another perspective, I'd bet that Tegra 5 will have more GPU power than an hd6670 - and there will be versions of Tegra 5 in phones and tablets.

 

[tviceman]

I seriously think everyone on here is too optimistic about what AMD's reactions to gtx680 will be. I think they're going to cut prices, yes, and I do think that >=$450 will be the new appropriate price for the hd7970 vs. a $500 gtx680, but I don't think AMD will cut prices that much. Look at how they reacted when the gtx460 came out..... or rather, how they DIDN'T react. They didn't do anything, and the gtx460 went on to be the best selling card from that point on until the gtx560 came along.

I'm betting AMD is going to beat their chest, shout about how much more vram and memory bandwidth they have, and price match the gtx680.

 

[mingsoup]

Wrong thread.

 

[maddie]

Well they are making $$ on this sub-300mm^2 chip with only 256-bit pin interface (less complex PCB) and 2GB of VRAM. That's like selling a GTX660Ti sized chip for $500! :hmm:

I don't even know why all 3 console makers went with AMD design for the next round. A mid-range Kepler chip would have been a great fit for consoles launching in 2013-2014.

I need a card with strong DP performance for distributed projects though. So I am prob. going to pass on GTX680. I am hoping AMD releases a much faster version of HD7970 or HD7970 prices fall rapidly in the next 6-8 months to more reasonable levels.

It seems the future really is Fusion.

 

[maddie]

Balla spoke about this earlier. This new power boost seems to only increase maximum frames without affecting minimum. Boost on low utilization sections of a game.

This will raise average frame rates significantly in the reviews but MIGHT not really affect the game experience as the minimum should stay the same.

 

[QuantumPion]

My interpretation of the GPU boost is that it overclocks the card when the power usage is below maximum. So games that are bottlenecked due to one part of the rendering but aren't using the power of the whole card will get a boost. Just like intel turbo boost increasing the clock speed of the 1st or 2nd core when the TDP for the whole cpu is below maximum.

 

[MrK6]

Well they are making $$ on this sub-300mm^2 chip with only 256-bit pin interface (less complex PCB) and 2GB of VRAM. That's like selling a GTX660Ti sized chip for $500! :hmm:

I don't even know why all 3 console makers went with AMD design for the next round. A mid-range Kepler chip would have been a great fit for consoles launching in 2013-2014.

I need a card with strong DP performance for distributed projects though. So I am prob. going to pass on GTX680. I am hoping AMD releases a much faster version of HD7970 or HD7970 prices fall rapidly in the next 6-8 months to more reasonable levels.

My guess is because AMD has the most versatile chip, something NVIDIA has yet to do. I'd imagine that if you're designing a console for an 8 year+ run, you want something that is as forward thinking as possible. Right now, AMD's 7000 series has performance, power efficiency, compute, etc. NVIDIA hasn't been able to deliver an architecture of that caliber. But that's assuming that the rumors are true and AMD is the king of the console market, they may very well not be.

My interpretation of the GPU boost is that it overclocks the card when the power usage is below maximum. So games that are bottlenecked due to one part of the rendering but aren't using the power of the whole card will get a boost. Just like intel turbo boost increasing the clock speed of the 1st or 2nd core when the TDP for the whole cpu is below maximum.

If it's that efficient, that's a fantastic design. Really, I'd like to see GPU design get intelligent enough to combine AMD's PowerTune and nvidia's Boost - drop clocks to minimize TDP and raise clocks to add performance where necessary with the end goal, and priority, to maintain the monitor's refresh rate.

 

[kreacher]

So if the cars is as good as the leaked reviews say then why would Nvidia price it was $500, won't they price it at $599?


Anyway video looks nice, I hope they also keep in mind the thermals while boosting and not just power.