Jump to content

NVIDIA GTX 680 Reviewed


Bosco

Recommended Posts

They probably will...it just officially launched last night....AMD would need a little more than 12 hours to notify all partners of a price cut.

 

Oh, I thought AMD would have anticipated it though, they tend to get owned when they make fun of other companies...

 

Can anybody do a benchmark where the cards have the same clocks? Seems like the nVidia card is more for gaming and the AMD one is moving towards computing...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh, I thought AMD would have anticipated it though, they tend to get owned when they make fun of other companies...

 

Can anybody do a benchmark where the cards have the same clocks? Seems like the nVidia card is more for gaming and the AMD one is moving towards computing...

 

Probably because this is meant to be their midrange card. So its basically like my GTX 460 being made to compete with the HD 5870. Crazy how well their mid-range performs vs AMD's high end.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, it's settled. I'm either going to pick up a GTX 680 or wait for some of the other 600 cards to drop before making a decision.

 

Power and performance that are both stellar? You can't lose with that!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Probably because this is meant to be their midrange card. So its basically like my GTX 460 being made to compete with the HD 5870. Crazy how well their mid-range performs vs AMD's high end.

 

How much would the GK110 cost, the die size is near double? I'm sure AMD could make a behemoth too but... AMD HD cards are better cause the gamer cards from nVidia have half the FPU points or something cause they keep it unlocked for the Quadro/Tesla...

 

GPU Boost seems to be an alright feature for power saving, let's you pick a specific range of FPS and the card keeps it between 'em allowing the GPU to downclock and save energy :)

 

You mean that?

http://www.techpowerup.com/162901/Did-NVIDIA-Originally-Intend-to-Call-GTX-680-as-GTX-670-Ti-.html

Edited by Dan The Gamer

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

How much would the GK110 cost, the die size is near double? I'm sure AMD could make a behemoth too but... AMD HD cards are better cause the gamer cards from nVidia have half the FPU points or something cause they keep it unlocked for the Quadro/Tesla...

 

GPU Boost seems to be an alright feature for power saving, let's you pick a specific range of FPS and the card keeps it between 'em allowing the GPU to downclock and save energy :)

 

You mean that?

http://www.techpowerup.com/162901/Did-NVIDIA-Originally-Intend-to-Call-GTX-680-as-GTX-670-Ti-.html

 

Wait what? There are more Nvidia favored games than AMD favored and since when is AMD better than Nvidia for gaming? Their drivers always have more issues?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wait what? There are more Nvidia favored games than AMD favored and since when is AMD better than Nvidia for gaming? Their drivers always have more issues?

:withstupid:

 

Comparing similarly-priced cards, NVIDIA always seems to have the edge in more games than AMD does. Then throw in that NVIDIA driver support is 10x better than AMD driver support, and PhysX. AMD's main draw was efficiency and more VRAM. Now all they have is the latter, and the benefit of that is arguable.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

:withstupid:

 

Comparing similarly-priced cards, NVIDIA always seems to have the edge in more games than AMD does. Then throw in that NVIDIA driver support is 10x better than AMD driver support, and PhysX. AMD's main draw was efficiency and more VRAM. Now all they have is the latter, and the benefit of that is arguable.

nVidia is not always better and don't neglect the fact that in both the case of PhysX and TWIMTBP nVidia has been known to intentionally impair the performance of AMD/ATi cards as opposed to just optimizing for themselves. They disabled the ability to use PhysX if the GPU actually driving the display is not an nVidia GPU (though there is at least one way to trick the drivers into allow this) and there was, years ago yes, the Batman Arkham Asylum issue where AA was disabled on AMD/ATi cards, but just changing the name of the card to remove the AMD/ATi name re-enabled the option. There were no performance issues. Wasn't it also nVidia who released a driver that didn't engage the fan properly and caused cards to overheat and fail?

Also, does anyone know how much money nVidia pours into TWIMTBP compared to AMD's optimization program? This is something I've wondered for awhile.

However, there is also the Dirt 3 incident for AMD. Remember how AMD was touting how well it would play on AMD cards in DX 11 because they optimized it, then nVidia released the GTX 400 series and left AMD in the dust in Dirt 3.

 

My point is nVidia is known to put themselves on top by pushing their competition down and driver support is not great for either company. I've never had an issue with an AMD driver and I have a feeling this is true for most people on the forum. I have had issues with several nVidia drivers, but I doubt many people on the forums have had issues with those same drivers. Drivers always boil down to what exact hardware and software configuration is in a system, so what may be great for one person is horrible for another. At least AMD tries to get something out every month with improvements, and will release hotfixes when needed. If an nVidia driver is busted for you, it could be months before another is released that may work as well as the version you are stuck on for the time being.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

nVidia is not always better and don't neglect the fact that in both the case of PhysX and TWIMTBP nVidia has been known to intentionally impair the performance of AMD/ATi cards as opposed to just optimizing for themselves. They disabled the ability to use PhysX if the GPU actually driving the display is not an nVidia GPU (though there is at least one way to trick the drivers into allow this) and there was, years ago yes, the Batman Arkham Asylum issue where AA was disabled on AMD/ATi cards, but just changing the name of the card to remove the AMD/ATi name re-enabled the option. There were no performance issues. Wasn't it also nVidia who released a driver that didn't engage the fan properly and caused cards to overheat and fail?

Also, does anyone know how much money nVidia pours into TWIMTBP compared to AMD's optimization program? This is something I've wondered for awhile.

However, there is also the Dirt 3 incident for AMD. Remember how AMD was touting how well it would play on AMD cards in DX 11 because they optimized it, then nVidia released the GTX 400 series and left AMD in the dust in Dirt 3.

 

My point is nVidia is known to put themselves on top by pushing their competition down and driver support is not great for either company. I've never had an issue with an AMD driver and I have a feeling this is true for most people on the forum. I have had issues with several nVidia drivers, but I doubt many people on the forums have had issues with those same drivers. Drivers always boil down to what exact hardware and software configuration is in a system, so what may be great for one person is horrible for another. At least AMD tries to get something out every month with improvements, and will release hotfixes when needed. If an nVidia driver is busted for you, it could be months before another is released that may work as well as the version you are stuck on for the time being.

 

AMD just started doing driver updates once a month in the last year but its not every month as you stated. Second 12.1 was not a new driver as claimed it was renamed but it was still the offical beta driver for 7000 series cards.

 

You said you never had a driver issue with AMD, when was the last time you used one? In the last 4 revisions the drivers are completely useless. A ton of games don't even work with CF and don't even get me started on all the flickering that happened with the released driver that was not fixed until 12.2 came out.

 

Since Sept Nvidia has launched 9 drivers to AMD's 5 not that great. Oh yes and now we can discuss AMD's twitter account. We have uploaded the new Cap driver for you, oh wait its broken do no use Cap 3 if you are running this driver only use CAP 2 and if you are running the latest drivers only use Cap 1 because CAP 2 and 3 are not config for it :lol: AMD spends more time tellng people want to run on twitter then do anything else, talk about no quality control.

 

I would rather wipe a monkeys ass then fight with AMD drivers, moving forward, if we can't get it to work we will say as such we are not going to be changing drivers to run one benchmark for this game and another driver for this game. If they can't get their crap together we will not waste our time.

 

Nvidia is not perfect with their drivers but they sure as heck do a better job then AMD does imo and I know most of the reviewers will agree with me. Now for the average Joe on the street they may not see some of the same issues due to what we run, how we test, or what we play, but I promise you the issues are far greater then you are down playing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I fully admit I have not used an AMD driver for sometime (December 2010 I believe), but the hatred towards them has been around since before then, as well as the bias towards nVidia. For example, your claim that nVidia has released 9 drivers since September is only true if you count the beta drivers as well. The recommended/certified driver count since September is 3 (285.62, 295.73, 296.10). I cannot compare the number of AMD beta drivers because they are not listed on the archived drivers page AMD has posted. However, if you do look at that page (Previous Catalyst™ Display Drivers for Windows Vista (64 bit)) you will find there has been one driver version released each month from October 2008 until January 2012. The current drivers, 12.2, are the first to have not been released during the month of the second number.

 

I am unsure about what your point is with 12.1 just being the 7000 series drivers with a new name because betas can be functional. If they were not I would doubt nVidia would ever recommend in customer support to use them, as they have.

 

The CAP stuff I cannot comment on as I have never had a Crossfire or SLI system (just single GPU and hybrid systems). Still, it is nice to see AMD trying to have application profiles like what nVidia has had for years.

 

Naturally I would not ask for you or any of our reviewers to run multiple benchmarks to test different drivers. We are a hardware review site, not a software review site, so the hardware should be tested in the state it arrives in, including the drivers at the time of release.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You said you never had a driver issue with AMD, when was the last time you used one? In the last 4 revisions the drivers are completely useless. A ton of games don't even work with CF and don't even get me started on all the flickering that happened with the released driver that was not fixed until 12.2 came out.

 

I've had a flicker appear whenever I first log in to Windows. Been there since the 11.10 drivers or so, maybe a bit before. Haven't switched to the 12.2s yet, but if that flicker is the one that got fixed, I just may.

 

As for Crossfire, I'll have to agree. Skyrim did not work with Crossfire at launch and only was fixed until a month or so later. I'm not saying every game needs to have Crossfire support right at launch (it would be nice), but to at least get it added within a week would be acceptable. I disabled Crossfire for around a month until AMD had support for it in Skyrim.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...