Nvidia Announces GeForce GTX 690 Dual-GPU Video Card

CommanderFrank

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Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the newest addition to the GTX line of video cards in Shanghai last night. The GTX 690 follows closely on the heels of the GTX 680, released just last month. The 690 will be available starting on May 3rd, with a list price of $999.

Huang claimed that the GTX 690 had been "designed from the ground up to deliver the highest performance of any graphics card in history.
 
WOW... That card costs almost twice as much as it cost me to build my current rig.
 
hmm the 690 before a 670??? Odd choice I think...

$999 price tag is hella expensive tho.. but if it really IS 2 680 GTX's on one card without it being severely halved like the 590... daaamn it would put some hella fight in the ASUS Mars II CU cards at or around the same price.. Interesting to see.
 
I just about spit out my morning coffee and laughed at a grand price tag...

I'll build another rig first...
 
What a joke, they can't even keep 680's in the channel, yet they're pushing out the 690's. Nice to be 'paper king' of the GPU market.
 
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On the note about console ports.. NO KIDDING.

I am very tired of playing the next console game on my PC. Even if I spend HALF that much on a video card i should be able to make my consoles look lazy in comparison. THAT is what frustrates me.

Why not just skip the middle man, make an "xbox" card and let us turn our computers into overpriced Xbox's. At least then we might... I dunno.. only pay 500 bucks to equal the performance of an xbox?
 
I think people annoyed by the high pricetag are missing the point. It's a top end card that isn't targetted at people on a budget.
nVidia (and the same is obviously true for the likes of Intel too) will know from past experience that there are enough people out there who are willing to pay a high price for the latest-and-greatest, so who can blame them for pricing it as such?
 
The prices these people are charging are laughable.

Why?

They charge what people will pay.. they have done it in the past... also give it some time and price will drop..

this is high end enthusiast cards here, people with $1500 rigs dont buy these cards... usually... people who spend $1k on E processors do....which is silly for most..

dont like the price dont buy it.. i think Ferrari has ridiculous prices for a car that will get me from A to B.....
 
I don't see the big deal about the pricing....how much are 2 680's going for nowadays? $499 each?
 
Wow, the price is fucking expensive, but of course, it was no surprise, its the cost of two GTX 680's and I didn't expect it to be lower either. But nice looking card.
 
They're not too far off from their most expensive card ever, that 8800 Ultra which went for like 830 bucks at release. This is clearly not the card for the average gamer. This is a status symbol. They're treating it like a Ferrari so you'll end up paying the most for the best.

Though I wish they had allocated at least 4 gb of vram for each gpu. If I bought for 999 it'd probably be the only video card I'd game on for 2-3 years, if not longer, and memory needs are rising all the time in new games.
 
This is going to be one of those niche products geared to people that are too lazy to read actual reviews and go by price instead, like the consumers that look at the price tag of a 3960 and think, must be alot better than a 3930k if it costs $500 more.
 
What suprises me is that the greens have announced this before the reds even give us a hint on 7990.....
 
The real catch will be how close to 2x680 performance they get. Too often the single card/dual-gpu solutions take too much of a beating in performance vs a standard sli set, and what they seem to forget is that someone willing to drop 1k+ on gpu's doesn't have much trouble setting up a dual-card sli rig for same/less money and typically better performance.

Now, if there wasn't a restriction on number of gpu's run in sli AND if the titles were better than 90% of the console ported trash available, we'd have a better use scenario, at least for those looking to sink anything into a top-end rig.
 
The real catch will be how close to 2x680 performance they get. Too often the single card/dual-gpu solutions take too much of a beating in performance vs a standard sli set, and what they seem to forget is that someone willing to drop 1k+ on gpu's doesn't have much trouble setting up a dual-card sli rig for same/less money and typically better performance.

Now, if there wasn't a restriction on number of gpu's run in sli AND if the titles were better than 90% of the console ported trash available, we'd have a better use scenario, at least for those looking to sink anything into a top-end rig.

From everything I have seen, PCIe bandwidth can be a major bottleneck when running multiple 680s.

For years we've all believed that PCIe bandwidth was not a serious concern but there are strong indications that for high end setups, it is a concern.

The 690 uses a PLX PCIe 3.0 bridge chip which - in theory - could mitigate the bandwidth issues associated with running multiple cards on most socket 1155 systems.

The other application is that you can run this in an SG07/08 mITX case and have a very powerful surround system that takes up very little room.
 
From everything I have seen, PCIe bandwidth can be a major bottleneck when running multiple 680s.

For years we've all believed that PCIe bandwidth was not a serious concern but there are strong indications that for high end setups, it is a concern.

The 690 uses a PLX PCIe 3.0 bridge chip which - in theory - could mitigate the bandwidth issues associated with running multiple cards on most socket 1155 systems.

The other application is that you can run this in an SG07/08 mITX case and have a very powerful surround system that takes up very little room.

Anyone considering dropping a grand+ for 2x680s/690 probably would be sporting gear that supports pci-e 3.0, which diminishes the first concern.

As far as wanting a single card solution for mITX, its a possibility, but considering that those looking at this type of vga processing potential are already a very small set of consumers, the subset of which that are trying to cram it into a mITX build has to be exceptionally low in population.
 
Anyone considering dropping a grand+ for 2x680s/690 probably would be sporting gear that supports pci-e 3.0, which diminishes the first concern.

As far as wanting a single card solution for mITX, its a possibility, but considering that those looking at this type of vga processing potential are already a very small set of consumers, the subset of which that are trying to cram it into a mITX build has to be exceptionally low in population.

I'm sorry, but I don't think your opinion is as well informed as it could be.

There are 2 platforms that support PCIe 3.0:

1. LGA2011
2. LGA1155 / Ivy Bridge

LGA2011 is premium and until recently, has not made sense for a system that is mostly for gaming as Hex core CPUs don't really help games and the 3820 processor is, at best, equal to a 2600k

Ivy Bridge just came out 1 week ago and there are already heat/overclocking concerns.


The problem with the LGA1155 platform is that if you run dual card SLI, you get x8 on both slots.

If you want Tri or Quad SLI?

The 690 seems to be a great solution for these bandwidth issues.
 
I wonder how long it will take them to drop the price on this guy to a reasonable price. I hear it runs Crysis 2 @ 57 FPS lol.
 
People complaining of price on a halo product? I thought this was [H]ardforum?

I also see a fair amount of misinformation. Ivy Bridge has only been out for 1 day, the 23rd was a press event.

The GTX 670's aren't out yet because nVidia doesn't have enough binned GK104 chips to support a full second product release yet. Which may also mean that of all the GK104 chips they do receive, most are of acceptable quality for 680 status. Though this is just my own speculation.

There was also the rumor/issue of TSMC shutting down production.
 
I'm sorry, but I don't think your opinion is as well informed as it could be.

There are 2 platforms that support PCIe 3.0:

1. LGA2011
2. LGA1155 / Ivy Bridge

LGA2011 is premium and until recently, has not made sense for a system that is mostly for gaming as Hex core CPUs don't really help games and the 3820 processor is, at best, equal to a 2600k

Ivy Bridge just came out 1 week ago and there are already heat/overclocking concerns.


The problem with the LGA1155 platform is that if you run dual card SLI, you get x8 on both slots.

If you want Tri or Quad SLI?

The 690 seems to be a great solution for these bandwidth issues.

I'm well aware where pcie 3.0 is available. That being said, the first cards that really test this bandwidth are very recent to market, and most anyone that would be playing with this much gpu power is (hopefully) fairly informed, and would likely accommodate the build to it. If someone is toying with sli/tri-sli/quad-sli 680s, it's not much of a stretch for them to easily consider selling and swapping platforms for something more robust, especially given that even if the price differential is minor, even more so in relative terms to their gpu budget.

As for the lga2011, anyone that has even slight knowledge of the current platforms knows that there are a few specific reasons to go 2011 - possible 6-core, 8 dimms, and pcie lanes. As to your comments on IB, if you have followed it at all you'd realize that the concerns boil down to it not being some overclocking messiah - rather, it's relatively comparable to current sb chips, given ipc gains, and is easily an option.

Once again, if your gpu budget is $1k plus, you are in a small minority and most likely more informed than even the "average" enthusiast, and would adjust your build accordingly. Will there be people that are the exception and will blow money with no idea, sure - and a single card solution might be fine for them if they didn't want to do anything else and didn't know better. But if the 690 ends up being less powerful than sli 680s, most in that relative buying position may have a hard time stomaching paying 1k for less than optimal performance.
 
The most impressive thing from the 590 to the 690 isn't the sizable bump in specs but the drop in required power from 375 W to 300 W. Bravo! :cool:
 
The most impressive thing from the 590 to the 690 isn't the sizable bump in specs but the drop in required power from 375 W to 300 W. Bravo! :cool:

Yeah, plus the fact that it has two full blown GK104 parts. They seem only down-clocked to hit the 300W number.
 
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