680 SLi Review Real World Testing + Eyefinity resolutions

I agree both setups are great. If I were gaming in eyefinity resolutions using dual card around this review (which I am) I'd lean more towards Kepler.

Reason being whenever AMD and nvidia are close enough to eachother performance wise, the tie breaker is gonna be drivers and price. Nvidia has those in the bag albeit by a little but still. If on the other hand your looking at eyefinity resolutions even greater than this I might hold off to see performance numbers as it seems the higher the resolution the more AMD shines but the lower the resolution the more Nvidia shines.

Strange circumstances and completely different cases to buy either offering
 
If you have 3 Displays the 680 2GB Memory bottlenecks your minimum FPS in BF3 to 10 frames in spots which = instant death, good one Nvidia! AMD 7970 wins in dramatic fashion there.

7970 CFX now or wait for 680GTX 4GB cards to SLI if you play BF3 beyond a 1080p resolution.

Only if you play @ 1080p and lower resolutions or really old/low detailed games is a 680GTX 2GB a nice GPU to have at this moment.
 
I agree. That 10fps minimum seems to hint of a memory bottleneck. I'm not 100% sure, it could be driver related too. Since Kepler is a brand new architecture, nvidia has a lot of performance they can squeeze out with driver updates vs 7970 which has more mature drivers, albeit a bunch of betas and finally one WHQL official but still.

Single Screen = 680 for sure

Multi Monitor/eyefinity = not sure or wait for price war to pay less than $550 for a 7970
 
teletran8 said:
If you have 3 Displays the 680 2GB Memory bottlenecks your minimum FPS in BF3 to 10 frames in spots which = instant death, good one Nvidia! AMD 7970 wins in dramatic fashion there.

7970 CFX now or wait for 680GTX 4GB cards to SLI if you play BF3 beyond a 1080p resolution.

Only if you play @ 1080p and lower resolutions or really old/low detailed games is a 680GTX 2GB a nice GPU to have at this moment.
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I'm guessing you're the type that only looks at the charts (and specific ones too) and forms an opinion disregarding the performance analysis provided by the reviewer. Quoting the BF3 page:

"When we move to 5760x1080 the scaling remains good however the GTX 680 suffers from some random stutters in the framerate which drag down average performance a little. Hopefully this can be resolved in the future."

"In the future", as in they infer it might be a driver-related issue. Either way, just by looking at the chart beyond the dual-gpu setups, you can see how a single 680 is faster than a single 7970, about 20% minimum fps, so it's a tad odd that the SLI setup presents problems.
 
LoganKDT said:
"In the future", as in they infer it might be a driver-related issue. Either way, just by looking at the chart beyond the dual-gpu setups, you can see how a single 680 is faster than a single 7970, about 20% minimum fps, so it's a tad odd that the SLI setup presents problems.
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Everything I've seen shows that the GTX 680 is bandwidth-constrained above 1920. This is why it opens a huge lead at 1920 and below, but then tends to lose that lead (and sometimes fall behind) at higher resolutions / settings / eyefinity.

SLI puts an additional load on memory bandwidth since there is additional communication required between the cards. For a card like the GTX 680 that's already visibly constrained, you're likely to see a hit on SLI scaling and minimum frame rates.

Of course, for some games the GTX 680 has plenty of bandwidth, so it really just depends on what you are playing.
 
When it comes to multi cards and monitors, drivers and "smooth" fps are critical.

I'll go Nvidia, even if it's 5-10 frames slower. If SLI fps is slower but smoother, the experience will be more enjoyable over the faster but choppy CF fps, and vice versa.
 
defaultluser said:
Everything I've seen shows that the GTX 680 is bandwidth-constrained above 1920. This is why it opens a huge lead at 1920 and below, but then tends to lose that lead (and sometimes fall behind) at higher resolutions / settings / eyefinity.
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Shouldn't take long for someone to do some memory overclock testing and see how the scaling is - that'll tell pretty quick whether it is a bandwidth limitation or something else.
 
Forceman said:
Shouldn't take long for someone to do some memory overclock testing and see how the scaling is - that'll tell pretty quick whether it is a bandwidth limitation or something else.
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Good point. Seeing that the GK110 has 512/384bit bus, it's probable the GTX 680 256bit bus is limited at high resolutions when compared to the 7970.
The results are close, and I think that was nV goal for the short term.
 
On a single card for triple screen gaming it seems the 7970 is just slightly better ? I am not into CrossFire or SLI, would just get one of the single card beasts, and the MSI Lightning which comes stock OC'd already, would be the best for 3 - 24" monitors ?
 
If I was going AMD I would definitely get a card like the Lightning to make sure I could at least get rid of screen tearing if I experienced it(which I have) even if it meant buying another $30 to $60 in adapters.
 
teletran8 said:
If you have 3 Displays the 680 2GB Memory bottlenecks your minimum FPS in BF3 to 10 frames in spots which = instant death, good one Nvidia! AMD 7970 wins in dramatic fashion there.

7970 CFX now or wait for 680GTX 4GB cards to SLI if you play BF3 beyond a 1080p resolution.

Only if you play @ 1080p and lower resolutions or really old/low detailed games is a 680GTX 2GB a nice GPU to have at this moment.
Click to expand...

Could be driver related, since the single GTX 680 didn't spike so low. If it was VRAM/bandwidth, you'd expect to see it on the single card too, since they are using the same settings.
 
Forceman said:
Could be driver related, since the single GTX 680 didn't spike so low. If it was VRAM/bandwidth, you'd expect to see it on the single card too, since they are using the same settings.
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Could be, but I remember the 5870's didn't show memory limitations until u used xfire, then 2gb per card let them stretch. Can't wait to c Brent's findings.
 
i think 7970 cf is best, more vram and amd does good scaling with cf
 
So when do you guys think we'll get the Hardocp review like the one in the OP? I want to see some of Brent's numbers on this issue.
 
680 dominates in BF3 except in 5760p with 4xaa due to 2gb.

below 5760p with 4xaa its a landslide win for 680, unexpected.
 
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teletran8 said:
Only if you play @ 1080p and lower resolutions or really old/low detailed games is a 680GTX 2GB a nice GPU to have at this moment.
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Troll detected, please drag it to recycle bin.

we really dont need trolls like this one in this forum, i hope you listening mods.
 
Agreed, I wont be surprised if nvidia boosts it's sli performance substantially in games that have poor scaling and by as much as 20% more in games it's currently looking good in. Kepler is a brand new architecture and I think nvidia has what it takes to get the performance up there.

I would hold judgement until there is enough time for the drivers to mature.
 
why is the mem on the 7970 lighting only 6020mhz?

My reference 7970 doesnt crap out till somewhere between 7500 and 7700 on stock volts, have not taken the time to figure it out yet,
 
Rattle said:
why is the mem on the 7970 lighting only 6020mhz?

My reference 7970 doesnt crap out till somewhere between 7500 and 7700 on stock volts, have not taken the time to figure it out yet,
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The Radeon 7000 series have ECC which hides memory instability. You're actually decreasing performance if ECC has to do the correction a lot.
 
lol your point would be valid if it infact was unstable but its 100% stable for me @ 7500mhz and I have proven it through testing it is not decreasing performance, but infact increasing.
 
Rattle said:
lol your point would be valid if it infact was unstable but its 100% stable for me @ 7500mhz and I have proven it through testing it is not decreasing performance, but infact increasing.
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So prove it. There's plenty of posts out there of people seeing performance decrease at as low as 6.2 GHz and not many people get above 7 GHz at all. Unless you're just here to say "look at me my card clocks really high!"
 
7500 is really nice, highest ive seen is 8100.

7500 means your chip has major potential man. jesus, what does the core do at 7500, and what voltage/temp/fan speed? are you overvolting mvddc for 7500? 1700mvddc?



edit: I'd say memory range is 1550-2000 / 6.2-8.0. Core range is 1150-1350. I've seen some 1380-1400 suicide runs at xs on open case water blocks with fans running all over, but not really a normal oc.
 
@L_E: is this the point where we argue to shit about GPUs and whatnot, then buy each other's preferred setups?
 
jaredpace said:
7500 is really nice, highest ive seen is 8100.

7500 means your chip has major potential man. jesus, what does the core do at 7500, and what voltage/temp/fan speed? are you overvolting mvddc for 7500? 1700mvddc?



edit: I'd say memory range is 1550-2000 / 6.2-8.0. Core range is 1150-1350. I've seen some 1380-1400 suicide runs at xs on open case water blocks with fans running all over, but not really a normal oc.
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No 1.6v 7500 is rock solid in anything I tried I cannot find any sign of decreased performance.
Core is good for 1200 at 1.175 I really haven't tested/tried for more. I looped heaven and played bf3 at 1200/1875 and it performed awesome hovering around 70c... shrug

I usually just run it at 1125/1575 1.125v for 24/7 use. 60c load temp with fan at 50%

Anyway the point is almost all 7970's are gonna do 7k on the ram....
 
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TroyX said:
Troll detected, please drag it to recycle bin.

we really dont need trolls like this one in this forum, i hope you listening mods.
Click to expand...

Saying stupid crap like the below may come back to haunt you.

"680 dominates in BF3 except in 5760p with 4xaa due to 2gb.

below 5760p with 4xaa its a landslide win for 680, unexpected.
"

quickly looking ; Metro 2033, F1 2011 and for the looks like Batman without physx it loses

Few different places have shown SLI not so great, but with the superb drivers, not much faith that there will be much more performance to come out of it. More than likely, there are going to be a lot of people eating a low of crow when Brent is done with is article.
 
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