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NVIDIA Kepler GeForce GTX 680 Video Card Review @ [H]ardOCP

They kicked AMD's ass big time.

AMD HD79XX cards look much more expensive in the over all build but they just don't seem to work right next to a GTX680. I'm sure NVIDIA and retailers are going to enjoy the profits $$$ from this well made GTX680.

Great review. :cool:
 
Thanks for the great review. I think this should give the GPU market a shove in the right direction. Looking forward to the additional follow-up reviews!
 
Only Galaxies and Zotacs left on NewEgg. Glad I jumped on the eVGA's the moment they popped up.
 
Great job Kyle and Brent! Very impressive gpu from nVidia. I'm staying tuned for the oc and vsync articles!

I would prefer to go back to nvidia as I always had better luck with their drivers. However I know my oc 7970 handles eyefinity MUCH better than it does at stock. I need to know if the 680 can do the same with 133% TDP.

God knows I would love to get the 680 for the reduced fan noise!
 
Really great to see nVidia come out with a single-card, nV Surround solution. That was the one *little* thing that might have swayed me back to AMD. I recall reading up on AMD's PowerTune earlier in 2010, when they introduced it with the 69XX series and was curious why they hadn't taken it a step further - the way nVidia's GPU Boost is doing.

This does seem like the natural evolution of things though :p
 
Great review like always!!

Nvidia's turbo boost is a game changer and amd's will have no choice but to take notice.
It might skew the results a bit as a 7970 might perform much closer oc'd to the 680.

Considering the 680 with a Single monitor trounces the 7970 and is 50$ cheaper and on par @ eyefinity resolution.... yeah gold awards all round!

This can only be good for us consummers :D
 
Awesome looking forward to OC results, that's going to be interesting with the GPU boost I think.
 
maboblivion said:
Great review like always!!

Nvidia's turbo boost is a game changer and amd's will have no choice but to take notice.
It might skew the results a bit as a 7970 might perform much closer oc'd to the 680.

Considering the 680 with a Single monitor trounces the 7970 and is 50$ cheaper and on par @ eyefinity resolution.... yeah gold awards all round!

This can only be good for us consummers :D
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Seems like the 680 got a gold award or editors choice or best card ever award on every review I have looked at so far.
 
Gotta hold off until the after market coolers come with....I'm trying to build a completely quiet build even while gaming. Brent pointed out that it ran quiet while he was next to the test system, I'll just feel more comfortable with a little better heatsink and fans

Awesome review by the way guys. I never buy anything until I read my Hard reviews
 
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Best possible outcome! ATI and nVidia leap-frogging each other. I can't wait for the gtx 670. Still have 79 days left........ (crosses fingers).
 
Great GPU. Best in long time from Nvidia. I ll buy one even if I dont eat for few months..

And finally earned vacation for gtx 580.
 
Looks like a really good GPU, very impressive three screen results. This card looks like a winner all around, especially at this price.:D AMD better get their shit together.

I be in for two, but I just spent a bunch of money on waterblocks for my 7970. Oh well.

Nice to see Surround on one card now.
 
I really want to know Battlefield 3 Ultra(4x MSAA) VRAM usage at 1080p,1600p and multidisplay. This should settle the 2GB vs 3GB dilemma for a LARGE no of people.
The only reason I will have to upgrade my 460 1GB is that the usage at Ultra is 1015MB+ out of 1024MB which leads to single digit FPS crawling.
 
Not bad at all especially for the price. This makes me glad I waited for Kepler to drop before picking up anything. Now to wait for a further price drop on the EVGA 580's or for an EVGA 680 to come out with a lifetime warranty... :D
 
Here's a question I don't see any mention of anywhere - what kind of audio support does it have? The 400 series would bitstream HD audio (like Dolby-HD and DTS Master Audio) but the 500 series wouldn't. Anyone know about this one?
 
The 680 certainly looks better to me now than it did in all the leaked info. That said, I'm still waiting for GK110 before I make any purchasing decisions, I'm in no rush. It's hard to say who was price gouging though. Nv releases a mid range card at $500, and AMD releases their high end at $550. I'm so confused about who to be pissed at ;)
 
Wow guru3d got the 680 GTX up to 1260 on the GPU Core.....impressive.

Bring on Hardocp overclocking review!
 
Glad I picked up a 2nd 6950 to crossfire. I might be able to get a good deal on two 7950s later this year now that Nvidia has taken the performance crown.
 
so tempted to pull the trigger on 2 of these and dump my ATI cards ><

I need some SLI vs CFX testageeeee :D

Great review! I was pretty shocked at the clear lead they had in most things

Looks like the only tests that show OCing showed the 680 hitting about 1250mhz, so about 25% over stock, similar to AMD.
 
OK, I have started removing access to the Video Card forum if you come into this thread and say that our review is unfair or biased etc, because of how NVIDIA scales its clock. I am not going to allow this idiotic shortsightedness, or what could surely be trolling.

We compared two STOCK products out of the box at DEFAULT settings.

SLI and Overclocking articles will be worked on next.
 
Thank you all at [H] for an amazing review, I love this part
A canned or synthetic benchmark is now even further removed from being relevant to gameplay performance; a benchmark won't represent the real-world clock speeds you will get in games. Since you cannot disable GPU Boost and lock the frequencies, the old way of comparing performance based purely on framerate no longer applies.

The only true way of representing real-world gameplay is to take the GTX 680 and play games with it, push the eye candy, and report your experiences. This is exactly how we have been evaluating for a decade now, and it is the only way to properly report the experience of gaming on the GeForce GTX 680.
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I'm so glad you guys have done away with canned benchmark a long time ago. Now its even more crucial to benchmark these cards the way [H] does it. :cool:


Anyway, I'm so glad I waited. nVidia continues to excel in the driver department too, WHQL on day 1. Its these little things that gives me the confidence to invest in their hardware. Now the GTX 680 price and performance just cemented my decision


Mr Jen wasn't kidding when he presented the slide about Kepler's performance per watt. They set their sights on the right target this time. Who knows what Maxwell can do, but for now I'll just enjoy the 680;)
 
Excellent. I'm glad to finally see some healthy competition from Nvidia and not just some expensive power hungry, hot running monster beast like their previous cards.

I feel an incoming price war, this feels soft of like Nvidia's own "HD 4800" launch. Though, I still think the 7970 is worth considering unlike some people, it just needs a price drop. :)

I'm in interested to see more Eyefinity/Surround benchmarks, if the 2GB of RAM can be proven not to be a bottleneck then I just may end up with a 680 or two. :)
 
Newegg had them in stock for all of 2 seconds. I was literally on the page when I saw the EVGA one appear, and refreshed and it was out of stock. Yup, that fast.
 
B2BigAl said:
The 680 certainly looks better to me now than it did in all the leaked info. That said, I'm still waiting for GK110 before I make any purchasing decisions, I'm in no rush. It's hard to say who was price gouging though. Nv releases a mid range card at $500, and AMD releases their high end at $550. I'm so confused about who to be pissed at ;)
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I think there is a lot of room for price droping and that we will see it in next few months. Waitng is still the best thing to do. Games are not that demanig and we can play them on previous series GPUs with good quality. But I want this one bad..
 
I"m still ok with my 7970 buy. Nivida did put out a good card. But I'm sure this was supost to be there mid range card. You know that die is to small for Nivida there aways go big and hot or go home lol. I still can't belive they only put 2 gigs of ram on it though. If your gamming at 1200/1080p that might be fine but any thing above that I think your going to run into issue with the new games. 2 gigs of ram is not somthing I would want on a card that I want to keep for a while. My 7970 is using over 2.2gigs on Crysis 2 with the texture pack and DX11 patch so is BF3. Now when Nvidia comes out with the GK110 I"ll porbaly cry a little lol but Untill then I'm good with my AMD card That I got on sale for 529 shipped :).
 
well thank god my order went through. You just know when the next batch comes in there will be another $50 tacked onto the MSRP.
 
One question, which is most likely related to your next review, is it possible to do surround on 2 cards still? (Using DVI only?) or is it limited to 1 card now?
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
I"m still ok with my 7970 buy. Nivida did put out a good card. But I'm sure this was supost to be there mid range card. You know that die is to small for Nivida there aways go big and hot or go home lol. I still can't belive they only put 2 gigs of ram on it though. If your gamming at 1200/1080p that might be fine but any thing above that I think your going to run into issue with the new games. 2 gigs of ram is not somthing I would want on a card that I want to keep for a while. My 7970 is using over 2.2gigs on Crysis 2 with the texture pack and DX11 patch so is BF3. Now when Nvidia comes out with the GK110 I"ll porbaly cry a little lol but Untill then I'm good with my AMD card That I got on sale for 529 shipped :).
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hench = no buy for me. not gunna hrow £400 on a card that will have issues later this year
 
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