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

Bye Bye 7970's. It was fun, sorta. Hello 680's =)

I wonder if they have a "zero-core" power feature like the 7970's. Really liked the second card going silent.
 
Are they quiet? There was nothing that I could see in the article about noise....
 
WorldExclusive said:
PBsQD.gif
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Fucking epic! LMFAO!

Couldn't have put it better myself.

I was afraid Nvidia would do the same as AMD and come out with a $550 card that was a little faster than their $500 GTX580 but this lays waste to the $500 price point and not only will the GTX580 drop in price but the 7900's should be coming down soon as well.

Well done Nvidia.
 
I ordered the EVGA flavor earlier this morning. I cant wait to get my grubby little hands on it.
 
Damn good cards....1 is faster then 2 480 gtx's.

EVGA has the 680 GTX ready for step-up!!!
 
Finally. Very happy Nvidia has a very solid release that would actually make me go back to the green side (if I could afford a new computer right now) after many years on the red side.

Competition is a good thing. :)

Now if Nvidia would just take this engineering and apply it to their Tegra chips. :eek:
 
well it says I ordered an evga one from newegg but well I aint seein it in my order history and no email was sent lets hope they didn't lose my order!
 
PRIME1 said:
I'm sure a 670/660 etc. will cover those ranges. Considering all the advantages of this new chip over the 7xxx series I think a steep discount will be the only way to make up the difference.
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Wouldn't be too sure. For one there is a lot of flexibility in the 79xx, with the OC market, and even after user overclocks, for one. Something we don't know about just quite yet from this series as Nvidia. Another is the fact that the bar is set at 680 performance at $500, just like the 7970 at $550 before it. Which means now that AMD has competition, they just need to slot in lets say $450, to be on par or $400 if they go back to being bang for the buck, like they have in the past. Obviously it gives the opportunity to Nvidia, to use the 670 and 660 to force AMD pricing down further. Be we don't know where they sit in the window AMD and Nvidia has now set. If the 670 doesn't beat the 7950, then there might be an opportunity for AMD to keep a margin based pricing on the 7970 while using the 7950 to keep competitive pricing for the 670.

All this is academic, because, it took Nvidia this long to get the 680 out. Who knows when we will see the rest of the lineup.
 
For the mere 23 bucks I popped to have it tomorrow, which I am sure 99% of everyone here did as well.

You arent [H] if you ddint :p
 
Lorddeth said:
http://www.evga.com/articles/00669/#GTX680HydroCopper

Awesome review as always guys!!!! And I was looking through the versions EVGA plans to release, the 4GB FTW version as well as the 4GB Hydro Copper versions look AWESOME!!!!!!!!! <drool> I will be snagging some new cards soon methinks.........................;-)
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I don't know what EVGA will be charging for it, but I would suggest it will not be worth it if it carries a premium over $50. After seeing what we have seen, I have to wonder why I need more RAM on this GPU.
 
Just bought an EVGA after this review through a HardOCP commissioned link. ;)

5 Stars Brent and Kyle.

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except that bogus in skyrim there isn't much to hype about sorry actually this card makes amd look better in single gpu area compared to previous gens
 
For what it is worth every single card for sale right now was built by NVIDIA for its partners. So choose on support and warranty at the moment.
 
Impressed in some ways, in some others, meh.

If I didn't already have a 7970 I'd probably go with the 680 (although I'd still wait for reviews on OC potential prior to making a purchase, we are gamers afterall, max OC'ed stable 680 vs max OC'ed stable 7970 is the statistic I care most about)
 
Any clue how long it's going to take for kepler to trickle down to the $200-$250 price range cards?
 
Nope, not going to be this "Boohoo" shit in my thread acting like a child. You will be banned for this type of behavior. If you have an intelligent point, then make it, otherwise STFU. - Kyle
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
yeah that worries me the most is that you can't turn the boost off.. for some reason i have a feeling it could turn ugly if Nvidia didn't think ahead when it comes to overclocking. i just hope that if you say overclock the gpu to 1100mhz that the boost doesn't end up dropping the card to 1059mhz because well thats what the max boost setting is.

hopefully the boost option is bios controlled and not hardware controlled so you can maybe disable it at the bios level.

btw awesome review/article Brent and i agree with your last statement, i really hope Nvidia has gone back to creating efficient gpu's. its nice not seeing a power hungry flagship gpu from them.
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I'll flesh this out in its own article, but you don't exactly set the frequency you want to overclock with this card. You either raise the TDP of the card, overclocking it up to 33% higher, or you raise the percentage of the offset between baseclock and gpu boost. It sounds complicated, but NVIDIA has made the controls very easy. Raising the TDP card is the easiest way to overclock. By doing this, you are telling the card it can run beyond its TDP, up to 33% higher, so GPU Boost has more room to flex its muscle, and thus in turn should yield higher best effort GPU clocks in-games. What the clock speed is, you won't know unless you monitor the frequency and actually see what it does. Things get a little more tricky when you start messing with the offset in combination with that. We'll dive it it all. Though the TDP of the card is 195, NVIDIA has designed the board to withstand a higher power envelope, so you won't kill your card by raising the TDP from 100 to 133%.
 
This review is somewhat flawed. Yes the reviewer used "stock" clocks, but the 680 GTX automatically overclocks itself. According to Tom's Review, there was only about 150mhz overclocking room as when he set 200mhz it would actually decrease performance. This 150mhz was worth about a 5% increase.

Now if we take the comparison of an overclocked 7970 Hardocp 7970 Overclock Charts

and take the charts from the new 680 + 5%, the two cards are basically the same speed once overclocked.

Now the differences between the two:
$50 price tag (though AMD might have a price cut)
3GB Ram vs 2GB
Power consumption is lower on Nvidia
Nvidia vs ATI drivers (50% like one, 50% like the other)
 
Crazy Chuckster said:
Niiiiiicccceeee


So WorldExclusive, you steping yours up or buying new today?
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I sent the 480s back to Newegg. The extra cost of warranty and shipping would have increased the price up to $500 on both cards.
I chose to just buy the GTX 680 straight up for $500!

Now I will compare the GTX 680 with my recently acquired XFX 7870 Black Edition, and see if I really need all of the power the GTX 680 provides @ 1200p.
Most likely the 7870 will back up for sale. :D
 
Crazy Chuckster said:
Thats EXACTLY why I went with EVGA. Nothing but good things from that company.

That being said though Kyle, means these carda are all pretty much the same yet Zotac is only putting a 2yr warranty on it....
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No, all cards ARE THE SAME right now....except for the sticker.
 
PCPer has a little bit about the boost feature in Ryan's article but I will be waiting for what Brent brings us in much greater detail.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I'll flesh this out in its own article, but you don't exactly set the frequency you want to overclock with this card. You either raise the TDP of the card, overclocking it up to 33% higher, or you raise the percentage of the offset between baseclock and gpu boost. It sounds complicated, but NVIDIA has made the controls very easy. Raising the TDP card is the easiest way to overclock. By doing this, you are telling the card it can run beyond its TDP, up to 33% higher, so GPU Boost has more room to flex its muscle, and thus in turn should yield higher best effort GPU clocks in-games. What the clock speed is, you won't know unless you monitor the frequency and actually see what it does. Things get a little more tricky when you start messing with the offset in combination with that. We'll dive it it all. Though the TDP of the card is 195, NVIDIA has designed the board to withstand a higher power envelope, so you won't kill your card by raising the TDP from 100 to 133%.
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oh very interesting, will definitely wait to read that article.
 
DumpALump said:
This review is somewhat flawed. Yes the reviewer used "stock" clocks, but the 680 GTX automatically overclocks itself. According to Tom's Review, there was only about 150mhz overclocking room as when he set 200mhz it would actually decrease performance. This 150mhz was worth about a 5% increase.

Now if we take the comparison of an overclocked 7970 Hardocp 7970 Overclock Charts

and take the charts from the new 680 + 5%, the two cards are basically the same speed once overclocked.

Now the differences between the two:
$50 price tag (though AMD might have a price cut)
3GB Ram vs 2GB
Power consumption is lower on Nvidia
Nvidia vs ATI drivers (50% like one, 50% like the other)
Click to expand...

The review compares OUT OF THE BOX performance. If you have issue with that, I suggest you not read our content on this topic. To say it is flawed is simply idiotic.

We will be following up with an article that is focused on overclocking results.
 
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