Upgrading to a 680 from 480 worth it?

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damstr

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 26, 2005
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Just wondering if its worth upgrading to a 680 with the prices they are at now which is around $500? I want the MSI Lighting because of its beast overclocking capability being able to up the voltage with the unlocked bios you can flash.

Looking to play Crysis 2 and 3 and Bioshock infinite @ 1920x1280 with all the eye candy turned on.

I'm just worried about the 7XX series cards coming out soon and the 6XX series taking a price drop.
 
If you want to stay with nvidia the 680 isn't worth it. The 670 is ~90% of the peformance for ~75% of the price and when both are overclocked is roughly 95% of the performance. Both cards have the same memory bandwidth and vram which becomes more important at higher resolutions. At 1440 and higher res I could only recommend the 79xx cards because of their higher memory bandwidth and extra gig of ram, but at around 1080 the 670 holds its own pretty well. I recommend HD7950 boost overall and gtx 670 for nvidia
 
RyanH said:
If you want to stay with nvidia the 680 isn't worth it. The 670 is ~90% of the peformance for ~75% of the price and when both are overclocked is roughly 95% of the performance. Both cards have the same memory bandwidth and vram which becomes more important at higher resolutions. At 1440 and higher res I could only recommend the 79xx cards because of their higher memory bandwidth and extra gig of ram, but at around 1080 the 670 holds its own pretty well. I recommend HD7950 boost overall and gtx 670 for nvidia
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Having owned all of the cards you mentioned I would go with a 7950 for bang for the buck as well or a non-ref 670 is you want team green.

Also, 7970 doesn't really do anything at high res better than a 680 that I noticed. I gamed at 5760x1200 on both a single 680 and single 7970 and they were about the same, the caveat was spending extra money on active DP adapters caused the 7970 to end up more expensive in the end as I had to go through 5 of them before I found 2 that worked.

All of them are much more powerful than a 480 and will use less power so it would be a good upgrade.
 
I went from GTX 480 SLI to one GTX 680, and was more than happy.

But now that it's 2013, rumors of the GK110 and GTX 700's coming in the Spring, you should hold off.
 
depending on what you play, i would just recommend picking up another 480.
 
I had sli 480's and now have a 680+480 for physx, I would just pick up another 480 if you want better frame rates and wait until the series 7 cards are released.
 
damstr said:
Just wondering if its worth upgrading to a 680 with the prices they are at now which is around $500? I want the MSI Lighting because of its beast overclocking capability being able to up the voltage with the unlocked bios you can flash.
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you can pretty much do this bios with any 680 if you know where to look.
 
perkele said:
From 1.175 to 1.212. Lightnings do +1.3v.
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Not stock ones anymore, NVIDIA banned them from touching the voltages. The older cards can, but the newer ones cannot or MSI won't get any warranty from NV.

I just realized the comments above refer to custom 'hacked' or homemade BIOSes which is different.

Just to add, of the 2 I've owned, one lightning went to 1390, the other to 1275 or so.

Apparently there is still a bit of a lottery. :) It's a great card otherwise but I'd probably go 7970 lightning over 680 lightning at this point.

Either way if you've waited for 2 generations I'd just wait a few months to see the 8970 and potentially 780 releases. The 680 is still pretty overpriced imo.
 
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im approaching 1390 on my 680 classifieds in SLI. i love the evbot. Sad nvidia made evga remove it. lucky there is guides on how to add the connector back.
 
Lightnings can't go over the Nvidia cap of 1.215v anymore. Nvidia stomped on MSI till they took the ability away.

A 680 is much faster than a 480, also draws less power and runs cooler.

The only things I've heard about new Nvidia cards is the GK110 for $900. *%*@# that.
 
Bobnova said:
Lightnings can't go over the Nvidia cap of 1.215v anymore. Nvidia stomped on MSI till they took the ability away.

A 680 is much faster than a 480, also draws less power and runs cooler.

The only things I've heard about new Nvidia cards is the GK110 for $900. *%*@# that.
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They can if you flash to the older bios right?
 
I run SLI 480s and I love them dearly, however I look forward to the day that I drop in something that doesn't sound like a jet engine cooling the sun! A 680 would serve you well - as would a 670, as suggested earlier. Or Two ;)
 
480 to 7970 non-ghz edition was a big jump but the asus dcu2 top 670 is better.
 
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CleanSlate said:
480 to 7970 non-ghz edition was a big jump but the asus dcu2 top 670 is better.
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I do hope you mean 480 to 7970. Because the 680 to 7970 should be just as good, or even alittle better. I would buy the 7970 in a heartbeat if it was that much faster.
 
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Taranabas said:
I run SLI 480s and I love them dearly, however I look forward to the day that I drop in something that doesn't sound like a jet engine cooling the sun! A 680 would serve you well - as would a 670, as suggested earlier. Or Two ;)
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Only 2? I have 3 in Tri-Sli, get me a roast pig, give my rig 10 minutes to spool up with furmark and you got yourself a nicely golden roast ping within 30 minutes. On the side note, in another thread, a wise upgrade from a single 480 would be the 670 which has been mentioned easily more than half the performance of the 680 for lot less cheap (even cheap after newegg rebates or open box units).
 
damstr said:
Just wondering if its worth upgrading to a 680 with the prices they are at now which is around $500? I want the MSI Lighting because of its beast overclocking capability being able to up the voltage with the unlocked bios you can flash.

Looking to play Crysis 2 and 3 and Bioshock infinite @ 1920x1280 with all the eye candy turned on.

I'm just worried about the 7XX series cards coming out soon and the 6XX series taking a price drop.
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I just upgraded from 2 GTX 480's to 2 GTX 670's and yes its very worth it. First off , I don't know about you but I water cooled my GTX 480's as the stock fans where just far to loud. Secondly the GTX 670's are much less power hungry than the GTX 480's and output a lot less heat.

I wouldn't even bother with paying the extra hundred for a GTX 680 honestly.
 
Godmachine said:
I just upgraded from 2 GTX 480's to 2 GTX 670's and yes its very worth it. First off , I don't know about you but I water cooled my GTX 480's as the stock fans where just far to loud. Secondly the GTX 670's are much less power hungry than the GTX 480's and output a lot less heat.

I wouldn't even bother with paying the extra hundred for a GTX 680 honestly.
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This is all true.
 
I went from two 570's in sli (which are slightly faster then the 480) to two 670 FTW's in sli and was very impressed - Vastly more performance, less heat/noise.
 
Think I'm just going to go with the MSI 680 Lightning. Most overclockable, quietest with its dual fan heatsink most power of the 680's on the market right now most so than the 680 Classified. On Newegg right now for $499.
 
flu!d said:
I went from two 570's in sli (which are slightly faster then the 480) to two 670 FTW's in sli and was very impressed - Vastly more performance, less heat/noise.
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The 480's and 570's are actually pretty the same, except power consumption, noise and heat output. The 480's are a tad faster on higher res thanks to it's higher memory bandwidth and the 570's are bit faster on normal res' up to 1080. But the 570's do scale a little bit better in SLi.
 
damstr said:
Think I'm just going to go with the MSI 680 Lightning. Most overclockable, quietest with its dual fan heatsink most power of the 680's on the market right now most so than the 680 Classified. On Newegg right now for $499.
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There really isn't any advantage to buying the lightning model since recently NV forced MSI's hand to eliminate the voltage regulation.

I'd just get the ECS reference card on newegg for $450 considering they've actually made significant strides in their CS and with their 99 hour RMA.

If you don't trust ECS, the EVGA model is just $10 more. Or if you gotta have an aftermarket cooler, the Gigabyte Windforce 3 is $470 with a $20 rebate and since it uses a reference PCB besides an extra VRM it can be fitted with a standard 680 waterblock.
 
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GigabyteZ said:
There really isn't any advantage to buying the lightning model since recently NV forced MSI's hand to eliminate the voltage regulation.

I'd just get the ECS reference card on newegg for $450 considering they've actually made significant strides in their CS and with their 99 hour RMA.

If you don't trust ECS, the EVGA model is just $10 more. Or if you gotta have an aftermarket cooler, the Gigabyte Windforce 3 is $470 with a $20 rebate and since it uses a reference PCB besides an extra VRM it can be fitted with a standard 680 waterblock.
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I think you missed the part where you can flash back to the older unlocked bios before they restricted voltage change. The unlocked one you can raise the voltage.
 
I upgraded from a 580 to a 670 and thought it was well worth it. It a lot less noisy and doesn't heat up the room. I also upgraded to a 120hz monitor at the same time. That may have something to do with an extra perceived upgrade :p
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Not, really. With that you'll still top out at 1.21v (which you card should do out of the box anyways if you check it with a DMM). The lightning does more than that with the LN2 bios and has software control on top of that. If I'm not mistaken.
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I'm extremely confused here. So the old bios will still work with the new cards without bricking? I thought NV made MSI discontinue the software control and add something onto the card on the hardware level to eliminate any kind of voltage regulation besides a hard volt mod.
 
GigabyteZ said:
I'm extremely confused here. So the old bios will still work with the new cards without bricking? I thought NV made MSI discontinue the software control and add something onto the card on the hardware level to eliminate any kind of voltage regulation besides a hard volt mod.
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Thats what I've been wondering too. I don't know if there is any hardware change on the newer lighting models or if its just a different bios.
 
From what damstr says you still can by just flashing to the old bios but pretty much everywhere else mentions otherwise.
 
I went from TRI SLI GTX470 to SLI GTX670 OC edition with GTX680 PCB and it made a huge diff in performance.

I also upgrade my system that was running 6950 in crossfire to GTX670 SLI and made a good performance boast... Now I have GTX670s in both systems and for gaming its blazing fast....
The biggest factor for me was the power consumption and heat. althought ALL my cards are under water, my GTX670s idle 20c lower and load temps don't go over 50c in SLI..
 
GigabyteZ said:
From what damstr says you still can by just flashing to the old bios but pretty much everywhere else mentions otherwise.
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See this thread.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1280007/official-msi-gtx-680-lightning-owners-club

First post they show you how to flash back to an older unlocked bios from the locked bios. Doesn't brick the card. You can get 1.31-1.32v from the unlocked bios.

The first 5000 Lightning 680s that were made shipped with the two BIOSs that are mentioned above. However, apparently NVIDIA has now imposed a new limitation that prevents all other 680 Lightning cards from having voltage control, even with the new Afterburner 2.2.3. These newer 680 Lightnings still have two BIOSs (one regular, one LN2), but the LN2 BIOS is no longer "unlocked" to allow voltage control above 1.175. Thus, if your LN2 BIOS version is something other than 80.04.09.00.F8, you have one of the new restricted cards. If this is the case, you can flash your card's BIOS (while it is in LN2 mode) with the unlocked LN2 Mode BIOS file (BIOS version 80.04.09.00.F8).
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Seems like aquacomputer makes a waterblock for it too. Although having paid $420 for a new reference model I couldn't justify another $80 for the Lighting model. Kudos for pushing the envelope though.
 
It's not worth upgrading from a GTX 480 to anything yet. Not a 680. Not SLI. Not a 7990. It is worth waiting for at LEAST one, if not two, more generations (keeping in mind that we're on the cusp of "one more" and those are only respins, but will still have improvements.)

Why do you all waste your money like this? Stop fooling yourselves; you are NOT maxing these cards out. And I know most of you are NOT doing 4k gaming or whatever, either. If you want to stay up to date, you need to upgrade MORE often than this, because that 480 is pretty worthless now. Either upgrade when the old stuff still sells for pretty good money, or try to get several (2 is not nearly enough) years out of it. "In between" those areas is where you really lose money and screw yourself over.

My GTX 460 768MB has yet to choke on a game @ 1080p with high settings and decent (2-4x for most games) antialiasing. I wouldn't be able to game with the same settings at 2560x1440 or anything, but if I can do 1080p with a 460 768MB, a 480 will handle the 2560x1440 case just fine. Only a few games will choke them up, and honestly, none THAT badly.
 
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dandragonrage said:
It's not worth upgrading from a GTX 480 to anything yet. Not a 680. Not SLI. Not a 7990. It is worth waiting for at LEAST one, if not two, more generations (keeping in mind that we're on the cusp of "one more" and those are only respins, but will still have improvements.)

Why do you all waste your money like this? Stop fooling yourselves; you are NOT maxing these cards out. And I know most of you are NOT doing 4k gaming or whatever, either. If you want to stay up to date, you need to upgrade MORE often than this, because that 480 is pretty worthless now. Either upgrade when the old stuff still sells for pretty good money, or try to get several (2 is not nearly enough) years out of it. "In between" those areas is where you really lose money and screw yourself over.

My GTX 460 768MB has yet to choke on a game @ 1080p with high settings and decent (2-4x for most games) antialiasing. I wouldn't be able to game with the same settings at 2560x1440 or anything, but if I can do 1080p with a 460 768MB, a 480 will handle the 2560x1440 case just fine. Only a few games will choke them up, and honestly, none THAT badly.
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Depends on the user, quite honestly. It is pretty good advice overall, though, to only upgrade when it's necessary. My 4890 on my other system still handles most games pretty well, including Metro. However, if you do want to choke down a system at 1080p, try TW2...
 
Come this April my 480 will be 3 years old in think that's plenty of time and I definitely got my money's worth out of it. When I upgrade I need to at least double my performance if not triple.

Heck I'd consider doing a 690 on water even though I only game @ 1080P. Why? Because there are decent gains despite the lower resolution and its also more future proof. If NVIDIA had a 490 and that's what I was running now I doubt Id be looking at upgrading at this point. Probably get another year out of it.

I go through phases with computers. I get into really crazy for a year or so then completely don't give a shit. Then jump back in and want the best of the best. Just the way I am and money doesn't really matter.
 
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