We tested the GK104: GeForce GTX 680 and high-end guns
Cue
There’s a lot to be said for the Kepler architecture, the GK104, the GeForce GTX 680, but luckily the formula isn’t too complicated. As things stand, NVIDIA has surprisingly chosen this time to choose the needs of the gaming society and more professional use separately and make two separate chips (we’ve heard of the Kepler variant coming to the cGPU market). The GK104 was clearly made for the players and worked well. True, it was necessary to sacrifice that general applications could mobilize more modest forces, but in return the size of the core could be kept in check, as consumption figures were extremely favorable, which had not been the case with high-end GeForcees for a long time.
The GeForce GTX 680 consumed far less than the GTX 580, while being on average 25-35% faster than it, which is a parade indicator. However, more importantly, the GeForce GTX 680 is even more fuel efficient than the Radeon HD 7970, although the difference is only 5-15%, but it also matters, especially the GeForce GTX 680 in 3D performance. HD 7970. Let's look at a comparison of the two of them! Of the six non-3D test programs, the GTX 680 won four times, and the HD 7970 could only win twice where GPGPU work was required. Of the eight game-to-game games, the GTX 680 was the faster in seven, with significant differences in some places, from now on there’s nothing to talk about. However, the truth is that what was said is only valid for FULL HD, ie 1920 × 1080 resolution, because currently due to the limitation of our monitor we can measure at this maximum resolution, and here the GeForce GTX680 2 GB VRAM was certainly not a bottleneck.
If, on the other hand, you are playing at higher resolutions, the 2 GB of VRAM may be thinner, and then the HD 7970 may already benefit from 3 GB of RAM. If, on the other hand, we’re playing exclusively at FULL HD, it’s clear in terms of power and performance that we need to choose the GeForce GTX 680 as an objective (and money) buyer. The big question is whether ever-improving drives will be able to change power conditions. AMD's GCN is also a fresh architecture, but Kepler is brand new and already seems to have an advantage, which is no small matter, especially since approaching it from a certain perspective, NVIDIA has designed its new GPU to it used the foundations of AMD’s philosophy in its design, and this led us to success.
Of course, the development of prices is not incidental either. Like any top card, by the way, the GeForce GTX 680 is expensive, especially being brand new. Depending on the store and brand, the run-out GeForce GTX 580 is available for as little as $ 120 in some places, while AMD’s flagship, the Radeon HD 000, is available for about $ 7970. In contrast, the starting price of the GeForce GTX 133 is somewhere around 000-680 HUF. In other words, the GeForce GTX 140 is the most expensive, but keep in mind that it is also the latest, fastest and most economical, and NVIDIA also features NVENC engine, GPU Boost technology, Adaptive Vsync and pleasant speed FXAA anti-aliasing. and there are the eternal GeForce adapters, CUDA and PhysX. Although the dual-core giants GTX 145 and HD 000 are still capable of good performance, due to their undulating and driver-dependent production and horror goods (GeForce GTX 680 ~ 590 HUF, Radeon HD 6990 ~ 690 HUF) we would no longer buy take them into account when making a purchase.
The reference is GeForce GTX 680
In our opinion, NVIDIA did a very good job and pulled a lot with Kepler and the GeForce GTX 104 based on the GK680 core. At last, he wasn't trying to solve the matter by force, but like a cunning fox, he went to his opponent with common sense and trick, which must have surprised AMD as well. We think it made a good decision when, with the GTX 680, it voted in favor of designing a high-end card for home use, while pushing cGPU capabilities into the background, maximizing 3D performance and reducing power consumption to an impressive level.
In the top card market, money is always the secondary consideration, if we want to spend HUF 130-150 wisely, we would clearly take a GeForce GTX 000 off the shelf if we want to play a video card that will serve for years to come. our needs. We believe that in this field, under current conditions, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 deserves the editorial offer GIGABYTE GTX 680 OC single-core card test winner which, in almost half of the cases, was able to withstand dual-core cards and beat them frequently.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 |
GIGABYTE GTX 680 OC |
The GIGABYTE GTX 680 and GTX 580 video cards tested are a From GIGABYTE's domestic office while the ASUS HD 7970, HD 6990 and GTX 590 models are ASUS Home Office provided for the measurements, thank you!
The article was written by: Zoltán Mihics (med1on) and Gábor Pintér (gabi123)
Thanks to the following sponsors for our permanent test components in this article:
