GTX 680 First Impressions.

[Dan3345]

Long story short version at the bottom.

 

 

 

Well gang I got a new GTX 680 today, and I lucked out too. I went online to check out newegg to see if they had the Asus 680 Direct CU II TOP edition in stock. They didn't, no-one did. My second choice was an EVGA GTX 680. EVGA is a great brand (like Asus) and I know that whichever card I pick as long as its made by either Asus or EVGA it will be great. So anyways I went to eat dinner at a restaurant near our city shopping center which conveniently has a Fry's electronics store.

 

I meandered inside Fry's not expecting to find anything because in my opinion, frys sucks. They have huge markups on everything and I find their staff to be somewhat unhelpful and sometimes rude. Anyways I wandered to the back of the store to find the video cards. They had only a few GTX 680's left and the Asus one I had wanted was not among them. The EVGA cards were however, and to make it even better they had several unmolested EVGA GTX 680's with 4GB's of VRAM and a backplate. (Backplates are sexy don't you know?)

 

So this card was on tigerdirect for $630, and on NCIX for around $600-$610 I believe. But at Fry's, get this..It was only $530.. I stupidly went up to the clerk with the card and asked if the price was a mistake. He laughed and said it was but he has been looking the other way and was planning to plead ignorance should the manager ask about it.

 

So I took the card and ran. Just kidding, I bought it. Anyways after eating dinner I took the thing home and replaced my two 6950's. Downloaded the most recent WHQL Beta drivers off of Nvidias site and began playing stuff. (this is all after spending an hour making sure AMD was out of my registry and files). One of the biggest factors in me buying this card (or any card for that matter) was being able to max skyrim at 1920 x 1080 and being able to get a stable 60 FPS. Lots of reviewers and benchmarks confirmed this was possible but everyones PC is different and I kept my reservations as to avoid disappointment.

 

Now I haven't even overclocked yet, and I go into Solitude and 60fps + everywhere. I waited in game for morning (so that when all the people come out at once the card will have to render that) and was amazed when it stayed there. At some point it even went up to eighty while stating at areas that made my TWO (YES 2, as in the number 2) 6950's flinch. This one card laughed at the game, and the two inferior cards. And I giggled.

 

Then I went to markarth, which with my old cards would bring the FPS down to around 35-40 FPS just for being at the city gate to skyrim. With the 680? No problem. 80+ Fps. Walked around the city, and it stayed there most of the time, only dropping to around 55 FPS when standing outside the Jarl's house and facing the open city.

 

Riften was another city I had issues at, where again I would simply stand at the entrance to the city at noon in game and watch the frames plummet. Again, the 680, no..the LONE 680 handled it just fine with 65-80 frames per second. And again I haven't even overclocked it...

 

So if you haven't figured it out, I am happy. And, I am not buying anything AMD anymore... I learned with their CPU's and now their GPU's the hard way. Now for you AMD fans, I know why you bought yours, it was cheaper and you could still game, and to that I say: Good for you, more power to you! However for me, its all about the stable frames while not sacrificing the games good looks. I have the money to burn, and I intend to burn it.

 

Minecraft plays fine, lol.. I can now max out FNV and keep stable 60 FPS something I couldn't do with the 6950's. Which I should add just goes to show that in the case of most bethesda games the problem with performance is the gamebryo engine, and that the only way to conquer this lousy excuse for coding is to hit it with as much force as you can and beat it into submission. I can do that now.

 

Overclocking results are as follows.

 

Power Target is up at 135%. I only needed it at about 120% but I like to give things room to breath.

 

The core clock has an added 130mhz on it which boosts the GPU to 1240mhz under load.

 

Mem was boosted to 6.5 ghz. Coming from a stock of 6,008. +500mhz, I can go higher but I don't see a need, plus some people talk about how adding too much to the memory is detrimental to the overall performance.

 

With the OC I saw an added 10 FPS in skyrim everywhere which is welcome. My only gripe so far with this card is the fan kicked in at weird somewhat random times. The core would be at 75 degrees Celsius but the fan would be spinning at 30% and then ramp up to 60% when the temperature dropped to 60 degrees. I set my own fan curve and now it keeps it cool, idling at 30 degrees Celsius, and reaching 70 degrees Celsius under load. Which IMO, is pretty good for a card with a reference blower fan. Also I don't hear any coil whine (yet) and while I did notice it is louder when under load than my older cards were, noise does not bother me that much. Especially when you take into account that I usually play games with friends and talk to them over skype, so I am almost always wearing headphones.

 

So yeah, all I have really played is skyrim, and minecraft, plus FNV, and BFBC2. All played above and beyond my expectations. Except minecraft. I only average 275 frames with that.. Not complaining but I was expecting it to be a little higher even with the games render distance maxed. But now I just sound spoiled.

 

TLDR version: Replaced two MSI 6950's with a GTX 680 and got much better performance.

[ousnius]

Yes the 680 is awesome indeed. :psyduck:

 

I really like NVIDIAs drivers and support, too. That's why I'll keep using their GPU's for now.

Next year I'm gonna upgrade my GTX 570 to some GTX 7xx card, probably the 770 including a new MB, CPU and RAM. :thumbsup:

[Rennn]

I doubt they'll release the 7XX next year, how would that even give the 6XX enough time to make a profit? Edited August 29, 2012 by Rennn

[Dan3345]

Yeah i was going to say, nvidia would lose a lot of money by simply releasing the next gen less than a year later. All of these people who think it will happen base it on the GK110 tesla chip, that somehow by not making the 680 the gk110 it is less powerful and unworthy of the flagship title.

 

Based on my experience i would simply state they are wrong and point out that the gk110 is a workhorse not a gaming chip, you can relate all the physical qualities of it to a gaming chip but in the end it is not and if nvidia wants it to be they need to change a few things with it.

 

So 7xx series gk110 it may be, but it will not release next year. I am certain of this.