nVidia 'Kepler' GeForce GTX 680 Reviews

[Callsign_Vega]

That Vortez review is a joke. Pre-release drivers, half the tests are 1080P (lol for 3 and 4 way GPU testing), and their charts are all in error. Check the Skyrim tests. The 4-way 7970 performance numbers are in the bottom half of all the Skyrim charts yet in the cumulative FPS numbers it's the highest? They have no clue what they are doing.

[BlackFox]

I have seen your comments on other forums about this review and you are starting to sound quite bitter I read the reviews over at Vortez quite regular and to be honest the justification for using those drivers is fair. If you read the review comments there is discussion about this. You ought to wind your neck in rather than going on a mission to bad mouth what looks like a good article with many hours/days of hard work.

[Vardant]

to be honest the justification for using those drivers is fair.

You're joking...

For this review we will be using the previous refresh of NVIDIA drivers due to the decision NVIDIA made in disabling PCIe Gen 3 in their latest driver set for X79. While there are advantages to both driver sets, we are comparing like for like today so as AMD drivers are PCIe 3.0 compatible, we didn't want to confuse matters by using PCIe 2.0 with the NVIDIA setup.

[N19h7m4r3]

You need to clarify what your saying.
They didn't build a pyramid because they had so many does not make sense at all.
They didn't build a pyramid because they came in late and had to ship before they could build on does.

They didn't build a pyramid because they had so many
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...6&postcount=41

That's what Gibbo said. One has to remember that they receive stock before the launch day. Reinforcing that it wa not a paper launch,

Then after the cards launched and people could by them, they sold one nearly every minute.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...0&postcount=47

[SKYMTL]

Actually, I think Vortez is completely justified in using those drivers BUT there are some issues by going this approach. I'll outline them for you.

- The drivers used are pre-release and not available to the public. Therefore, what's the use of showing performance that may or may not represent what people will actually achieve? IMO, the entire point of reviews is to demonstrate possible performance from an end user perspective and / or demonstrate comparative performance against other solutions. What amounts to alpha drivers entails quite a few potential issues.

- I'm not sure what (if any) the cumulative performance increases between that driver set and the subsequent ones was, but once again, using alphas or early betas is risky. There's a PCI-E 3.0 version of the official release drivers out there. They should have asked their contacts for it.

- NOT including performance with publicly available drivers is a bit of a miss IMO. It isn't detrimental to the review itself but I'd count it a missed opportunity.


Otherwise, I think the review was well done and let's be honest, us enthusiasts will always find problems with anything. To their credit, they used a properly overclocked processor and enough memory that bottlenecks shouldn't have occurred there either.

[icecpu]

http://en.expreview.com/2012/04/25/g...iew/22634.html

I read this review this morning, I do like one , the 2 Gb version is listed on Newegg, but OOS.
I never own Galaxy Video card before, how is their product quality ?

[cold2010]

GeForce GTX 680 3-Way SLI & Radeon 7970 Tri-Fire Review

For GTX 680 3-Way SLI we have the latest Beta driver installed, ForceWare 301.24.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/...trifire_review

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer

[boxleitnerb]

In BF3, even though the Radeon HD 7970 Tri-Fire was playable at 4X AA, our experiences with SLI were smoother and more fluid. The experience itself just felt better with 3-Way SLI, despite the fact it wasn't running at 4X MSAA, the experience seemed better to us with GTX 680 3-Way SLI.

In BF3 Multiplayer GTX 680 3-Way SLI was night and day superior to Radeon HD 7970 Tri-Fire. In multiplayer gameplay the name of the game is speed, performance, and smoothness to gameplay. GeForce GTX 680 3-Way SLI produced these aspects in spades. In order to get Radeon HD 7970 Tri-Fire to feel smooth enough, we had to reduce Ambient Occlusion to SSAO, and turn off motion blur. We could not go above FXAA, 2X or 4X MSAA made the game feel choppy. With GeForce GTX 680 3-Way SLI we were able to keep Ambient Occlusion at HBAO, though we did turn off motion blur for the best reaction time and accuracy. On top of the higher setting, GTX 680 3-Way SLI simply felt smoother and better, we had more fun in multiplayer with it compared to HD 7970 Tri-Fire.

We also weren't able to use AMD's Adaptive SSAA in Skyrim even with Tri-Fire. The image quality ended up being the same between the two configurations, but performance and overall smoothness was superior with 3-Way SLI.

Therefore, in summary, on the whole GTX 680 3-Way SLI provided the best actual experience gaming. Framerate does not tell all, and it often doesn't show you how a game feels when you are playing it. We have said it before, and we'll say it again, SLI feels better than CrossFireX, it feels smoother, and is more fluid. With CrossFireX you have to achieve higher framerates in order for it to feel as smooth as SLI does.

Don't just post the pretty graphs, read the text

[One_Hertz]

again with the feeling crap. Measure time between each frame to determine microstutter on both setups. Measure input lag. Only then you can make claims that setup X is more fluid than setup Y. Still nobody did a proper review.

[Manicdan]

again with the feeling crap. Measure time between each frame to determine microstutter on both setups. Measure input lag. Only then you can make claims that setup X is more fluid than setup Y.

i liked the power consumption summary the best
it showed the 7970s being under utilized in skyrim and deus ex, so maybe they can pull 20% more perf out of those with some driver updates
but the others showed each card nearly maxed out in power, and those games were quite close in graphs

but yes in any multi gpu setup, microstutter testing is a MUST.

[boxleitnerb]

again with the feeling crap. Measure time between each frame to determine microstutter on both setups. Measure input lag. Only then you can make claims that setup X is more fluid than setup Y. Still nobody did a proper review.

Not possible. Currently you cannot properly measure the frame times on Nvidia hardware due to the frame metering technology. What you measure with fraps is not accurate.
Why is it crap if the reviewer tells about his experiences? This is much more valuable than numbers that don't tell the whole story. And with AFR, fps are not the whole story, that's a fact. And btw it is nothing new that SLI is smoother than CF. I have read this in other reviews time and again.

[cegras]

Not possible. Currently you cannot properly measure the frame times on Nvidia hardware due to the frame metering technology. What you measure with fraps is not accurate.
Why is it crap if the reviewer tells about his experiences? This is much more valuable than numbers that don't tell the whole story. And with AFR, fps are not the whole story, that's a fact. And btw it is nothing new that SLI is smoother than CF. I have read this in other reviews time and again.

Care to be specific about why FRAPS doesn't work with nvidia?

Techreport's new benchs center around frame time comparisons.

[Manicdan]

Care to be specific about why FRAPS doesn't work with nvidia?

Techreport's new benchs center around frame time comparisons.

nvidia told us once how it worked and that it measures the time before the image is actually send to the monitor

its not perfect, but its not like its that bad of a measurement.

[boxleitnerb]

Care to be specific about why FRAPS doesn't work with nvidia?

Techreport's new benchs center around frame time comparisons.

Sure:

Now, take note of the implications here. Because the metering delay is presumably inserted between T_render and T_display, Fraps would miss it entirely. That means all of our SLI data on the preceding pages might not track with how frames are presented to the user. Rather than perceive an alternating series of long and short frame times, the user would see a more even flow of frames at an average latency between the two.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/11

[Callsign_Vega]

I have seen your comments on other forums about this review and you are starting to sound quite bitter I read the reviews over at Vortez quite regular and to be honest the justification for using those drivers is fair. If you read the review comments there is discussion about this. You ought to wind your neck in rather than going on a mission to bad mouth what looks like a good article with many hours/days of hard work.

Bitter? Because I call people out for retarded reviews with junk data? lol ok. Read below for the proper way to do Tr-Fire testing...

GeForce GTX 680 3-Way SLI & Radeon 7970 Tri-Fire Review


http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/...trifire_review

[BlackFox]

Bitter? Because I call people out for retarded reviews with junk data? lol ok. Read below for the proper way to do Tr-Fire testing...

Some may find that word 'retard' quite offensive Pilot Boy. Your tone and attitude is really showing in this thread.

You may rememebr this: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=226569

Have a read of your own comments on this matter:

Down to the nitty gritty; if you run a single GPU, yes; a single 16x speed PCI-E 2.0 slot will be fine. When you start to run multiple GPU's and/or run these new cards at 8x speed, especially in Surround/Eyefinity, make sure to get PCI-E 3.0.

[BababooeyHTJ]

So, what are the bets on when Nvidia will finally get around to releasing a driver update for these cards?

Bitter? Because I call people out for retarded reviews with junk data? lol ok. Read below for the proper way to do Tr-Fire testing...

Running SSAA on AMD and transparency AA on Nvidia is proper way to do a review? OK, I guess.

[Callsign_Vega]

Some may find that word 'retard' quite offensive Pilot Boy. Your tone and attitude is really showing in this thread.

You may rememebr this: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=226569

Have a read of your own comments on this matter:

Pilot boy? Is that the best you can do? What shall we call you, McDonalds boy? My tone and attitude is from someone who has vast experience with this topic and I know what I am talking about. It always amazes me the biggest loud-mouths on topics such as this have never had the equipment nor tested anything and have zero experience. And what does a quote about PCI-E 3.0 have to do with the VOrtez review that tests single monitor 1080P and 1600P? If you are referring to the [H] review, both AMD and NVIDIA cards were on 2.0 so it was an apples to apples comparison.

Running SSAA on AMD and transparency AA on Nvidia is proper way to do a review? OK, I guess.

They also have direct comparison charts and not best playability charts.

[UrbanSmooth]

Notice how the [H] makes good use out of multiple-GPU setups by testing them in Nvidia Surround and Eyefinity setups.

The [H] just gets it.

[Final8ty]

They didn't build a pyramid because they had so many
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...6&postcount=41

Yes i know they get stock beforehand and that's why i said maybe the stock was late as to why because Gibbo excuse still does not make sense because there is no rule that you must used all the stock, if they normally use 50 then use 50 of the stock, i think they were being lazy this time.

[cegras]

Sure:


http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/11

This is for SLI? How about individual GPUs? I did not read anything pertaining to that.

Edit: I misread your original post. Sorry!

[boxleitnerb]

So, what are the bets on when Nvidia will finally get around to releasing a driver update for these cards?



Running SSAA on AMD and transparency AA on Nvidia is proper way to do a review? OK, I guess.

Adaptive SSAA is not fullscreen SSAA, but works on transparent textures only - just as TrSSAA.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=350890

[Lanek]

They dont use the new technique from AMD for SSGSAA in DX10-11 with Lod applied ?

Note due to a problem with tri fire + eyefinity on last driver they was stuck with the 8.921 RC ... Im not even sure SSAA + Lod was available at this time ( aka 11.12 driver, prerelease )

[Gilgamesh]

Galaxy GTX680 4GB vs 2GB vs HD 7970 3GB:
http://en.expreview.com/2012/04/25/g...iew/22634.html

[One_Hertz]

So there is zero improvement for having 4GB... The entire boost is from the higher core speed.