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After months of rumors, Nvidia has finally unleashed its next-gen 28nm graphics tech, codenamed "Kepler." As usual, the series kicks off with a flagship single-GPU, the GeForce GTX 680, which is said to be the company's fastest and most power efficient offering to date, courtesy of the new GK104 graphics processor. On top of the raw speed and power improvements, Nvidia says Kepler cards introduce new tech to provide consistently smooth frame rates in games -- something we look forward to testing when we get a review sample.
The GK104 contains four GPCs with a total of eight SMXs, 1536 CUDA cores, eight geometry units, four raster units, 128 texture units, and 32 ROP units. The base clock is 1006MHz, but it can dynamically boost to 1058MHz and beyond for more performance (about 5% supposedly). The card also carries 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM running at 6008MHz with a 256-bit interface providing 6.0Gb/s of throughput. Dual six-pin power connectors feed the card's TDP of 195W -- notably lower than the GTX 580 (244W) and Radeon HD 7970 (250W).
Although Kepler is built on the foundation laid by Fermi, Nvidia had different developmental goals for each architecture. Fermi improved DirectX 11 geometry, tessellation and compute performance, while merely "managing" power consumption in the process. Kepler sort of reverses those priorities: it also strives to boost performance (and succeeds based on Nvidia's slides), but does so while emphasizing power efficiency. Nvidia's press kit includes a slide that demonstrates the generational performance per watt improvement:
We'll have to confirm all this for ourselves when we get our hands on a card, but the company also provided some reference performance comparisons between the Radeon HD 7970 when running various games at 2560x1600 and max quality settings. With those parameters, the GTX 680 outpaces the HD 7970 by an average of about 15%. It shows a dramatic lead in some titles, such as 36% in Skyrim (to be expected with Nvidia's driver optimizations), while the card slips behind its rival by 1% in Sid Meier's Civilization V.
Click for full size
As noted, Kepler comes with some new gamer-oriented feature called Adaptive VSync that should help stabilize frame rates. As you're likely aware, Vertical Sync is a game setting that displays new frames synchronously with your display's refresh rate (generally 60Hz -- or 60fps) to prevent artifacts such as screen tearing. The problem is, if your graphics card can't keep up at that pace and slips below the 60fps mark -- even just a little bit Nvidia says -- you're likely to experience stuttering as your card drops down to 30fps or worse.
Adaptive VSync solves the issue by dynamically enabling and disabling VSync as dictated by your frame rate. The feature will be available in Nvidia's R300 driver family and it won't be specifically limited to the GTX 680 or other GTX 600 series cards for that matter. The GTX 680 includes other enhancements such as a new display engine for multi-monitor setups, NVENC (a hardware-based H.264 video encoder), as well as FXAA and TXAA. We'll go over everything in more detail in our review (again, we're still waiting on a sample).
User Comments: 43
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hahahanoobs said:indiangamer said:
now thats a card to upgrade my hd 5870 since i was not able to upgrade my card due to restriction of having only 2 6 pin power connector so it costs less, runs cooler, quieter, faster. and is more powerfriendly. Now being a AMD fanboy i am going for nvidia. and its a big think
can anyone tell me if a 500 watt psu is good for this card or not as anandtech load power consuption is only 362 watts and my pc only have phenom 2 x6 (AMD fanboy) at default clocks?????
If you're CPU is not overclocked you'll be fine. I'm sure Anand used an overclocked i7. The only thing holding you back, is your CPU i'm afraid. Phenom II's are not the best gaming CPU's to be matched with high end graphics to get the most out of your hardware. An upgrade to an FX or Core i5 or i7, would give you the best performance... and maybe a jump to a 600w so you have that headroom in case you overclock in the future.
i run my 5870 overclocked which consume same power as 680 so i think i will be fine with a 680 with my 500 watt psu. and phenom 2 x6 performs alomst same as FX in games but i7 will give a big performance boost but i will wait for ivy bridge and now i will use 680 with my current PC
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Managed to get my order in on an EVGA... was lucky though I'd say under an hour later they were all gone. Time to put it up against my HD7970. The victor of the battle I will keep, the other will be sold off. WAR!!!
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More RAM plz!
Then I'll purchase.
It's coming. Vendors have to at least sell some reference boards before the factory specials take off ( EVGA GTX 680FTW 4GB....8+6 phase power...tasty)
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LNCPapa said:
Read this [link] and the following pages and see if you still need more RAM before you make a choice.
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This card would complement a Core i7 3930K nicely plus the shorter length and lower TDP makes it attractive in SLI configurations. If only the price drops a little bit.
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I love it when people post thier builds in the comment section thinking their impressing others.
Come to overclock.net and see some real builds.
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where is techspot 680 review
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where is techspot 680 review
Review boards might be in short supply. Seems NL.Hardware has cornered the market...
Associated GTX 680 Quad-SLI video on YouTube >>here<<
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You have a 7970 and you just orderd a GTX 680. I just got to ask WTF! and WHY?
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LNCPapa said:
Perhaps a second machine?
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dividebyzero said:where is techspot 680 review
Review boards might be in short supply. Seems NL.Hardware has cornered the market...
Associated GTX 680 Quad-SLI video on YouTube >>here<<
i will not like play in such a wire mesh lol
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Nvidia must be laughing all the way to bank,this card was meant to be a GTX 660/70,so i hope AMD have something up their sleeve.
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The price must come down, especially as few people can afford +400 quid on just a graphics card. However, it might follow suit like the 580 which commanded 350 quid up till last month... craziness!
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captainawesome said:
TS, how far is your review? I have read the Anandtech reviews but I prefer yours
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LNCPapa said:
My 680s have been about 1 hour away from me (driving) for the last 5 hours... so since it's UPS I think I may have them tomorrow
Guess what I just got in!!!!!
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LNCPapa said:
Okay - just got my setup done (seems my MSI Afterburner in my startup was causing repeated Red Screens of Death) so here are some of my benches. I've included my old Quadfire 5970 benches in for reference. I'll continue adding to this post so you can see the difference.
The new 3.0 version of the Heaven Benchmark.
[link]
[link]
Farcry 2 benchmark:
[link]
[link]
Very similar results here
Metro 2033 benchmark:
[link]
[link]
All I can say is WOW... the difference is huge
AvP benchmark:
[link]
[link]
Slightly slower results
I'll re-run some of my other benches when I get time and compare previous results.
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Everything at stock (CPU and cards) ?
Thanks for the benches, much appreciated.
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LNCPapa said:
Yes - everything is at stock except my CPU. The 5970 numbers had stock GPU timings as well. I also changed the link to the 5970 benches of Heaven since I accidentally linked a differently configured run. They should be similar settings now if you refresh.
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