Revisiting the GeForce GTX 680: GTX 1050 Ti-Class Performance for Less?

My old but still working GTX780 should be up next :) I wonder what would be a worthy upgrade. However, with the currently inflated prices, it is not as interesting.
 
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It's nice to see how well the 7950 is holding up.

A GeForce 670 would probably also be quite a reasonable buy. Shouldn't be much slower than a 680.

And those 'buy for $100, pay $200 shipping' cards...
 
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What would make a good article is the relative performing old cards against their modern day counterparts; of course it gets tricky due to manufacturer/model variances.
 
I love articles like these but.....

You said this "Not only was it faster than the HD 7970, but it was also more efficient, quieter and cheaper when it first launched. It would be interesting to see how they compare today."

Then you compared it to a 7950? Why not a 7970 or 280x?

I know it's a very similar chip but the 7970/280x would be what, 10/15 % quicker?

Think they're similar prices on Ebay as well.

The article itself, aside from my nit-picking, is really informative, good job.
 
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Colonel Blimp said:
I love articles like these but.....

You said this "Not only was it faster than the HD 7970, but it was also more efficient, quieter and cheaper when it first launched. It would be interesting to see how they compare today."

Then you compared it to a 7950? Why not a 7970 or 280x?

I know it's a very similar chip but the 7970/280x would be what, 10/15 % quicker?

Think they're similar prices on Ebay as well.

The article itself, aside from my nit-picking, is really informative, good job.
Click to expand...

I had the 7950 data from a previous throw back type article. I'll test the 7970 soon!
 
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VitalyT said:
My old but still working GTX780 should be up next :) I wonder what would be a worthy upgrade. However, with the currently inflated prices, it is not as interesting.
Click to expand...

Nowadays, the 780 is a bit slower than the 7970, 280X and 380X and probably on par with the 960/380. Basically all these GPUs are upgrades: 290, 290X, 390, 390X, Fury, FuryX, 470, 480, 570, 580, Vega 56, Vega 64, 780 Ti, 970, 980, 980 Ti, 1060 3 GB, 1060 6 GB, 1070, 1070 Ti, 1080, 1080 Ti, Titan, Titan Black, Titan Maxwell, Titan XP, Titan Xp and Titan Volta.

Pick your poison.
 
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Great, informative article steve .getting nostalgic ?picking up old GPU's on the cheap?.,
this shows anyone with that generation of card or even a pair of them ,would be illserved to buy a low to midrange GPU today as it would hardly be much of an upgrade .
I still have a pair of 4 gig GTX 670's and they only lose about 20 to 30 frames to my single GTX 1080.and outperformed a 970.
easy to see the 2 gig frame buffer is getting long in the tooth,just not able to cut it any longer on the newest titles.
its nice to have lots of older titles though, ,no DLC, lootboxes ,Pay to play shite,etc. just GOG, which still play well on my Sli GTX 480 rig also,
new games allways come out before I get the old one finished ,and I still pick up the odd, older title out of the clearance bin when I see them for a couple bucks,I recently picked up COD Ghosts ,Xcom Enemy unknown,and Watchdogs, all for under 20 bucks .Good stuff.(y):)

Edit: Too bad it wasn't a 4 gig GTX 680 you had ,it seems they are holding a fair bit more value than the 2 gig version ,and I would wager the extra frame buffer ,would play some role in keeping the minimums up and stuttering down ,in games that will use the extra ram.
 
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Cryio said:
Nowadays, the 780 is a bit slower than the 7970, 280X and 380X and probably on par with the 960/380. Basically all these GPUs are upgrades: 290, 290X, 390, 390X, Fury, FuryX, 470, 480, 570, 580, Vega 56, Vega 64, 780 Ti, 970, 980, 980 Ti, 1060 3 GB, 1060 6 GB, 1070, 1070 Ti, 1080, 1080 Ti, Titan, Titan Black, Titan Maxwell, Titan XP, Titan Xp and Titan Volta.

Pick your poison.
Click to expand...

But would anyone actually upgrade from a 780 to any of those ?,up to and including the 1060 3 gig ,I don't feel it would be worth the investment ,better to find a second 780 on the cheap and sli for a while . until prices flatten out a bit,though as I just checked a couple of hits and the 780 is still fetching fair ROI, I bet also thanks to the mining craze ,
from dual 670 4 gig to my 1080 it was hardly worth the money, for 20/30 frames , though I did intend to get a second 1080 and still do,but thanks to the miners for putting the Kybosh to that idea, I HATE YOU! :mad: if for that reason alone.

And who is going to upgrade from a top tier, high end GPU of a couple of generations ago.to a low to mid range GPU in todays Tech.? no one that I know., that is not what enthusiasts do.
 
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Steve said:
Colonel Blimp said:
I love articles like these but.....

You said this "Not only was it faster than the HD 7970, but it was also more efficient, quieter and cheaper when it first launched. It would be interesting to see how they compare today."

Then you compared it to a 7950? Why not a 7970 or 280x?

I know it's a very similar chip but the 7970/280x would be what, 10/15 % quicker?

Think they're similar prices on Ebay as well.

The article itself, aside from my nit-picking, is really informative, good job.
Click to expand...

I had the 7950 data from a previous throw back type article. I'll test the 7970 soon!
Click to expand...

I would like to see the 7970 results too, and possibly a 950/960 tossed in there :)
 
Yeah you really should have compared a 7970 at the same time, so we could have gotten an impression of how smooth each gaming experience was on each card... As the reason I got rid of my old GTX670 was largely because of Frame dips and stutters from now having enough vram when pushing higher settings...


Also just so people know, the GTX680 boost's itself pretty high. 1150mhz as seen in his screen shots... A 7970 would have gained a lot more from a OC to OC comparison. Which is another thing that would have been nice to see. A 7970 even at 1100-1150 is a pretty much guaranteed OC. And a big boost from the stock 925mhz.... I still have a hd7950 and it has no problem running @ 1200mhz. Considering how close you card was already boosting to the 1200mhz you would probably only be able to do with a OC (doing 1250-1300 on a GTX680 is like doing 1200-1250 on a 7970).

The GTX680 was a great card once.. This article doesn't really show what most stock GTX680's can do. This is a higher end card that from the looks of it at stock is boosting to damn near what you could do with a Overclock. Not much room for gains... This is also why the power usage is crazy high. I really think these facts should be noted in the article, as a real stock GTX680 is not this power hungry. And kinda goes to show how efficient the GTX1050ti really is...
 
GPUs never age well.

It is always fun to see how slow once hugely expensive and mighty hardware is compared to modern budget cards though.
 
Pre-Maxwell nVidias are very power hungry. That's why the miners don't buy it out from the used market.
Recently I was able to sell my GCN Radeon for the same price I bought it used 3 years ago. Crazy.
 
Very interesting. I still have a GTX 770 laying around, which is just an overclocked GTX 680. They are still great cards to this day.
 
So a GTX 1050Ti is $220 or so. Set a value which one might assign to a 'bought new with warranty"..say $25 (3 yr protection plan as proxy) and a 100 watt difference in energy (about 2 cents an hour), then based on 1000 hours per year for 3 years.. I calculate that a GTX680 in good used condition is worth about $135.
How would you see it?
 
DZillaXx said:
Yeah you really should have compared a 7970 at the same time, so we could have gotten an impression of how smooth each gaming experience was on each card... As the reason I got rid of my old GTX670 was largely because of Frame dips and stutters from now having enough vram when pushing higher settings...


Also just so people know, the GTX680 boost's itself pretty high. 1150mhz as seen in his screen shots... A 7970 would have gained a lot more from a OC to OC comparison. Which is another thing that would have been nice to see. A 7970 even at 1100-1150 is a pretty much guaranteed OC. And a big boost from the stock 925mhz.... I still have a hd7950 and it has no problem running @ 1200mhz. Considering how close you card was already boosting to the 1200mhz you would probably only be able to do with a OC (doing 1250-1300 on a GTX680 is like doing 1200-1250 on a 7970).

The GTX680 was a great card once.. This article doesn't really show what most stock GTX680's can do. This is a higher end card that from the looks of it at stock is boosting to damn near what you could do with a Overclock. Not much room for gains... This is also why the power usage is crazy high. I really think these facts should be noted in the article, as a real stock GTX680 is not this power hungry. And kinda goes to show how efficient the GTX1050ti really is...
Click to expand...

Should use a 7970Ghz not the regular 7970.
 
I was lucky to get my R9 290x and 290a less than 200 dollars each two years ago , still going strong.



 
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Before this second wave of miner craze hit it was completely dumb to get a used GTX 680 since you could get an R9 280X for the same price. I saw mint condition R9 280Xs going for around $125.
The 280X was essentially an updated version of the 7970 Ghz Ed. card, and many compared it to the GTX 960 as its closest rival, but real gamers knew that the 280X usually edged out the 960 in games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEWABNJi6Rc

Additionally, the 280X was the last iteration of a tried and true (and to my mind, legendary) compute architecture. It's double precision performance in particular was way ahead of the competition, and even today it's still a decent card for compute especially when factoring in price/performance (again, pre-miner craze).
 
When the "580" comparison was done, I commented that I'd like to know how my old 670 stacks up to newer cards. Seeing the 680 compares to only a 1050Ti is a bit disappointing (meaning my 670 is closer to a standard 1050.)

I've been debating whether or not to upgrade to a 1060. Seeing as how I'm probably close to 1050 already, I really can't justify spending $200 for that small of a performance boost. :(
 
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What is infuriating is that "all" graphic cards, old and new are way over priced. So even if you wanted to pick up an older card it ain't worth it.
 
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Mugsy said:
When the "580" comparison was done, I commented that I'd like to know how my old 670 stacks up to newer cards. Seeing the 680 compares to only a 1050Ti is a bit disappointing (meaning my 670 is closer to a standard 1050.)

I've been debating whether or not to upgrade to a 1060. Seeing as how I'm probably close to 1050 already, I really can't justify spending $200 for that small of a performance boost. :(
Click to expand...

if you were fortunate enough to have bought the 4 gig model 670. you would be better served to find a second 670 on the cheap , and wait for next gen or prices to normalize ,unless you play the few games that don't support multi gpu.
and , demand has actually propped up prices of older Gpu's as well ,making them harder to find on the cheap.people are hanging on to them,
 
Mugsy said:
Damn Bitcoin miners. :mad:
Click to expand...

The situation with GPU's is not the only problem crypto miners are creating,this is an interesting read.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...ature-217230?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email

wait for this to actually get full blown ,we are all gonna suffer ,my main reason for the unbridled hatred for miners .and they have no clue whats going to happen.
I've already bought 2 economical Honda inverters ,for when its no longer affordable to be connected to the Grid.
Also on the CBC news today ISPs in Canada will be upping rates again ,and upping the rates for overages,,I'll soon be cutting the wires.
 
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