NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Review: Retaking The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on March 22, 2012 9:00 AM ESTThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Prior to the launch of our new benchmark suite, we wanted to include The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is easily the most popular RPG of 2011. However as any Skyrim player can tell you, Skyrim’s performance is CPU-bound to a ridiculous degree. With the release of the 1.4 patch and the high resolution texture pack this has finally been relieved to the point where GPUs once again matter, particularly when we’re working with high resolutions and less than high-end GPUs. As such, we're now including it in our test suite.
Skyrim presents us with an interesting scenario. At anything less than 2560 we’re CPU limited well before we’re GPU limited, and yet even though we’re CPU limited NVIDIA manages to take a clear lead while the 680 still finds room to push to the top. For whatever the reason NVIDIA would appear to have significantly less driver overhead here, or at the very least a CPU limited Skyrim interacts with NVIDIA’s drivers better than it does AMD’s.
In any case 2560 does move away from being CPU limited, but it’s not entirely clear whether the difference we’re seeing here is solely due to GPU performance, or if we’re still CPU limited in some fashion. Regardless of the reason the GTX 680 has a 10% lead on the 7970 here.
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Wreckage - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Impressive. This cards beats AMD on EVERY level! Price, performance, features, power..... every level. AMD paid the price for gouging it's customers, they are going to lose a ton of marketshare. I doubt they have anything to match this for at least a year.Creig - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
The review has been up for less than a minute so you couldn't possibly have read it already. How pathetic is it that you were sitting there hitting F5 repeatedly just so you could get in another "First post! Nvidia is uber!" comment.Get a life.
Grooveriding - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Haha Creig,Good observation, he must of been sitting there spamming to get in that first comment, before he read a word of the review.
Sour grapes at being banned much, Wreckage ?
nathanddrews - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
... but he's correct. The 680 does dominate in nearly every situation and category."the GTX 680 is faster, cooler, and quieter than the Radeon HD 7970. NVIDIA has landed the technical trifecta, and to top it off they’ve priced it comfortably below the competition."
Obvioulsy Wreckage's analysis of AMD's "price gouging" and prophesies of doom are farfetched...
N4g4rok - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Well, yeah, the card does well in most of those tests, but i think it might be a little too far to say that it dominates the 7970 on every level.cactusdog - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Just finsished looking around various sites and the 680 isnt as good as was suggested.Dont forget, you're basically comparing an overclocked Nvidia card to a stock AMD card, and even the base clock is much higher on the nvidia card.
At the same clocks the results will look much better for AMD. Also, 3 monitor gaming could favour AMD with 3GB of vram.
Seems like Nvidia really wanted to target the 7970 and the price/performance tag this time, by building a souped up, overclocked Gk104 but its not a 7970 killer. AMD will just need to sell them for $449.
AMD can stay with the 7970 as planned until Q4 and the 8 series.
gamerk2 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
You know clocks aren't the only thing that determines speed? Couldn't one just as easily argue that AMD cards were better because they basically clocked their RAM so high?Fact is, at stock, the card beats the 7970 at a lower price. Period.
Meaker10 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
You're ignoring the host of factory overclocked models out there that will be quieter than the 680M and perform on a similar level, the price just needs to be dropped.Kakkoii - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Herp derp, the same can be said about Nvidia cards as well. The 680 has tonnes of OC'ing headroom. The GPU boost it has is a messily overclock.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I guess the lower clocked cores of 470, 480, 570, 580 , and many other Nvidia cards were greatly cheated in all benchmarks because the amd cores were often well over 100mhz higher at stock....So we have had at least 3 years of lying benchmarks in amd's favor.
I'd like to personally thank gamerk2 for this very astute observation that sheds the light of Nvidia asbolutely winning in all the above mentioned nvidia cars for the past couple of years.
Thank you... (sarc/reality check is free)