Official GeForce GTX 680 Review and Discussion thread

[Hambone]

I just got an EVGA 680 in. I haven't had an Nvida card since the ATI 5800 series came out so I'm totally out of touch.

I'm reinstalling Win7 from scratch right now. I kind of felt the need for a clean install anyway. For this EVGA 680 - should I use EVGA drivers or reference drivers? And are there any tools on the disk that I would want - and, if so, should I even bother with the disk? Usually I just assume any disk has old drivers and go to the net...

Also, I may be weird but I still use Ghost 2003 to make images (I'm happy with how simple it is and don't like the extra bloat in windows from a windows installed backup prog). Why would the 680 does this at the DOS level?



Thanks!

[FastRedPonyCar]

Originally Posted by Hambone

I just got an EVGA 680 in. I haven't had an Nvida card since the ATI 5800 series came out so I'm totally out of touch.

I'm reinstalling Win7 from scratch right now. I kind of felt the need for a clean install anyway. For this EVGA 680 - should I use EVGA drivers or reference drivers? And are there any tools on the disk that I would want - and, if so, should I even bother with the disk? Usually I just assume any disk has old drivers and go to the net...

Thanks!

no use these (assuming you're installing a 64 bit version of windows 7 - which you should be doing)

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/42929

[Hambone]

Originally Posted by FastRedPonyCar

no use these (assuming you're installing a 64 bit version of windows 7 - which you should be doing)

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/42929

Thanks - much appreciated.

Other question I had is - why would the 680 do this at the DOS level? I've never seen a DOS screen corrupted like this by any video card (yeah - I still use Ghost 2003 - very simple and easy to use, works on SSD's and no bloat at the OS level):

[FastRedPonyCar]

i've seen ghost have artifacts like that on other system too. I work with ghost 2003 every day. some GPU's just do that.

as long as it doesn't do it in windows, I wouldn't worry about it. Install MSI afterburner to monitor temps and overclock. Keep an eye on the temperature. There is a slight chance that the heatsink may not have proper contact with the GPU but those are slim odds.

[Blacklash]

IMO below is the important part of the [H]ard GTX 680 SLi review. I've used SLi and Crossfire extensively. I concur with their sentiments. Raw FPS doesn't tell the whole story, particularly when discussing MGPU.

"We don't know what other descriptive word to use, other than "smoothness" to describe the difference we feel between SLI and CrossFireX when we play games. We've expressed this difference in gameplay feeling between SLI and CrossFireX in the past, in other evaluations, and we have to bring it up again because it was very apparent during our testing of 680 SLI versus 7970 CFX.

We can't communicate to you "smoothness" in raw framerates and graphs. Smoothness, frame transition, and game responsiveness is the experience that is provided to you as you play. Perhaps it has more to do with "frametime" than it does with "framerate." To us it seems like SLI is "more playable" at lower framerates than CrossFireX is. For example, where we might find a game playable at 40 FPS average with SLI, when we test CrossFireX we find that 40 FPS doesn't feel as smooth and we have to target a higher average framerate, maybe 50 FPS, maybe 60 FPS for CrossFireX to feel like NVIDIA's SLI framerate of 40 FPS. Only real-world hands on gameplay can show you this, although we can communicate it in words to you. Even though this is a very subjective realm of reviewing GPUs, it is one we surely need to discuss with you.

The result of SLI feeling smoother than CrossFireX is that in real-world gameplay, we can get away with a bit lower FPS with SLI, whereas with CFX we have to aim a little higher for it to feel smooth. We do know that SLI performs some kind of driver algorithm to help smooth SLI framerates, and this could be why it feels so much better. Whatever the reason, to us, SLI feels smoother than CrossFireX.

Personally speaking here, when I was playing between GeForce GTX 680 SLI and Radeon HD 7970 CrossFireX, I felt GTX 680 SLI delivered the better experience in every single game. I will make a bold and personal statement; I'd prefer to play games on GTX 680 SLI than I would with Radeon HD 7970 CrossFireX after using both. For me, GTX 680 SLI simply provides a smoother gameplay experience. If I were building a new machine with multi-card in mind, SLI would go in my machine instead of CrossFireX. In fact, I'd probably be looking for those special Galaxy 4GB 680 cards coming down the pike. After gaming on both platforms, GTX 680 SLI was giving me smoother performance at 5760x1200 compared to 7970 CFX. This doesn't apply to single-GPU video cards, only between SLI and CrossFireX."

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/..._card_review/9

[MUYA]

First non official GTX 680 4GB (from Galaxy) numbers at expreview. The link below has 5760x1080 res benched vs 2GB 680 and 7970!

http://www.expreview.com/19134-7.html

[FastRedPonyCar]

3 screem gaming!

looks like there wasn't very much difference between the 2 and 4 gig models to be honest. I'm glad I didn't wait. the 2 gig version 3 screen benchmarks we've seen over the last few weeks have shown us that it's more than enough to drive most games at high frame rates and I think that a 2nd one is needed for those 60+ fps in games like metro and arkham city vs simply more RAM.

[Muppet]

I can'r understand anything written in that review. It would be nice to know what AA settings they used. Other than that, there doesn't appear to be a great difference between 2Gb and 4Gb at that res.

[Pennyboy]

Originally Posted by FastRedPonyCar

i've seen ghost have artifacts like that on other system too. I work with ghost 2003 every day. some GPU's just do that.

as long as it doesn't do it in windows, I wouldn't worry about it. Install MSI afterburner to monitor temps and overclock. Keep an eye on the temperature. There is a slight chance that the heatsink may not have proper contact with the GPU but those are slim odds.

Hey FastRedPonyCar, do you know if MSI Afterburner is better than EVGAs precision software?

[Muppet]

Originally Posted by Pennyboy

Hey FastRedPonyCar, do you know if MSI Afterburner is better than EVGAs precision software?

I'm pretty sure they are both based on the same program, but have different skins. I think it maybe Rivatuner or from the maker of it.

[FastRedPonyCar]

Originally Posted by Muppet

I'm pretty sure they are both based on the same program, but have different skins. I think it maybe Rivatuner or from the maker of it.

yeah under the hood, both look very similar.

Afterburner wasn't picking up any info from the 680. the overclock sliders were grayed out so I couldn't change anything.

For the EVGA tool, you don't actually have sliders to dictate the max frequency, you slide them to indicate how far BEYOND the stock overclock boost you want it to go. so if the card by default will overclock itself to a max core clock of 1 ghz, if you want to set the overclock to 1.2 ghz, you slide the core clock slider to 200mhz.


Also, make sure if you use Precision X to overclock, you download OC scanner to test the overclock.

http://www.evga.com/ocscanner/

[mojoman0]

everyone see the evga 680 classified? 4gb 14 phase pwm

our old pal sneaking a glance

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1586778