GTX 680 4gb Review

[§k¥¥ |{£øúÐz]

Originally Posted by hostage67

Well... depends on what you are doing exactly.

Keep in mind that while a 690 will give great processing power, it won't increase the usable ram. You are still limited to only 2gb's of VRam.

If you are running a single monitor then frankly you probably only need a single 680 making the 690 mostly worthless to you unless you are after 120hz.

If you are running Surround video (5760x1080) then the extra processing power will definitely be worthwhile. On the other hand, you also could be running out of VRam, making the 680 4gb versions more ideal, but realistically with just a few tweaks mostly to MSAA you can drop your vram usage down below the 2gb limit of the 690 making it a viable option still.

So in short with a 690 or 2gb 680 you may not be able to run every setting at absolute max, but you can get pretty close. If you just absolutely must run the maximum settings then you should really be looking at the 4gb version of the 680 as that is really the only way to do it without hitting the memory cap.

Yeah I think I'm going to get the 4gb 680 and call it good. Should I need more power for nv surround, I might later invest in another 680 and will be glad I have overhead.

[WordMasterRice]

Originally Posted by §k¥¥ |{£øúÐz

Yeah I think I'm going to get the 4gb 680 and call it good. Should I need more power for nv surround, I might later invest in another 680 and will be glad I have overhead.

I have thought about doing the step-up to the 4 gig but to be honest my surround setup (1920x1200 x 3) is buttery smooth in BF3 so I don't really think I see a need. Not to mention I don't really like surround anyway hah.

[§k¥¥ |{£øúÐz]

Originally Posted by WordMasterRice

I have thought about doing the step-up to the 4 gig but to be honest my surround setup (1920x1200 x 3) is buttery smooth in BF3 so I don't really think I see a need. Not to mention I don't really like surround anyway hah.

yeah to be honest, I don't like surround in most games. it makes me dizzy lol.

Additional Comment:

tigerdirect has the evga 4gb superclocked gtx 670's in stock so I just bought one. it was $489, but the reviews of the 670 show that with a light overclock it's faster than a stock gtx680. plus with 4gb of vram, it'll be good for my nvidia 2d surround and is still $200+ cheaper than the 4gb ftw version of the gtx680.

woot. just sucks that it'll get here while i'm on the east coast for a business trip all next week

[hostage67]

Originally Posted by §k¥¥ |{£øúÐz

yeah to be honest, I don't like surround in most games. it makes me dizzy lol.

Additional Comment:

tigerdirect has the evga 4gb superclocked gtx 670's in stock so I just bought one. it was $489, but the reviews of the 670 show that with a light overclock it's faster than a stock gtx680. plus with 4gb of vram, it'll be good for my nvidia 2d surround and is still $200+ cheaper than the 4gb ftw version of the gtx680.

woot. just sucks that it'll get here while i'm on the east coast for a business trip all next week

Well... That appears to be a pre-order, they aren't currently available.

Looks like you're at a 967mhz vs 1110mhz for the Core clock speed. And it looks like they've disabled a few of the shaders and processor units. Overall may not be a bad compromise if they can actually keep these cards in stock.

Personally I think I will still wait for the 4gb FTW 680 edition, but the 670 superclocked don't look like a bad alternative. And you are looking at about a $140 different between the two. The 670 I think would be better price/performance if that's what you are after.

Here's a pretty good review to compare the 670, 680, and 7970
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3200.html

[§k¥¥ |{£øúÐz]

Originally Posted by hostage67

Well... That appears to be a pre-order, they aren't currently available.

Looks like you're at a 967mhz vs 1110mhz for the Core clock speed. And it looks like they've disabled a few of the shaders and processor units. Overall may not be a bad compromise if they can actually keep these cards in stock.

Personally I think I will still wait for the 4gb FTW 680 edition, but the 670 superclocked don't look like a bad alternative. And you are looking at about a $140 different between the two. The 670 I think would be better price/performance if that's what you are after.

well nearly ever review of the gtx670 i've read today, the gtx670 with a light overclock beats the gtx680 (both reference cards) fairly easily. considering the price difference, it's a good deal to me. the 600 series seems to be a pretty healthy jump in performance from the 500 series.

and i should mention that i plan on getting a second one in the near future

[skrilla316]

Holy shnikes, They're in stock too!

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by §k¥¥ |{£øúÐz

well nearly ever review of the gtx670 i've read today, the gtx670 with a light overclock beats the gtx680 (both reference cards) fairly easily. considering the price difference, it's a good deal to me. the 600 series seems to be a pretty healthy jump in performance from the 500 series.

and i should mention that i plan on getting a second one in the near future

I couldn't believe the reviews when I saw them too. <10% difference for 20% off? That's pretty awesome.

[Urbanfox]

OC... IN STOCK... for MSRP... within week of launch? WOW.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127675

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Urbanfox

OC... IN STOCK... for MSRP... within week of launch? WOW.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127675

so then WTF is with all the 680 product shortages?

[hostage67]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

so then WTF is with all the 680 product shortages?

apparently they put them all into the 670's for some stupid reason. I'm guessing they don't want people to have the 680's for some reason because there was clearly enough stock to produce them, but they felt they were better off pushing the 670's instead.

[Urbanfox]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

so then WTF is with all the 680 product shortages?

Well, there are a lot of people who think stock is fine, it's just that they are literally selling that fast.

I don't know about every retailer, but the Newegg business rep for the company I work for says that is NOT the case for them.

Who knows.

[§k¥¥ |{£øúÐz]

they probably looked at previous year's sales data and realized most people buy the bang for the buck card, which is usually the '70' series cards, so they put most of their stock into that card lol. just a guess

[hostage67]

Originally Posted by §k¥¥ |{£øúÐz

they probably looked at previous year's sales data and realized most people buy the bang for the buck card, which is usually the '70' series cards, so they put most of their stock into that card lol. just a guess

Ya, except they make more money on the 680, why in the world wouldn't they make sure that card had stock on release instead of waiting even longer for a lower performing card to put their stock into. Just seems like an odd choice to me. I'm clearly missing the logic.

[§k¥¥ |{£øúÐz]

Originally Posted by hostage67

Ya, except they make more money on the 680, why in the world wouldn't they make sure that card had stock on release instead of waiting even longer for a lower performing card to put their stock into. Just seems like an odd choice to me. I'm clearly missing the logic.

depends. if they sell enough volume of 670's, they can make more money with it regardless of if the 680 has higher profit per unit. sometimes volume > ppu

[hostage67]

Originally Posted by §k¥¥ |{£øúÐz

depends. if they sell enough volume of 670's, they can make more money with it regardless of if the 680 has higher profit per unit. sometimes volume > ppu

That's not really the question here, they are selling out either way. So is it better to sell out at a $400 price point, or a $600 price point using the exact same hardware?

Obviously the $600 is giving them a larger profit margin considering both cards have the exact same hardware, the 670 simply has a lower clock and some disabled shaders (disabled, but still physically present).

About the only thing that might make sense to me is that the 670 processors couldn't bin high enough for the 680, but if that's the case then getting the 670 just to overclock it to 680 speeds isn't going to work well.

[Almost Tactf]

Man.....I want a new card so bad, but for a single display at 1920X1080 there is no reason to upgrade my GTX 480 SLi.....

[hostage67]

Originally Posted by Almost Tactf

Man.....I want a new card so bad, but for a single display at 1920X1080 there is no reason to upgrade my GTX 480 SLi.....

That just means you also need some extra monitors too

[§k¥¥ |{£øúÐz]

Originally Posted by hostage67

That's not really the question here, they are selling out either way. So is it better to sell out at a $400 price point, or a $600 price point using the exact same hardware?

Obviously the $600 is giving them a larger profit margin considering both cards have the exact same hardware, the 670 simply has a lower clock and some disabled shaders (disabled, but still physically present).

About the only thing that might make sense to me is that the 670 processors couldn't bin high enough for the 680, but if that's the case then getting the 670 just to overclock it to 680 speeds isn't going to work well.

trust me, they aren't stupid. they look at how many of each card they sold the previous years, along with the profit they made on each, and come up with a weighted ratio of models to produce for maximum profit. they would be crazy not to utilize simple statistics to keep their profit at the bleeding edge of the green.

[hostage67]

Originally Posted by §k¥¥ |{£øúÐz

trust me, they aren't stupid. they look at how many of each card they sold the previous years, along with the profit they made on each, and come up with a weighted ratio of models to produce for maximum profit. they would be crazy not to utilize simple statistics to keep their profit at the bleeding edge of the green.

I think you are missing the point...

They clearly have a very limited number of cards being produced at the moment. So lets just give that a number so we can quantify it. Lets say they are producing 1,000 cards a week. Each week the entire 1,000 cards gets sold.

1,000 x $400 = $400,000 (GTX 670)
1,000 x $600 = $600,000 (GTX 680)

doing the simple math that's $200,000 they are losing each week, production costs are the same between the two since they are physically identical cards, the 670 simply has portions disabled. That being the case the numbers simply don't add up. Why would a company purposely sell at a lower profit margin.

What you are saying about the weighted ratio's only make sense if they have enough stock to fill the orders. But when stock is in short supply those numbers are no longer relevant since you are guaranteed to sell 100% of your stock regardless, the question is simply at what price point.

[Sephiroth]

I'm with you hostage.

The cores are identical in size, it's no cheaper to make a 670 die than it is a 680 die.

Given this there are only two possibile conclusions;
Nvidia is artifically creating supply issues
or
They're having stable yield issues with all 8 clusters enabled, and the 670's are disabled versions of the failed units.