NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMetro 2033
Paired with Crysis as our second behemoth FPS is Metro: 2033. Metro gives up Crysis’ lush tropics and frozen wastelands for an underground experience, but even underground it can be quite brutal on GPUs, which is why it’s also our new benchmark of choice for looking at power/temperature/noise during a game. If its sequel due this year is anywhere near as GPU intensive then a single GPU may not be enough to run the game with every quality feature turned up.
Metro was another game that the GTX 680 had trouble with, leading to it trailing the 7970 by the slightest bit. With multiple GPUs thrown into the mix that slight gap has significantly widened, leading to the GTX 690 once again trailing the 7970CF, particularly at 2560 and 5760. In this case the GTX 690 is only hitting 82% of the 7970CF’s performance at 5760, and 84% at 2560. It’s only at 1920 (and 100fps) that the GTX 690 can catch up. So much like the GTX 680, NVIDIA’s not necessarily off to a great start here compared to AMD.
Meanwhile GTX 690 performance relative to the GTX 680 SLI once again looks good here, although not quite as great as with Crysis. At 5760 the GTX 690 achieves 96% of the performance, and at 2560 97% of the performance. So far the GTX 690 is more or less living up to NVIDIA’s claims of being two 680s on a single card.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
200 Comments
View All Comments
tviceman - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Last page: Based on our benchmarks we’re looking at 95% of the performance of the GTX "580 SLI" - 580 SLI should read 680 SLI.UltraTech79 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I wish there was a separate button to point out this sort of thing so they could silently correct it. Dont get me wrong, I think its good to have accurate information, just clutters things up a bit.Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
My inbox is always open.=)mediaconvert - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
p 2While the basic design of the GTX 690 resembles the GTX 590, NVIDIA has replaced virtually every bit "with plastic with metal" for aesthetic/perceptual purposes.
surely "with plastic with metal" to "of plastic with metal"
still a good review
rockqc - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
1st line on page 2 "Much like the GTX 680 launch and the GTX 590 before it, the first generation the first generation of GTX 690 cards are reference boards being built by NVIDIA"First generation has been written twice.
Torrijos - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
The first benchmark plotted (Crysis) has a resolution of 5760 x 1200, this has to be wrong!tipoo - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It's crazy but right. He tested that resolution on multiple games.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
If you look at accumulated benchmarks across the web, the 680 Nvidia cards beat the 7970 amd cards by a much higher percentage in 1920x1080 (17.61% ahead) than they do in 1920x1200 (10.14% ahead).This means anand reviews always tests in 1920x1200 to give the amd cards a prettier looking review, instead of testing in 1920x1080 (the most commonly available resolution at 1920x that they could easily set their 1920x1200 monitors to).
Hence their tests here at anand are likely also amd favorably biased in higher resolutions.
http://translate.google.pl/translate?hl=pl&sl=...
A5 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It's not like 19x12 is an uncommon or unavailable resolution. Maybe Nvidia should improve their 19x12 performance?crimson117 - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Sadly, it is a very uncommon resolution for new monitors. Almost every 22-24" monitor your buy today is 1080p instead of 1200p. :(