#Nvidia gtx 680 reviews series#

So, NVIDIA made a great move with retaining its X70 pricing here. When I first tore the GTX 770 out of its box, the first thing I thought was, “ Welp, this isn’t going to be $400.” I had figured that NVIDIA was going to price the GTX 770 to align with AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition at ~$450, even though both were likely to come out about even in performance. This increase, along with the clock boost to 1,046MHz, should result in some interesting benchmarking. For the first time on a graphics card, NVIDIA’s offering GDDR5 at speeds of 7,010MHz, boasting bandwidth of 224.3GB (+15% over GTX 680). You might have noticed a “7” there in the Mem MHz section – and no, that’s no typo. As we’ll see in our testing, though, it’s a bump that reflects itself in our benchmarks. While the GTX 770 is based on the same chip as the GTX 680, both of its clocks have seen a boost, resulting in a TDP bump from 195W to 230W – rather substantial.

#Nvidia gtx 680 reviews series#

If it turns out that I’m way off the mark with that speculation, I’ll just put the blame on this delicious, ice cold thought-enhancing Maudite.Īs per the usual, let’s take a quick look at NVIDIA’s current lineup: NVIDIA GeForce Series

If NVIDIA wanted to deliver a knockout punch to AMD, it could boost the “GTX 770 Ti” core count to 1,920. The upside to a model like this is that it wouldn’t affect the GTX 780’s market placement at all, thanks to the fact that it bundles in 50% more cores.

Those features along with a clock boost would justify a $500 price-tag quite well. The 384-bit memory bus is also important. With the advent of high-res gaming (we’re talking above 1080p), a 3GB framebuffer almost seems like it should be a given at this point, but it’s not possible on GK104. With a $250 gap between GTX 770 and GTX 780, it seems inevitable that a $500 option will hit after NVIDIA’s able to get some lower-end models out there. And, well, with 700 having launched, it makes no sense to roll-out a new product with an old name. Given that, it might seem that the GTX 770 should be called the GTX 680 Ti or something similar, but because the 770 includes some exclusive 700 series perks (like GPU Boost 2.0 as mentioned above), NVIDIA’s naming scheme is justified.

Why? Because GTX 780 is based on the same silicon as TITAN and brings with it a couple of nice perks, such as 3GB (or 6GB) of GDDR5 and a 384-bit memory bus. While it is based on the same GK104 architecture, unlike the GK110 which the GTX 780 (our review) uses, it bundles in all of the 700 series niceties (such as GPU Boost 2.0), sports the same cooler as the GTX 780, and, perhaps best of all, is priced at $399 USD.Ĭonsidering the fact that the GTX 780 is priced $150 higher than the GTX 680 was at its launch, it’s worth noting that the GTX 770 retains the same pricing that the GTX 670 had at its launch. To call NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 770 a “ GTX 680 w/ a new name” would be a major understatement, however. Fast-forward to today, and we’re experiencing a bit of a deja vu moment the just-announced GTX 770 becomes the direct replacement of the GTX 680. With it came a card that performed just about on-par with the previous-generation’s champ, the GTX 480. In late 2010, NVIDIA unveiled the second model to populate its GeForce 500 series, the GTX 570.