Gtx 680. Are you buying one? Why or why not?

[superjim]

I've had a little bit of mid-life-video-card crises lately. It started in January with the 7970 launching and me wanting to upgrade my trusty 5870 that served me faithfully for nearly 2.5 years. I picked up a 6970 for $250 in January but then saw the OCing potential of the 7900 series, specifically the 7950 for less money. Picked up the Sapphire 7950 OC because of it's awesome thermals/OCing. Sold the 6970, broke even (thank god).

This brings us to this morning where, out of sheer impulse, I was able to snag two 680s with the intent to scalp them on ebay (yeah I know, I don't do this very often). But now I'm debating on whether to keep one and sell the 7950. It really depends on two things: 1) what I can still get out of the 7950 money-wise and 2) the OCing potential of the 680. My 7950 will run 1100/1575 with 1.2v which is roughly comparable to a stock 680 give or take 5% (an unnoticeable 5% I might add). The 680 OCing jury is still out with rumors of "capped OCing by NV in the BIOS" and the GPU boost boggling things up. Time will tell.

 

[Rvenger]

I would admit that I never just pulled the trigger so fast on a purchase... and I never spent remotely close to $500 on a videocard.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

People really need to wait and see how AMD's pricing responds before buying. If they don't at least do that then they are wasting money.

no they don't, that's teh last thing we want to happen if we're really hoping for AMD to drop prices

if AMD sees the GTX680 being bought up in droves while their own 7900 sales stagnate, they'll have no choice but to drop prices

if too many consumers decided to play the "wait and see" game, nothing would happen. Why would AMD lower their prices if the numbers didn't reflect a need for it?

That being said I went for a 680 because I want the fastest possible performance for my 120Hz 1080p monitor with the least number of GPUs, and the 680 will give me that. Really the only way a 7970 could catch my attention now is if its price plummets into the $300 range, basically to the point where I couldn't pass up buying two of them for crossfire despite not really wanting to go back to more than a single GPU solution. And that's simply not going to happen.

 

[smackababy]

Once a good water block for one is released, I will pull the trigger.

 

[dust]

I've come to the realization that my cards bitcoin mine FAARRRR more than they game, so no.

Though it does pain me to know that I just received my 7970s yesterday, and they are now outdated in gaming performance less than 24 hours later. 12 hours to be exact. Never been outdated that quickly before lol.

1.2 Thash/sec is pretty nice though.

And I got the sapphire dual-X ones. Holy wow they are quiet compared to my old 5870s, even if I crank the fan to 100%.

 

[Vesku]

No, waiting for good $300 28nm cards. The 660ti/670 needs to show up or 7870 needs to drop $50.

 

[Corporate Thug]

I like to go a notch or two BELOW top of the line so I'm waiting to see with the GTX 660/670 has to offer. I'm hoping the 670 will offer GTX580 performance with 6XX features at $300...that would be sweet as hell.

 

[Subyman]

I grabbed an EVGA 680 from newegg earlier. I've had my 470 for just over 2 years I believe and enjoyed buying it right around its launch to maximize the life of the card. I decided to jump in quick on the 680 so that I can keep it for around 2 years. I won't have to even dream of upgrading for quite a while, that is worth alot for me. I'll add a waterblock in a month or so and be all set.

 

[amenx]

I'm buying 2. Jury is still out on overclocking the 680 and I hope they don't disappoint me in that respect.

Check this out.

http://kingpincooling.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1681

Of course I dont expect all 680s to do as well through out, still interesting results here.

 

[Martimus]

I was expecting it to be better after reading the title in the AT article, but it is worse in all of the most demanding games than the 7970. I wouldn't get one anyway, since Wreckage and Rollo have ruined all nVidia products for me, but now I doubt that I will see price reductions in the competing AMD products.

 

[blackened23]

I was expecting it to be better after reading the title in the AT article, but it is worse in all of the most demanding games than the 7970. I wouldn't get one anyway, since Wreckage and Rollo have ruined all nVidia products for me, but now I doubt that I will see price reductions in the competing AMD products.

Who's wreckage?

 

[Rvenger]

I grabbed an EVGA 680 from newegg earlier. I've had my 470 for just over 2 years I believe and enjoyed buying it right around its launch to maximize the life of the card. I decided to jump in quick on the 680 so that I can keep it for around 2 years. I won't have to even dream of upgrading for quite a while, that is worth alot for me. I'll add a waterblock in a month or so and be all set.

I thought the same thing and now I regret purchasing all those other cards in between. i.e 2x GTX 480s and an HD6950

 

[jackstar7]

I would have gotten two, but they're not compatible with my setup (3xDP monitors). Maybe if a nice custom comes out it might be worth the switch.

 

[ZipSpeed]

I will wait for the 2nd gen update for 28nm. Pretty happy with my GTX 580 @ 1200p.

 

[MrK6]

With a 7970 at 1300MHz+, I haven't seen anything that suggests a GTX 680 can catch it, nevermind have a high enough performance lead to make it worth the trouble of switching. Big K on the other hand, hopefully will be a different story.

 

[Insomniator]

No because Starcraft 2 and ME 3 run maxed on my 470.

 

[Rvenger]

Who's wreckage?

This guy:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review?all=true

 

[HOOfan 1]

I would want to see the rest of the lineup fleshed out (670? 660? 660 Ti? IDK what they'd be called) before making any decision.

Looks great so far, but my dual GTX 560 Ti are already underutilized by MW3 and LoL, which is what I've been mostly playing in recent months.

Yeah I'd like to see what a $200 cheaper card in this lineup can do. How long will I have to wait though? My Geforce 3 Ti 200 isn't cutting it anymore

 

[railven]

Was going to wait for the GTX 670 (my price cap was $450) but hey, it's Premium Season - $50 more and I'm sure I get a lot more performance out of it.

Ordered an EVGA soon as F5 showed them on Newegg. Now hoping for a price cut on HD 7970 and I can claim the difference as a refund

Competition FTW!!!

 

[Rvenger]

My Geforce 3 Ti 200 isn't cutting it anymore

Not sure if serious?

 

[Golgatha]

Equal/better/much better performance than my current 7970 (depends on the game), should do better at Folding@Home (hopefully sooner than later) in the near future, I want to play Alice and Batman with PhysX support, and I get random screen minimizations to the desktop when I first startup Rift (which isn't game breaking, but is none-the-less annoying, and further anecdotal evidence AMD still couldn't write a stable video driver to save their collective asses).

Gave my 7970 almost 2 months of trial for team red. Defecting to team green and regretting ever trying team red in the first place. Should have just stuck with my GTX 570 for awhile longer. Probably looking to be a $100 lesson learned. I'll just stick with nVidia and eVGA from here on forward. Besides the Rift startup issue, the fan profile is just plain obnoxious on the 7970. There is no steady ramp up with temperature. It's either completely silent or a hair dryer.

To be fair, most of my other games worked pretty well and without issues on this card, CCC is in much better shape than it was 2-3 years ago (which isn't saying much, as it was oftentimes crash happy and unusable in Crossfire with my 5850s), it overclocks easily (easy 1075/1475 without ever messing with voltages) and has beastly performance (30-40% faster than my GTX 570 when overclocked), but there are enough small bugs and noise irritations with this card that I'm still not nearly as happy with it as I was with my rock-solid stable GTX 570. I used that card for about 1.5 years and never ever had any issues. Hoping to have the same experience with my new eVGA GTX 680.

 

[dust]

Definitely not! Although, if I would be in the market for a 500$ card, I would at least wait for some user reviews, one driver revision, comments on power circuitry. I might skip all that if I could benefit of the same return/ warranty policies you guys have in U.S.

 

[HOOfan 1]

Not sure if serious?

Yes...my current gaming computer, which doesn't run games any newer than ~2005 has a Willamette Pentium 4 1.9Ghz. 256 MB of RDRAM, 40GB hard drive and a Geforce 3 Ti 200.

I am one of those famous "I'm going to wait and see how the next crop of processors and graphics cards performs before I buy new stuff" guys. I've been waiting on the next big thing since 2004

 

[Subyman]

Equal/better/much better performance than my current 7970 (depends on the game), should do better at Folding@Home (hopefully sooner than later) in the near future, I want to play Alice and Batman with PhysX support, and I get random screen minimizations to the desktop when I first startup Rift (which isn't game breaking, but is none-the-less annoying, and further anecdotal evidence AMD still couldn't write a stable video driver to save their collective asses).

Gave my 7970 a month or so of trial for team red. Defecting to team green and regretting ever trying team red in the first place. Should have just stuck with my GTX 570 for awhile longer. Probably looking to be a $100 lesson learned. I'll just stick with nVidia and eVGA from here on forward. Besides the Rift startup issue, the fan profile is just plain obnoxious on the 7970. There is no steady ramp up with temperature. It's either completely silent or a hair dryer.

I haven't been serious about AMD since I had a 4870. Had too many driver problems and crossfire was always acting up. I wanted to like the 7000 series but they priced it to the moon. I'm staying with green this time around again.

 

[Jhatfie]

Not me, my 7950 OC that I got for $460 runs 24/7 at 1200/1750 @ 1.2v which should put it pretty close to the same performance of a boosted 680 in most games. However if I was buying something new, I'd likely go for the GTX as it has superior thermals and is cheaper than a 7970.