[VR] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Specifications Revealed

[f1sherman]

2 cards in your sig - 580@950, and 7970@1150...

That is 1% apart in OC department

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I like how VID can be set higher than it needed to be and it's considered a boon because it overclocked x amount without adding voltage.

 

[blackened23]

2 cards in your sig - 580@950, and 7970@1150...

That is 1% apart in OC department

Stock MSI lightning clock is 832 clocked (reference is 778), so 950 is around 125mhz over stock. Consider that the MSI lightning is an aftermarket cooled premium card with additional power phases and better VRM components -- this is considerably better than how well a reference GTX 580 would overclock. Meanwhile, a *reference* 7970 at 1150 is 225mhz over stock. And it does go beyond 1150 with additional voltage, although I don't run it that high 24/7.

So generally, my opinion is that most 7970s overclock very easily especially with more voltage. And they definitely overclock considerably better than the GTX 580. We can go back and forth on this forever though, but thats what I think based on my experience using these products

 

[f1sherman]

*772MHz is default!!!!

And yes everyone agrees that Tahiti is a good OC-er, but it's not the 1st card that was shipped with OC margin, and with good probability to boot

 

[MrK6]

I don't think it will pull that high OC since I assume it will be already high clocked to surpass the 7970, remember this is the performance chip which wasn't meant to compete with the high-end AMD. On the other hand I think it will be priced lower than 500$.

Well it remains to be seen how much they sacrificed to reign in performance/watt on this new process and architecture. AMD set the bar pretty high with the 7xxx series, and it will be interested to see if nvidia follows suit.

How many 7970 can do 40+%? C'mon, lets stay realistic here. What is the average OC a 7970 can be expected to do with reasonable voltage for 28nm (be it stock or raised)?

Well that would up to the user, wouldn't? Those are pretty ambiguous qualifiers.

 

[f1sherman]

btw... nothing easier for AMD then to release OC updated BIOS, if they feel confident enough

I remember EVGA giving "free boost" to their customers in such a way

 

[Crap Daddy]

We can't predict how much this card will overclock and what will be the benefits. From what I understood the 7970's performance scales very good with overclocking. But this is what I understand is going on:

NV is "adapting" to the market. GK104 was designed to replace the GF114 as the "performance" chip. Due to the "great" performance of Tahiti they realize this chip can compete with AMD's high-end. It can even be better. Since the big boy, GK100/110 whatever, is still not ready they decide to launch the GK104 under the name GTX680 since it outperforms TahitiXT (how and by what margins remains to be seen). The bad news is that by naming it 680 it will de facto replace the 580 at a similar price point (hope I'm wrong) bringing an increase in performance (based on what the 7970 has above the 580) of around 30% at maximum.

As for the GK110 which should have been the real successor of the 580, there's no need for it now in this GPU market. The Teslas and the Quadros can wait a little longer.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

We can't predict how much this card will overclock and what will be the benefits. From what I understood the 7970's performance scales very good with overclocking. But this is what I understand is going on:

NV is "adapting" to the market. GK104 was designed to replace the GF114 as the "performance" chip. Due to the "great" performance of Tahiti they realize this chip can compete with AMD's high-end. It can even be better. Since the big boy, GK100/110 whatever, is still not ready they decide to launch the GK104 under the name GTX680 since it outperforms TahitiXT (how and by what margins remains to be seen). The bad news is that by naming it 680 it will de facto replace the 580 at a similar price point (hope I'm wrong) bringing an increase in performance (based on what the 7970 has above the 580) of around 30% at maximum.

As for the GK110 which should have been the real successor of the 580, there's no need for it now in this GPU market. The Teslas and the Quadros can wait a little longer.

I hear it a lot this launch, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. IMO Nvidia is working as fast as they can to get GK100 out, there is no reason not to.

If GK104 can compete with the 7970 and GK100 is considerably faster Nvidia would release it as soon as they possibly could to further devalue AMD's products.

 

[f1sherman]

AMD needs higher GPU prices, to raise margins and give some value to their brand (after all 384bit is closer to high-end then 320mm2 GK104 256bit)

7700 are just terribly priced, and 7800 - good $50 overpriced.

Nvidia too has nothing against good margins, but discrete GPU are their core business and they need to sell them ALOT.

Yet there is not much happening driving demand up.

So where do they meet with prices this round?

Wouldnt it be a nobrainer for both companies to invest in PC gaming industry?!

 

[Nintendesert]

If TSMC is indeed providing low amounts of 28nm wafers and chips to customers like Nvidia and AMD, this would explain why there was so much OC headroom left on the 7xxx series and perhaps even on some of the new Kepler cards. The companies are simply trying to improve yields by picking a speed that's going to give enough improvement over the previous gen so it'll sell while still keeping a large number of chips going to the AIBs.

Had AMD clocked the 7970 200mhz faster they would have created a bigger chip shortage than they may already have. For them that would have adversely affected profits too much.

That's my theory anyways, problems at the fabs mean higher prices and lower clocks to boost the quantity of chips they can ship.

 

[blackened23]

We can't predict how much this card will overclock and what will be the benefits. From what I understood the 7970's performance scales very good with overclocking. But this is what I understand is going on:

NV is "adapting" to the market. GK104 was designed to replace the GF114 as the "performance" chip. Due to the "great" performance of Tahiti they realize this chip can compete with AMD's high-end. It can even be better. Since the big boy, GK100/110 whatever, is still not ready they decide to launch the GK104 under the name GTX680 since it outperforms TahitiXT (how and by what margins remains to be seen). The bad news is that by naming it 680 it will de facto replace the 580 at a similar price point (hope I'm wrong) bringing an increase in performance (based on what the 7970 has above the 580) of around 30% at maximum.

As for the GK110 which should have been the real successor of the 580, there's no need for it now in this GPU market. The Teslas and the Quadros can wait a little longer.

I don't agree with this assessment at all. I think what really happened is that NV did this out of necessity because GK100 engineering samples failed and had to be scrapped, while the GK110/112 won't be ready until late Q3 or Q4. With this in mind they tweaked the GK104 as much as they could to be a flagship product, because its all they have right now. For all we know GK110/112 is vaporware currently so its pretty meaningless to discuss it as being a flagship. If anyone wants to speak of vaporware as a flagship product, why stop there, we could go on the maxwell, sea islands, etc.

 

[railven]

AMD needs higher GPU prices, to raise margins and give some value to their brand (after all 384bit is closer to high-end then 320mm2 GK104 256bit)

7700 are just terribly priced, and 7800 - good $50 overpriced.

Nvidia too has nothing against good margins, but discrete GPU are their core business and they need to sell them ALOT.

Yet there is not much happening driving demand up.

So where do they meet with prices this round?

Wouldnt it be a nobrainer for both companies to invest in PC gaming industry?!

I personally think that part in the end is the effect caused by the console explosion. Outside of processing issues at TSMC, there has been very little in terms of hardware pushing games. The few games we can name don't really push hardware to a point where some people HAD to run out and upgrade. The new games that are announced don't even exploit that new hardware.

Metro 2033/Crysis 2/BF3 are all more than playable at incredibly IQ without maxing out, and those are the only three that pop into my head in the last two years, and frankly I'd cross Crysis 2 because most people probably beat it before the DX11 patch came out (and I know I didn't care enough for the game to replay it.)

AMD might be taking a lax approach because they might know more of what is in store for the future (if all three consoles ARE being handled by AMD, and we saw how many console ports we got, there might not even be a need for these giant GPUs we all crave.)

I'm just guessing but we're still using DX9 almost 10 years after it launched. Has that ever happened before? I can't even remember when I last used DX8 haha.

 

[Crap Daddy]

I don't agree with this assessment at all. I think what really happened is that NV did this out of necessity because GK100 engineering samples failed and had to be scrapped, while the GK110/112 won't be ready until late Q3 or Q4. With this in mind they tweaked the GK104 as much as they could to be a flagship product, because its all they have right now. For all we know GK110/112 is vaporware currently so its pretty meaningless to discuss it as being a flagship. If anyone wants to speak of vaporware as a flagship product, why stop there, we could go on the maxwell, sea islands, etc.

I have been saying almost the same thing. GK104 is capable of beating Tahiti, GK110 is not ready, launch GK104 as GTX680, get the money.

 

[f1sherman]

For all we know GK110/112 is vaporware currently so its pretty meaningless to discuss it as being a flagship. If anyone wants to speak of vaporware as a flagship product, why stop there, we could go on the maxwell, sea islands, etc.

Does not really matter, TSMC or Nvidia, BigK is simply not ready.

Fermi for instance, was late according to Jensen, because of them BOTH.

I'm just guessing but we're still using DX9 almost 10 years after it launched. Has that ever happened before? I can't even remember when I last used DX8 haha.

How about x64? They don't even bother to give us even that tiny 64 bit compiled binary :wall <-- hits head:

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I don't agree with this assessment at all. I think what really happened is that NV did this out of necessity because GK100 engineering samples failed and had to be scrapped, while the GK110/112 won't be ready until late Q3 or Q4. With this in mind they tweaked the GK104 as much as they could to be a flagship product, because its all they have right now. For all we know GK110/112 is vaporware currently so its pretty meaningless to discuss it as being a flagship. If anyone wants to speak of vaporware as a flagship product, why stop there, we could go on the maxwell, sea islands, etc.

Do you have a link where Nvidia stated GK100 was scraped?

I'd like to know where people are getting the information that GK100 was scrapped and we have to wait for the next series refresh for a bigK product.

 

[railven]

How about x64? They don't even bother to give us even that tiny 64 bit compiled binary :wall <-- hits head:

Tell me about it, WoW just released a 64bit client in it's seventh year of existence.

When my HD 5870 got 40-50FPS in BF3 online @ Ultra with MSAA-off, Post-Processing-Medium, I realized the best looking game I've played to this point still isn't breaking my 1.5 year old GPU. That doesn't seem right.

 

[tviceman]

I don't agree with this assessment at all. I think what really happened is that NV did this out of necessity because GK100 engineering samples failed and had to be scrapped, while the GK110/112 won't be ready until late Q3 or Q4. With this in mind they tweaked the GK104 as much as they could to be a flagship product, because its all they have right now. For all we know GK110/112 is vaporware currently so its pretty meaningless to discuss it as being a flagship. If anyone wants to speak of vaporware as a flagship product, why stop there, we could go on the maxwell, sea islands, etc.

I think every company tweaks and engineers their chips "the best that they can." The fact that GK100 or whatever isn't out first doesn't mean Nvidia put "extra engineering" into GK104, as it would have been way too late in the design process to start adding in features or changing the design. GK104 is going to end up performing exactly how it was meant to, whether or not Tahiti would have been faster or slower.

I think this whole situation is a result of several factors. 1) This is AMD's first compute-focused GPU, and they may have played it safe on design to make sure they didn't have the transition problems that Nvidia had with Fermi. 2) AMD clearly played it it safe on Tahiti's clock speeds. 3) Related to 1 and 2, AMD's philosophy is to be first to market. This also could have affected how their chips and design process went. 4) JHH has been saying for quite awhile now that Kepler would have a much greater focus on performance per watt than past architectures which might be playing a very pivotal role on how Nvidia will have managed to get equal or better perf per mm ^ 2 than AMD.

I think AMD's move to compute combined with Nvidia's focus on perf per watt is the result of what we are about to see - GK104 besting Tahiti in "normal" situations. I think Tahiti will still have the upper hand in multi-monitor setups due to it's higher memory bandwidth and higher amount of vram. And, ironically, I don't think Nvidia's GK106 will be able to beat Pitcairn. Pitcairn packs an amazing punch for it's size.

 

[RussianSensation]

Had AMD clocked the 7970 200mhz faster they would have created a bigger chip shortage than they may already have. For them that would have adversely affected profits too much.

Good thing that GK104 will most likely beat HD7970 in DX11 games. That means AIBs will finally release much faster clocked HD7970, as AMD intended.

Sapphire Toxic 7970 @ 1150mhz / GDDR5 6000mhz + 6GB VRAM

 

[blackened23]

Good thing that GK104 will most likely beat HD7970 in DX11 games. That means AIBs will finally release much faster clocked HD7970, as AMD intended.

Sapphire Toxic 7970 @ 1150mhz + 6GB VRAM

Did reviews get released without me knowing about it? Where can I find these benchmarks, I want to see them. I've seen 2 rumors indicating slower than 7970 performance, 10 rumors of "between 7950 and 7970" performance, 2 rumors indicating close to 7970 performance and another indicating greater than 7970.

Wake me up when the nvidia marketing rubbish ends and solid figures are released. Until then, I can only declare SLI 470s overclocked to a billion mhz the winner.

 

[tviceman]

Good thing that GK104 will most likely beat HD7970 in DX11 games. That means AIBs will finally release much faster clocked HD7970, as AMD intended.

Sapphire Toxic 7970 @ 1150mhz / GDDR5 6000mhz + 6GB VRAM

I'm guessing $699 for that card.

 

[RussianSensation]

Wake me up when the nvidia marketing rubbish ends and solid figures are released. Until then, I can only declare SLI 470s overclocked to a billion mhz the winner.

It's not marketing rubbish. Only Charlie has stated that GK104 is horrible in some scenarios and is faster in others. Almost all other sources consistently point to 30-50% faster than GTX580, which pretty much seals the deal for DX11 games. Based on what Kyle said at HardOCP (a website that's probably the most frequently quoted on our forum), GTX680 beats 7970 in DX11 games. Regardless if GK104 wins or not, more factory pre-overclocked 7970s are coming. AMD has said for a while that AIBs will be launching factory clocked 7970s. If GTX680 easily beats the 7970, that will only encourage AIBs to release even faster clocked 7970s. That's a good thing for the market.

 

[chimaxi83]

Did reviews get released without me knowing about it? Where can I find these benchmarks, I want to see them. I've seen 2 rumors indicating slower than 7970 performance, 10 rumors of "between 7950 and 7970" performance, 2 rumors indicating close to 7970 performance and another indicating greater than 7970.

Wake me up when the nvidia marketing rubbish ends and solid figures are released. Until then, I can only declare SLI 470s overclocked to a billion mhz the winner.

Hey, only if they're water cooled, you got them on the cheap, and your girl bought them for you

 

[blackened23]

It's not marketing rubbish. Only Charlie has stated that GK104 is horrible in some scenarios and is faster in others. Almost all other sources consistently point to 30-50% faster than GTX580. Based on what Kyle said at HardOCP (a website that's probably the most frequently quoted on our forum), GTX680 beats 7970 in DX11 games. Regardless if GK104 wins or not, that means more factory pre-overclocked 7970s are coming and more competition. AMD has said for a while that AIBs were launching factory clocked 7970s. It's good to see that AIBs are upping up their game.

http://helixpc.com/archives/231

The GTX 670 Ti branding was first revealed by VR-Zone Chinese earlier this month and Sweclockers&#8217; sources - Taiwanese AIB partners &#8211; confirm the same. They peg the release date in March after Cebit 2012. This suggests a release some time between March 11th and March 31st. The GeForce GTX 670 Ti is vaguely indicated to have performance &#8220;better than GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950&#8243;, which implies average performance somewhere between HD 7950 and HD 7970.

http://videocardz.com/30687/nvidia-is-releasing-gk104-as-geforce-gtx-670-ti

After many rumors floating around the web about upcoming GeForce 600 Series, we have finally confirmed information. VR-Zone suggests that NVIDIA is planning to name their GK104 Kepler gpu as GeForce GTX 670 Ti. GeForce GTX 670 Ti would have better performance than GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950. According to VR-Zone GK104 performance would place it between Radeon HD 7950 and 7970.

There were many rumors about two to three variants of GK104, so GTX 670 Ti may be only one of them. We had information that GK104 is actually GeForce GTX 680. New information suggest that NVIDIA would add Ti brand to GTX x70 card, this has not happened before.

According to VR-Zone NVIDIA is planning to release GTX 670 Ti between March 11th and March 31st. Source of this information is from Sweclockers, which have a confirmation from Taiwanese AIB partners.

GeForce GTX 670 Ti would feature 1536 shader processors, 128 texture and 32 raster operating units. Card would be equipped with 2GB GDDR5 memory with 256-bit interface. Core clock is to be set around 950 MHz.

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2012/2012022401_First_Kepler_GPUs_may_be_with_us_in_March.html

Getting accurate information is difficult, as the GPUs are still under NDA, but if the rumors are to be believed then GTX 670 Ti will outperform GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950, implying performance somewhere between HD 7950 and HD 7970. The source says that GK104 will have 1536 shaders, 128 TMU, 32 ROP and 2 GB 256-bit GDDR5 memory. GTX 670 Ti will contain the best binned cores (ie those which have been tested and shown to perform best) and is expected to have a core clock 950 MHz and memory clock of 5 GHz.
This card is expected to replace GTX 560 Ti in the marketplace, indicating that NVidia will initially not be releasing their high-end cards. This is backed up by reports that the successor to GTX 580 (based on the GK110 core) will not be launched until Q3 or even Q4 2012. So anyone wanting the absolute fastest GPU today will still be looking at AMD's Radeon HD 7970 for at least 6 months. However, with GTX 670 Ti (and HD 7950) being not too far behind, performance wise, there will be more choices for users wanting a high-end card but unable to afford the absolute best currently available.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-kepler-g...i-arrives-march-2012-performs-gtx-580-hd7950/

Rumors of a Kepler GPU based on the GK104 core were already circulating the web, The GeForce GTX670Ti which is the successor to the GF-114 based GeForce GTX560Ti would be a performance tier arsenal from Nvidia against the AMD&#8217;s recently released HD7000 Series cards with performance levels better than Geforce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950.

http://www.techpowerup.com/160933/Top-NVIDIA-GK104-Part-Gets-GeForce-GTX-670-Ti-Branding.html?cp=2

Speaking of performance, sources told SweClockers that they expect the GeForce GTX 670 Ti to outperform GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950.

I can find at least 15 more sources showing this same thing. Your assertion that only Charlie suggested 7950 performance for the GK104 is absurd. Now lets be clear, I don't know how it will perform, GK104 could well be better.

 

[RussianSensation]

Every single one of those sources you sighted is old, dating all the way to February 20-21st. I specifically said that based on the most recent information.

Look at the most recent information from the last 3-5 days.

- Highest SKU of GK104 is now GTX680 not GTX670Ti. At least half of the links you provided incorrectly call GK104 GTX670Ti
- "Rumored" performance is anywhere from 30-50% faster than GTX580, based on benchmarks from China (that's 2 days old info)
- Kyle @ [H] stated it beats HD7970 in real world DX11 non-canned benches (just yesterday)

If each Kepler SP is 3x slower than a Fermi SP, that means ~ 512 Fermi SPs @ 700mhz GPU. GK104 has same memory bandwidth as GTX580. GTX580's weak spot was 2560x1600 as a result of only 64 TMUs. GK104 ups that to 128TMUs. If each Kepler SP is just 2x slower, that's ~ 768 Fermi SPs @ 700mhz GPU, coupled with 128TMUs! That would shred GTX580 to pieces.

Either way, let's not get into another endless discussion of GK104 vs. HD7970. I simply stated that because it's most likely that GK104 will beat HD7970 in DX11 games, AIBs will be even more encouraged to release faster clocked 7970s. I linked to a Sapphire Toxic card coming out as a sign that AIBs are finally upping their game. That's excellent news.

Here is yet another factory pre-overclocked 7970:

PowerColor Vortex II , 1100mhz GPU

 

[DeeJayeS]

Wake me up when the nvidia marketing rubbish ends and solid figures are released. Until then, I can only declare SLI 470s overclocked to a billion mhz the winner.

Hey, only if they're water cooled, you got them on the cheap, and your girl bought them for you

:biggrin: