NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTGeForce Experience & The Test
Before jumping into our test results, there’s one last thing we wanted to touch upon quickly. Along with announcing the GTX 690 at the NVIDIA Gaming Festival 2012, NVIDIA also used the occasion to announce a new software utility called GeForce Experience.
For some time now NVIDIA has offered a feature they call Optimal Playable Settings through GeForce.com, which are a series of game setting configurations that NVIDIA has tested and is recommending for various GeForce video cards. It’s a genuinely useful service, but it’s also not well known and only covers desktop GPUs.
With GeForce Experience NVIDIA is going to be taking that concept one step further and offering an application that interfaces with both the game and the successor to NVIDIA’s OPS service. The key difference being that rather than having the settings on a website and requiring the user to punch in those settings by hand, GeForce Experience can fetch those settings from NVIDIA and make the settings changes on its own. This would make the process much more accessible, as not only do users not need to know anything about how to access their settings or what they do, but the moment NVIDIA includes this with their drivers it will be far more widespread than OPS ever was.
The other change is that NVIDIA is going to be moving away from manual testing in favor of automated testing. OPS are generated by hand, whereas GeForce Experience settings are going to be based on automated testing, allowing NVIDIA to cover a wider range of games and video cards, most importantly by including mobile video cards. NVIDIA already has GPU farms for driver regression testing, so this is a logical extension of that concept to use those farms to generate and test game settings.
GeForce Experience will be launching in beta form on June 6th.
The Test
The press drivers for the GTX 690 are 301.33, though it sounds like NVIDIA will actually launch with a slightly newer version today. As the GTX 690 is launching so soon after the GTX 680 these drivers are virtually identical to the GTX 680 launch drivers. Meanwhile for the GeForce 500 series we’re using 301.24, and for the AMD Radeon cards Catalyst 12.4
We’d also like to give a shout-out to Asus, who sent us one of their wonderful PA246Q 24” P-IPS monitors to allow us to complete our monitor set for multi-monitor testing. From here on we’ll be able to offer multi-monitor results for our high-end cards, and a number of cards have already had that data added in Bench.
Next, based on an informal poll on our forums we’re going to be continuing our existing SLI/CF testing methodology. All of our test results will be with both cards directly next to each other as opposed to spaced apart in order to test the worst case scenario. Users with such a configuration are a minority based on our data, but there are still enough of them that we believe it should be covered.
Finally, we’d like to note that since we don’t have a matching pair of 7970 reference cards, we’re using our one reference card along with XFX’s R7970 BEDD. For gaming performance, power consumption, and temperatures this doesn’t have a material impact, but it means we don’t have meaningful noise performance for the 7970.
CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.2.3.1022 |
Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
Monitor: |
Samsung 305T Asus PA246Q |
Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 6990 AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 5970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 |
Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 301.24 NVIDIA ForceWare 301.33 AMD Catalyst 12.4 |
OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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InsaneScientist - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
Well, let's be fair... it's not nVidia's fault. It's TSMC that can't get their act together to produce 28nm chips in volume.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link
The GTX680 has sold more card by the verified reviewers at NewEgg than the entire lot of the 7870's and 7850's at NewEgg combined, and that's just with ONE GTX680 sold by EVGA - check it out my friend...ROFL
GTX680 in one listing outsells the entire lineup of 7870 and 7850 COMBINED at newegg- with verified owners count.
HAHAHA
Yes, the supply is always "key". ROFL
vladanandtechy - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
I must confess that every logic i can think of says i don't need this GPU.....but.....i want it....i don't need it.....but damn it....i want it.....it's nvidia....it's aluminium....it's 4 GB VRAM....it's probably 5 times faster than what i have.......and i want to congratulate the team for the review wich i read from start to finish...but to be honest with you.....you don't need 19 pages to describe it...for me...."futureproof" says it all....mamisano - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Is there any way you can post the average FPS achieved during OCCT tests? Curious how 680 SLI, 690 and 7970 CF compare in this regard.Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Sorry, but we don't currently record that data (though if it's a big enough deal we can certainly start).Filiprino - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Simply put, NVIDIA has superior software department in comparison with AMD.AMD is mainstream. Whenever they try to reach the high end, they fail miserably, both on GPU and CPU camps. Driver issues with crossfire, trifire and quadfire with or without eyefinity in numerous games (with eyefinity even more problems) etc.
If they don't get their problems solved by Catalyst 12.5 buying AMD cards for high end builds (anything multicard related) is a waste of money. And that is sad.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Yes, and the reviewer is constantly trying to catch nVidia in a big lie - and it shows - he even states how he never believed a word nVidia said about this card but had to admit it was all true.I have never, in many years, seen the same bad attitude given to amd's gpu's.
The bias in the write up is so blatant every time it's amazing they still get nVidia cards for review. The reviewer is clearly so pro amd he cannot hide it.
N4g4rok - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
He did say that Crossfire was so broken that he couldn't recommend it. He's been pointing out flaws in both companies along the way I think you should dial back the bias accusations a little bit.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Well if you want me to point out like 10 blatant direct wordings in this article I will. I'm not the only one who sees it, by the way. you want to tell me how he avoids totally broken amd drivers when he's posting the 7970CF ? Not like he had a choice there, your point is absolutely worthless.silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Okay then, for our benefit (because we're stupid and that), please point out the reviewer's transgressions.