March 16th, 2012
GeForce GTX 680 Benchmark Leaks Out, Leaves HD 7970 Behind
First real tests of GeForce GTX 680 were leaked. Card is much faster than Radeon HD 7970, leaving it behind in almost every test.
Long story short, most of the benchmarks prove that GTX 680 is indeed a good construction. According to previous leaks it was meant to be much faster than Radeon HD 7970. Tests performed by HKEPC confirm this rumor. GeForce GTX 680 was tested with LN2 cooling, with clocks up to 1006 MHz for core and 6008 MHz for memory. Default clock is capped with its own profiles, 1006 MHz is base clock, but card can change the level of gpu clock to 1058 MHz due to computing demand.
HKEPC have put GTX 680 through several tests, which include 3Dmark11 (Extreme and Performance Preset), Heaven Benchmark, Lost Planet 2, Call of Duty MW3, Batman Arkham City, Power Consumption and Temperature.
Benchmarks GTX 680 is 20% Faster than Radeon HD 7970 and 50% Faster than GTX 580
| GeForce GTX 680 | Radeon HD 7970 | GTX680 vs HD7970 | GeForce GTX 580 | GTX680 vs GTX580 | |
| 3DMark 11 Extreme Overall | 3165 | 2669 | 118% | 2077 | 152% |
| 3DMark11 Extreme GPU Score | 2869 | 2424 | 118% | 1905 | 150% |
| 3DMark11 Combined Score | 3421 | 2848 | 120% | 2520 | 120% |
| 3DMark 11 Performance Overall | 9303 | 7713 | 120% | 6578 | 141% |
| 3DMark11 Performance GPU Score | 9298 | 7406 | 125% | 6027 | 154% |
| 3DMark11 Performance Score | 7655 | 7010 | 109% | 6392 | 120% |
| Batman Arkham City [1920x1080 8xAA] | 57 | 49 | 116% | 42 | 136% |
| Call of Duty MW3 [1920x1080 8xAA] | 74 | 74 | 100% | 67 | 110% |
| Heaven Benchmark | 46.5 | 41.5 | 112% | 34.9 | 133% |
| Lost Planet 2 | 73.4 | 58.5 | 125% | 54.6 | 134% |
| Temperature Full Load | 83 | 86 | 96% | 86 | 96% |
| Temperature Idle | 33 | 40 | 82% | 37 | 89% |
Here are the official, and final specifications of GeForce GTX 680
| GeForce GTX 680 | GeForce GTX 580 | Radeon HD 7970 | |
| Core | GK-104 | GF-110 | Tahiti XT |
| Architecture | Kepler | Fermi 2.0 | GCN |
| Process | 28nm | 40nm | 28nm |
| Transistors | 3.54 billion | 3.0 billion | 4.31 billion |
| Die Size | 294mm2 | 520mm2 | 365mm2 |
| Engine Clock | 1,006MHz | 772MHz | 925MHz |
| Shader Units | 1,536 | 512 | 2,048 |
| Texture Units | 128 | 64 | 128 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Fillrate (GTexel/s) | 128.8 | 52.4 | 115.6 |
| Memory Type | 256bit GDDR5 | 384bit GDDR5 | 384bit GDDR5 |
| Memory Size | 2GB | 1.5GB | 3GB |
| Memory Date Rate | 6.0Gbps | 4.0Gbps | 5.5Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 192.26GB/s | 192.384GB/s | 264GB/s |
| PCI-Express | 3 | 2 | 3 |
| Maximum Wattage | 195W | 244W | 250W |
| Power Connectors | 2x 6-pin | 6+8-pin | 6+8-pin |
| DirectX | 11 | 11 | 11.1 |
| OpenGL | 4.1 | 4.1 | 4.1 |
| GPGPU | CUDA, OpenCL | CUDA, OpenCL | OpenCL 1.2 |
| Maximum Monitors Output | 4 | 2 | 4(6 w/MST) |
HKEPC test rig
| Test Platform | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7 3960X (With Turbo Boost) |
| Motherboard | ASUS Rampage 4 Extreme X79 MB |
| Memory | GEIL Evo 2 DDR3-2200 2GB x 4 CL9 |
| SSD / HDD | Corsair Force GT 120GB |
| VGA | MSI GeForce GTX 580/ GeForce GTX 680 /AMD Radeon HD 7970 |
| Power Supply | Corsair AX1200 PowerSupply |
| OS | Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64Bit |
GeForce GTX 680 GK104 GPU
A 28nm GK104 GPU is built with 1536 CUDA cores. Everything is packed onto 294mm2 die with almost 3.54 billion transistors. CUDA cores were trippled since GTX 580. GK104 is built with GigaThread Engine, which is placed between GPU and PCI-Express 3.0. GPU is divided into four graphics processing clusters (GPCs) which are connected to the same L2 cache and have all four have one Raster Engine. Every cluster has its two SMX, which is basically a streaming multiprocessor. SMX is equipped with PolyMorph Engine 2.0, which is accompanied by 192 CUDA cores. GK104 is also built with 8 Geometry Units, 32 Raster Operating Units and 128 Texture Units. Every Cluster has its own two SMXs, since every SMX has 192 cores, it makes 1536 CUDA cores in total.
GeForce GTX 680 – The Card
First thing is the clock, which reaches the GHz level on base settings. Card will automatically change the clock according to demand. GTX 680 has included profiles, where the Boost Clock is set to 1058 MHz (which is reference maximum clock). Card is built with 3.56 billion of transistors, which is half the billion more than its predecessor GTX 580. Fillrate was measured at 128.8 GTexels per second which is 146% more than GTX 680 and 11% more than Radeon HD 7970. Card has a similar bandwidth to GTX 580 of 192 GB/s. PCI-Express was updated to version 3.0.
NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround
GeForce GTX 680 has a support for operations on four monitors simultaneously. Since card has four outputs for displaying devices (HDMI, DisplayPort and two DVI-DL) it is possible to connect devices to all of them, and operate on multiple displays at once. This setting has a support of 3D Vision Surround technology. Every gamer that has heard of 3D Vision from NVIDIA will understand how interesting this option can be. Connecting three of four displays and play on them with stereoscopic 3D support may be quite a fun.
New Anti-Aliasing Algorithm TXAA
As we reported earlier, NVIDIA was prepaing a new anti-aliasing algoritm, which was supposed to increse image quality without decreasing framerate. It was comparable to 8xMSAA but much better. TXAA stands for super-efficient temporal anti-aliasing algorithm. It has two main levels TXAA1 and TXAA2. TXAA1 can be comparable to offer quality similar to 16 x MSAA, but performance penalty of 2xMSAA. TXAA2 is actually even better solution, there is no algorithm which would offer this quality of anti-aliasing. Performance penalty is measured to be at the level of 4xMSAA. There are few games which natively support this algorithm. To enable it we need to use NVIDIA’s Control Panel.
Adaptive VSync and GPU Boost
NVIDIA has presented a new VSync technology, which is mainly offered for gamers. Adaptive VSync is a good tool, when framerate is too slow or too fast. What new Adaptive VSync is a technology which will automatically remove the cap when framerate reaches critical 30 or less frames per second. Since low framerates offer noticeable lag, and high framerates offer page-tearing , Adaptive VSync is said to soften those transitions by making them more organic.
- READ MORE (Source): GeForce GTX 680 Test @ HKEPC [Chinese]
