EVGA GeForce GTX 690 4GB Graphics Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,042 words · ~10 min read
0:07
welcome to a special Linus Tech tips unboxing of the EVGA GeForce GTX 690 so
0:14
yes this is basically like a
0:18
590 like you put it in like a you know
0:21
multiplication machine and you makes two of them so it's pretty much two did I
0:27
say 590 cuz what I meant to say was 680 I'm sorry actually haven't slept very
0:31
much in the last few days and I apologize if that comes through in this
0:34
video but uh hopefully there will be an update in the next little while as to
0:39
why that is and then you will all
0:42
understand I think so this is basically like a 680 * 2 almost it has all the
0:49
same functional units that is shaders ropps as a GTX 680 but the only key
0:55
difference is that it is clocked slightly slower now remember that the
1:00
680 and the 690 by extension have two
1:03
different clock speeds by the way this has a very empty box like you know how I
1:06
normally tell you like the stuff on the box there's like nothing on it they
1:09
expect I guess if you're spending $1,000 on a graphics card that you probably
1:13
have some idea what you're buying otherwise you wouldn't be doing it um
1:18
where was I going with that right right all the functional
1:21
units it is clocked slightly slower but not by much cuz remember 680 and 690
1:27
have two clock speeds there's the base clock clock and the Boost clock so the
1:32
base clocks are a little bit different but the Boost clocks are very very close
1:36
and these cards whenever they are operating within their power envelope
1:39
ARM yourself with EVGA very very cool hey this is cool I have one of these
1:43
it's actually here let's go see it it's over there that's what my GTX uh 590
1:47
came in sweet see got my NVIDIA ammo
1:52
box see very cool anyway sorry guys just
1:55
showing off you know how it is um so as
1:58
long as they're operating within the power envelope set out by the graphics
2:03
card it will operate at that boost clock assuming no overheating as well so in
2:09
Practical terms they are very very close
2:13
a 690 is very close in terms of performance to two 680s in SLI consumes
2:18
less power which is very very cool and is also quad SLI capable without so many
2:25
PCI Express slots being taken out because you can run 680s in Quad SLI as
2:29
well in terms of included accessories we have a powered by EVGA sticker that's
2:33
got a very cool carbon fiber kind of finish on it as well as a driver
2:36
installation disc we've got a little warning about how the card is hot and be
2:40
careful please EVGA signature GTX 690
2:43
quick start guide okay Enthusiast built
2:47
okay very neat couple little stickers user guide as well as a few accessories
2:51
so accessories I'm not expecting too much uh okay oh for please for Pete's
2:55
sakes if you're running one of these cards please do not use the DVI VGA
3:00
adapter get a real monitor okay DVI to
3:03
HDMI that might come in handy next we have a dual six pin to eight pin adapter
3:09
two of those because this graphics card does require two eight pin power
3:14
adapters and my goodness it's heavy holy cow uh here you don't have to come in
3:18
too close just for the moment I'm just going to unwrap it here so you guys will
3:22
see actually something very cool I'm going to leave this here for just a
3:26
second let you guys take kind of a a
3:29
close look at it want to touch it too much
3:35
absolutely gorgeous so we're going to do a quick size comparison against the GTX
3:40
680 so that's one thing you guys will notice it is a bit longer than a regular
3:45
gtx680 but it also Bears a striking resemblance
3:52
to the last generation GTX
3:55
590 which is in similar fashion to GTX X
4:00
580s pretty much but clocked a little bit slower so you can see okay here we
4:05
go so you can see it's a fairly similar design so NVIDIA has two Vapor Chambers
4:09
here with aluminum fins that have Plexi Windows don't worry these stickers come
4:13
off you will be able to see them very clearly um so right aluminum fins on
4:18
either side cooling the two gpus one other thing that they've done is they've
4:22
adjusted the back plate that's under the fan right there so that it doesn't have
4:26
gaps in it anymore this is in theory to reduce turbulence so they just adjusted
4:30
the back plate so it cools the components directly rather than requiring that air flow they have also
4:35
changed the Shroud see this plastic shroud bam aluminum as well as I believe
4:41
I believe one of these components is magnesium and one of them of them is aluminum but you're going to have to
4:45
forgive me I can't remember which is which but the point is that this is
4:49
almost an entirely metal card just
4:53
because we can and it's a $1,000 card so
4:57
I guess they were able to uh to figure out way to not only design it almost
5:02
entirely in metal but also put an enormous glowing GeForce GTX logo on it
5:08
that looks absolutely Beast so we had a glowing logo on the 590 now we have uh
5:14
we have we have increased the size of that their logo by a fair significant
5:19
amount it also looks quite a bit more Sleek some guys like back plates I'm
5:23
personally not an enormous fan of back plates they do look very clean you can
5:26
see the 590 did have a back plate whereas the 690 does not have a back
5:30
plate the reason for that is because the 690 is using higher density gddr5 memory
5:36
modules these are Samsung modules that are running at 6 GHz there are none on
5:41
the back because they're higher density so you no longer need those back plates
5:44
in order to cool them one thing that's really cool about the 690 is that it is
5:48
significantly overbuilt so it actually uses a very similar overall layout as
5:53
the 590 in terms of the PCB in terms of the power delivery so they've made some
5:58
tweaks but what's cool about that is the fact that these
6:02
dual uh the Dual Graphics cores on this
6:05
car do not require nearly as much power
6:08
as the cores that were on the 590 so even though we've got all of this power
6:13
delivery built into the card we don't actually need it so NVIDIA has
6:16
effectively overbuilt the card in a significant way so what that allows you
6:20
is a little bit more room for overclocking although NVIDIA doesn't
6:23
want people overvolting these I don't know if you guys remember but there were
6:27
some horror stories where the GTX we had some GTX 590s die due to people
6:32
overvolting the snot out of them and the fact that they are pretty much a Balls
6:36
to the walls Take It to the Limit design from the get-go so that was that was a
6:40
bit of a problem I wouldn't expect that to happen with the 690 though just because it is so overbuilt now speaking
6:45
of overbuilt let's have a look at what all it's got here in terms of the build
6:49
so we've got three DVI ports two dvii one DVI D so this is not
6:55
going to work with an analog adapter although you shouldn't be using analog anyway um so if you're going to run
6:59
NVIDIA surround you can run these three um that would be my recommended
7:03
configuration you've also got a dis a mini DisplayPort which I believe can be used in surround as well but for
7:08
Simplicity of configuration I would definitely suggest sticking with three
7:12
DVI ports um especially because if
7:16
you're going to want to run 3D Vision you will have to use the DVI ports now
7:19
we've also got two 8 Pin PCIe power connectors just like with the 590 and
7:24
let's just have a you know like a bit of a closer look at the overall design of
7:28
this card it looks absolutely amazing I mean even this not plastic
7:32
guys made of metal this metal metal
7:36
metal we've got like these like aircraft riety looking things holding the whole
7:41
thing together I mean this is the kind of card that I wouldn't even want to
7:45
water cool because it looks so amazing
7:48
with the uh with the stock cooler on it and I've never said that before I'm a
7:52
huge water cooling Advocate now something to bear in mind is if you do
7:56
buy one of these you're going to want to make sure you have an adequate case for
8:00
uh for ventilation because a significant amount of the heat that it outputs is
8:04
going to go directly into your case towards the front of the case which is
8:08
not the natural way that air flow goes through your system you can also look at
8:12
redesigning the air flow in your system so you can bring okay so so you guys
8:16
Envision this for me okay so you got it installed in your system you can change
8:19
your CPU to an intake and then the front to an exhaust which isn't necessarily
8:23
ideal in the sense that heat rises etc etc but it may actually help keep things
8:28
a little bit cooler and then the rest of it is going to be exhausted out the io
8:32
plate out the back of the system I'm not sure what else there is
8:36
to say about it so yeah in terms of length it is pretty much exactly the
8:39
same as the GTX 590 it just looks way
8:42
more slick I mean check this out they even put a metal piece on the fan just
8:47
because it looks amazing never seen that before but there you go and then it is a
8:52
little bit longer looks to be about an inch longer than the GTX 680 so uh true
8:57
to NVIDIA's form even with their dual GPU cards they try to keep lengths
9:01
reasonable without letting them stretch out to be you know 11 in long like the
9:06
uh the radon 6990 did I think that pretty much covers it
9:11
in terms of performance what can you expect well single GPU performance is
9:14
going to be about you know 95 to 98% of
9:17
one of these and dual GPU performance will be about 95 to 98% of two of these
9:23
except the key difference is that you got it on one
9:26
card you save a little bit of power and yeah it's expensive but so is two of
9:31
these and that doesn't stop people from buying them so there you go thank you for checking out my unboxing and first
9:36
look at the gForce GTX 690 which is
9:39
without a doubt the fastest graphics card ever built and I'm going to put a
9:43
little asteris right here at the time of filming this video because as you guys
9:47
all know technology is always moving
9:51
forward yeah I let you guys down hardcore it has 4 gigs of RAM see I told
9:55
you I was tired 2 gigs dedicated per GPU
9:58
which means that you've essentially effectively got 2 gigs of RAM which
10:03
should be plenty for triple 1080p but you might not be able to run like the
10:08
latest games in triple 2560 x600 or something like that for that I would
10:13
probably be looking for like a custom 680 SLI configuration with two 4 gig
10:17
cards just something for you guys to bear in mind so 4 gig card 2 gigs
10:23
per GPU