Galaxy GeForce GTX 680 NVIDIA 3D Vision Performance Review Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,289 words · ~6 min read
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3D Vision one of NVIDIA's Marquee technology so to go along with the
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GeForce GTX 680 launch here I've got my
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Galaxy GeForce GTX 680 I can remove the glasses so you guys can see what the
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card looks like if you haven't already seen my regular performance review or my
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unboxing and the focus of this video is going to be on 3D Vision so what
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differentiates 3D Vision from its competitors first and foremost is the
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fact that it uses the NVIDIA ecosystem so you get a 3D Vision certified display
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in this case I'm using the vg236h monitor from ASUS honestly if you're
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buying a 3D Vision setup today I would definitely recommend going with one of
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the newer monitors with light boost whether it's the BenQ 2420t or the ASUS
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27 in I can't remember the model of it but it has light boost light boost makes
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all the difference in the world whether you're using Gen 2 glasses the ones that
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look like this or generation one glasses
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it definitely reduces headaches reduces cross talk between the two images and
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provides a much brighter more immersive 3D experience so there's Advantage
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number one is you got the NVIDIA ecosystem that is the NVIDIA graphics
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card the NVIDIA certified Monitor and the NVIDIA glasses means that everything
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works together there's no guess work involved there seems to be a lot of
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confusion about AMD's hd3d and that is for good reason I've tried on a couple
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occas occasions to get AMD hd3d working
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correctly and it can be a bit of a bear
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so for one it only works correctly over DisplayPort meaning there's only I
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think about two monitors on the market that supported out of the box and number
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two is you have to get 3D inserting middleware whereas NVIDIA is actually
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doing the work of putting in the driver profiles uh putting in the setup Wizard
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and getting you going in a fairly seamless manner
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so what are we comparing since we can't compare any AMD cards because it'd be
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hard to do apples to apples I want to compare the latest generation gtx680
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against its last generation equivalent
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the GTX 580 I also want to compare it against the GTX 570 just so you guys
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have another point of reference and finally against the GTX 590 that is the
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ruler of the roost from the last generation that is basically dual
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something between these two because it's got the same number of Cuda course as a
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580 but it's actually clocked about like a 570 so that's that's that graphics
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card so the 680 uh oh yeah so 3D why do
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we need more power for 3D well for one thing let's start I've actually already
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run all of the tests for this one so I've pretty much got them here but let's
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take a look first at a case study of the GTX 580 so in this case I'm going to
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highlight the GTX 580 Row for regular
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and then the GTX 580 Row for 3D Vision okay so in terms of average
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frame rates we see it requires about
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double the processing power in all scenarios minimum maximum and average in
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order to enable 3D Vision we get half the frame rate crisis 2 we're going to
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see a very different scenario where actually 3D Vision doesn't uh give it
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that much of a hit which is something that crisis 2 was actually designed for
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with The Witcher we see this scenario again where it takes about double the
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processing power remember it's rendering the scene from this angle and then from
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this angle and then using the glasses to show only the correct the correctly
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angled scene to each of your eyes to give you that 3d effect next Batman
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Arkham City we see once again a huge performance hit for enabling 3D Vision
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and finally with Skyrim we see the same thing where it takes about double the
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processing power so that is one big reason why stereoscopic 3D gaming
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enthusiasts might go with something like a GTX 680 over a last generation card
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because da you can actually see I'm going to
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highlight the GTX 680 with a green color
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for new NVIDIA cards okay so the 680
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actually performs across the
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board almost on par or better or sort of
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a little bit lesser or a little bit better than the last generation GTX 590
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which if you guys recall is pretty much equivalent to two GTX 5 70s or 580s
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somewhere in between that so that puts it a clear double the performance of the
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580 here in Battlefield 3 um double the
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performance of the 580 here in crisis 2 more than double the performance in the
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witch or two please note 20 FPS is not playable you'll have to dial back the
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detail levels one way or another this is just giving us the relative performance
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in a GPU bound scenario uh next we've got a significant Improvement although
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not nearly as huge as some of the ones we've seen before so 60 from 40 for the
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GTX 680 versus the 580 and finally in
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Skyrim we see yet another doubling of performance so while the regular
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performance num showed the GTX 680
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definitely beating the GTX 580 here actually yeah I guess it's
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pretty much close to double across the board maybe I should have looked more
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closely at these yeah okay oh okay
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Batman Arkham City not so much but then again not so much
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so okay what we've learned is that if you throw more processing power at it in
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this case the GTX 680 over the previous
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generation GTX 580 remember this is clocked at 1 GHz and that is a flexible
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clock speed using GPU boost it'll actually scale itself up in scenarios
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where it's not using as much power with 2 gigs of 6 GHz clocked memory this is
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using a new 28 nanometer process it consume significantly less power than
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the last generation GTX 580 so you can can see here oh no no no
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sorry not not against the GTX 580 but against the GTX 590 which is closer to
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it in terms of performance so you're uh saving as much as 100 to 150 watts under
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load across the board uh compared to a 590 and getting similar performance
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getting similar power consumption to the 580 and just blowing it out of the water
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in terms of performance especially as you guys can see in 3D Vision so if you
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want a game in stereoscopic 3D a GeForce GTX 680 is probably not a bad choice and
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thanks to Galaxy for providing the GTX 680 that I use to run these benchmarks
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don't forget to subscribe to lonus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and oh
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wow I almost forgot to mention that yes the 680 is the first graphics card from
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NVIDIA to support 3D Vision surround off
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a single card so using DisplayPort and then dual dvis you can actually run
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three displays in 3D Vision in surround mode off a single card and I shouldn't
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say it's the first because technically the 590 supports it because that one has
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dual gpus to power its three DVI ports
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but it is the first single GPU card that not only supports 3D Vision but also
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supports 3D Vision surround off a single
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card