GTX 680 & Radeon HD 7970 Length & Physical Comparsion Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,136 words · ~5 min read
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well I never really did one of these videos for the Radeon hd7970 and 7950
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launches so I guess it's fitting that I get around to it now basically what I'm
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doing is my usual length and general
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physical comparisons between these various video cards so here the reasons
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I've chosen these particular cards for comparison are one the Galaxy GTX 680
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and the uh radon hd7970 are sort of the
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the New Kids on the Block as far as high performance goes with the GTX 680 being
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the newest of all of the cards here the GTX 590 and the Radeon HD 6990 are the
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last generation King of the Hill cards both of them are dual GPU solutions that
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perform similarly especially once you overclock these uh these newer cards to
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these newer single GPU cards so we're going to see what kind of uh in addition
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to the much better power characteristics of the 680 and the 7970 how much smaller
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physically they are than their previous generation Brethren and the reason I'm
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including the GTX 580 is due to the fact that it was a similarly positioned card
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to the 680 from the last generation so we want to see what improvements NVIDIA
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has made on comparing the last generation single GPU to the current
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generation single GPU card so the 680
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is exactly 10 in Long one of the things
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I like about NVIDIA's reference cards is that they don't unnecessarily lengthen
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the card so you see how the PCB ends here and the cooler ends here this is
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something AMD just keeps doing and I can't fathom why they do this but check
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this out so the radon hd7970 remember
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guys this information is important if you need to fit one of these cards in your case the 7970 is about 11 in Long
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now what kills me about that is you guys
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can see quite clearly here actually I hope you can see quite
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clearly here the PCB ends here so they've just got extra random plastic
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shroud about yeah it looks like about a quart
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of an inch of it right off the back of the card why are you doing that I had
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trouble fitting it inside a shuttle X PC Bare Bones uh due to that extra just
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little tiny bit of space I mean I did get it in so it wasn't the end of the world but it's just a little bit
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frustrating um now in terms of the other
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aspects of the layouts of these cards these are both PCI Express 3.0 cards and
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they both have two power connectors however the GTX 680 due to its lower
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power consumption has two six pin power connectors in a unique stacked
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configuration so NVIDIA's theory about this is it'll provide slightly better
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Cable Management as well as it buys as
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buy them more room on the PCB you can
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see here that in theory it uses up less space although you can yeah I don't know
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how much I believe that because you can also clearly see next to the Stacked
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configuration there are six contact points for where we could have put a six
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pin connector right here anyway so yeah
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um you know whatever but so okay so in theory it gives them that and uh I mean
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maybe hey maybe it's working because they do have a significantly shorter
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card than the Radeon hd7970 you can't really tell this is sort of poorly
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aligned in terms of the camera but these are sitting at the same spot so this is
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how much longer the 7970 is versus the GTX 680 so it has an eight pin and a six
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pin now let's compare these to some last generation cards so here we go you know
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what let's focus on the 680 since it is the newest card
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here how long is it compared to a GTX
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580 the 580 is slightly
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longer not by much oops oh sorry I'm
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having a little bit of trouble with my chest tripod today here guys there we go
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now I got it so at 10 1/2 in versus 10
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in um there aren't too many cases where that half an inch is going to be the be
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all and end all the the actual difference in fact many cases are
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accepting graphics cards up to 12 in no problem these days so it's something to
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be aware of but if you have a gaming case like any kind of decent case it's
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probably not the end of the world now the GTX 590 at 11 in is one of the
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longest graphics cards ever produced um
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you know for I guess you could call it mainstream but it isn't really but for
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for the general consumer Market it's got two8 pin power connectors compared
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compared to and this is a similarly performing card especially in scenarios
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like 3D Vision uh we are definitely
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taking a step in the right direction not to mention the substantially improved
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power consumption that we get with the GTX 680 and finally the longest pure
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consumer card at 1T long the Radeon 6990
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so once again these are similarly performing cards but if you want to talk
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performance per inch the uh the 680 is looking pretty good and for that matter
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the 7970 looks pretty good too especially once you start overclocking
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it so to give you guys some context here I've just brought along a
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motherboard because yeah I can sort of measure these in terms of inches but
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that really doesn't help you eyeball whether they're going to fit in your case so let's take the 7970 and the GTX
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680 and my chest tripod's broken again here guys sorry about the shaky camera
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all right so you guys can visualize
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based on looking at your motherboard where it sits in your case and where the
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edge of your motherboard is see that so the 680 hangs just a little bit let's
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see how much it is looks like about a qu of an inch
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little over a qu of an inch over the edge of your motherboard so as long as
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you have that much clearance on the side of the board then you should be fine
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next we've got the 7970 which hangs
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about an inch and a qu over the edge of
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a motherboard so there you go hopefully that helps guys and don't forget to
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