GeForce GTX 690 vs 3-way SLI GTX 670 Performance & Value Comparison Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,332 words · ~6 min read
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Now, the purpose of this video is fairly simple. Because of its extremely
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scarce availability, the GTX 690, you
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know, isn't as popular as people would like for it to be. There's lots of
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people out there, I know this for a fact, who want to buy a GTX 690, who
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want the ultimate performance, but cannot find one in stock. anywhere. So,
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I have one here today and I want to treat this video as sort of a um a what
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can you do if you want ultimate performance and can't get a GTX 690 sort
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of video. So, it has come to my attention that depending on which
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retailer you look at, NCIX not being the one that I'm referring to here, a GTX
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690 can go for as much as $1,200, which
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is almost exactly the price of three GTX
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670s. So, this is going to be a head-to-head comparison in my most
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recent um in my most recent
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suite of benchmarks between 3-way SLI
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GTX 670s and a single GTX 690. I think
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we all probably know which one's likely to win at this point, but in case you
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don't, that is the purpose of doing these kinds of tests. So, I don't know
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if you can see my Fraps meter in the corner there. Look at that. It's like
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exactly where the light is making it so you can't see it. Whatever. I'll tell
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you what it says. So, this is Battlefield 3. All of the tests are going to be run at 1080p. Yes, I am
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aware that 1080p isn't necessarily I actually don't know which way I'm going
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anymore. I am aware that 1080p is not necessarily the ideal resolution for,
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you know, very high-end graphics card setups. However, I did notice that we do
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see scaling in some of the games that I've tested already where we're seeing
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more than double the performance in 3-way SLI as we're seeing with a single
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card. So, that is a very positive indicator. I'm using the brand new
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driver from NVIDIA released on May 22nd. So, this is their R300 driver. This is a
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WLE driver that supports uh the GTX 670
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and the GTX 690. You can see I'm getting aboutund
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195 FPS in Battlefield 3. This is all on ultra settings, so I'm going to be
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maxing out every game, uh, The Witcher 2, Battlefield 3, The Elder Scrolls,
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Skyrim, and Crisis 2, and bringing you
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guys the numbers head-to-head between these two very ultimaty solutions. Now,
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I had really wanted to test
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four-way SLI, but I actually didn't realize that the 670 does not support
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four-way SLI. So, one of these cards is not on the bench, and we're just going
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with these three. So, I have my reference card, my Galaxy card, and my
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other more different Galaxy card. The one that looks like this with the
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glowing logo. Pretty sweet.
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So, I'm finished my testing with the GTX 690. So, in case you guys were wondering
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what a GTX 690 looks like on the test bench, it's a little something like
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that. Looks pretty cool. Let's turn off
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the lights. You can see the glowing GeForce logo here, which glows very
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strongly and looks very cool as well. One's pretty toasty.
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Little bit of coil wine. Not too bad. Not as bad as uh my 680 or uh or any of
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my 670s, but not as good as 590, which
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had absolutely no coil wine. At least the one that uh that I have. Um
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overall, not that loud though. about pretty similar to GTX 590 in terms of
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the actual fan speed. Still got a game running on it right now. Definitely
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quieter than the 3-way GTX 670 solution
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and uh consumes less power, but remember it's two GPUs versus three GPUs. And I I
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see that that's five video cards, but I was only running three of them at a
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time. So, I'm just going to make up my little graphs and then we're good to go after I tell you the test bench, of
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course. So, this is a Radeon radio and radon nothing. uh Core i7 3930K at 4.4
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GHz with 16 gigs of Kingston HyperX RAM at DDR3600
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megahertz. I also have a Mushkin Kronos
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Deluxe drive in there and I've got my Gigabyte
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uh what is this thing? It's a GA something or other X79
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UD7. So, this is up to a 4-way SLI
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Crossfire X capable motherboard, and it's all powered by an OCZ ZX series
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1250 watt power supply. Easily capable
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of powering those three GPUs. Actually, you know what? It's uh 2:00 in the
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morning and I'm actually really tired, so I'm not going to make graphs, you guys. You'll just have to bear with me.
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So, here we go. Um, I actually have an upcoming video where I plan to do some
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GTX 670 versus Radeon 7970 scaling,
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which will be really cool. So, 1, two, and three-way configurations for both,
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seeing how they compare. But for this one, we're just looking at three times
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GTX 670s versus a single GTX 690. What
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is the better value proposition? So, you can see here in Crisis 2, the uh 3-way
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SLI configuration actually has a lower overall minimum, but a higher overall
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average, but not by much. We're talking a 5% performance advantage. In
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Battlefield 3, the 6 the 3x 670 solution just destroys
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the single 690. So, this is excellent scaling that we're seeing in this
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particular game. Um, I mean, we've got an additional 25 to 30% performance,
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probably about 25% performance from adding that additional GPU. So, that is
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a pretty good example of of of excellent scaling there. And you can see the
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minimum is even higher. That's more like 40%. Outstanding. Skyrim. Yeah, those
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look pretty similar to me within margin of error on this side. However, that
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minimum frame rate is very different. So, the GTX 690 was uh actually well the
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3-way SLI configuration was about 35% higher than the GTX 690 in terms of
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minimum FPS. And I did notice that when I was actually using it. Uh, Witcher 2
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is another one that uh, scaled okay in
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terms of averages with the 3 by GTX 670 configuration, but the minimum was a
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little bit lower. Well, quite a bit lower. But something to bear in mind about these minimums is sometimes when
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you're benchmarking, your frame rates will dip for sort of no reproducible or
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easily explainable reason. And uh, so there's a little bit of that to bear in
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mind as well. Personally, I know minimums are important to a lot of people, but personally, I put more
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weight into the averages, especially because of the way I'm collecting data
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with Fraps. Um, you can get a minimum
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that gets, you know, if both cards dip like this, you can get one of them that
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records at the very bottom of the dip because it happens to fall on that split
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second and one of them that falls here, but that doesn't mean the dip didn't
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happen. So, something to bear in mind about Fraps frame rate recording. So,
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thank you for checking out my 3-way GTX 670 versus GTX 690 performance review. I
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think that we can see that 38 by GTX 670 is a very viable option if you really do
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want the ultimate performance and you can't get your hands on one of these bad
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boys. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips.