Suggestions please!

[nudd]

Currently running a CrossFireX set up with 2 Radeon 6850s... I was wondering what type of performance boost I will notice when I upgrade to a GTX 680 in the near future, that is assuming I can find a buyer for my old GPUs. I will probably wait for a classified 680 to come out before I spend the money, or might even wait on the "685" or whatever the next nvidia flagship card will be called when released later this year (August I'm reading from speculation). I'm interested in getting a top of the line GPU when I'm done with my summer job so that this rig will last me for a few years, and will probably SLI the beasts when I can afford to considering I will probably need a new motherboard and PSU to go with the SLI configuration.

Questions:
1) Performance upgrade from 2x 6850's to GTX 680
2) Should I just wait for the next nvidia flagship?

Thanks once again for your help TH it is always appreciated.

 

[FtsArTek]

Going off the 400 and 500 series I wouldn't say it would be called a 685, but you never know... From 2 6850s to a 680... You'll see a bit of a framerate increase with the 680 in multi-gpu enabled games, and of course a massive jump in unsupported games. Really I suspect that there won't be a massive jump. You sure they don't mean the GTX690? In which case two 680s would be more powerful. But in any case, it's probably worth the wait, because 6850CFX is still pretty powerful.

 

[inzone]

You can get an AMD 7970 and get good performance to last a few years also. The prices should be coming down because the 680 came out at $500 so AMD is not going to sit on thier thumbs with that price so you can look for thier cards to drop significantly and the consumer will win with that option. You can wait for Nvidia and thier vendors to start releasing other models but thaqt might take a while and compared to the GTX 580 and all the models that came from that card , the release process took about a year for all those models to come out. The price on the 7970 will drop way before then. There is also talk of a 110 chip from Nvidia that everyone thought should have been the new flagship chip but we got a 104 instead that some reviewers are saying should have been a mainstream chip and not a flagship one. That means the 110 chip is out there lurking for the right time to come out and blow everything away. I'm sure Nvidia is holding it in reserve to see what AMD does.
The waiting game is always a pain because you don't want to buy now because there is for sure a better card coming out but then how long do you wait and what will be the gain over what's out now. The 680 is enough of a performance boost over what you have now that I'm sure you will be happy with a 680 and keep it for a few years and by then you can jump on what's out then. There is such a constant upgrading of technology that you really can't play the waiting game , there is always going to be something better just around the corner.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Two 6850's got 634 fps in Guru3D's game tests suite. Checking the 680, they didn't run Dirt2 on it so a apples to apples comparison isn't available. But looking at the ratio of all the other games .... we could expect 770 if Dirt2 was included....so Id guess about a 20% improvement.

Some of us have been speculating that the 680 was originally anticipated to be the 660 and therefore expecting "big kepler" to be released later this year. But that's pure speculation if if it is suggested by previously published pecs.

And yes, I expect that when we do see the 660 Ti, two of them will likely outperform the 680 by a substantial margin just as two 560's beat the 580 by 40% for less money. But we won't know for sure until we see them benched.

And yes again, I do expect that manufacturer"tweaked" factory OC'd versions of the 680 will outperform the current "reference" 680 .... look for custom PCB's and bigger coolers to push the tweaked cards 10-15% above what reference cards are capable of.....just as we saw for the 5xx series

 

[nudd]

Thanks for the quick replies. I just figured that the 690 was going to be a dual 680 type card, what I was referring to was the 110 chip card that, from what people seem to be speculating, may have a release frame around August. Perhaps I am just misinformed. I can definitely hold out though and see what's coming. I just keep seeing my primary card reaching temps of 93 degrees Celsius on BF3 in my ultra/hybrid 1080p config using my current crossfire set up...and it's a bit worrisome. I can't even run BF3 on ultra with my set up currently, and that's the goal. Don't get me wrong, I'm still getting mostly 80+ FPS near full ultra but I am really looking for a great single GPU solution. I really doubt my i7 2600k can be bottlenecking me in any form as it's OC'ed to 4.1 gHz. Also I can't add anymore gpus to my set up... my mobo only supports 2 PCI Express slots.