GeForce GTX 680 2 GB Review: Kepler Sends Tahiti On Vacation

Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012

If you need any evidence that GK104 was originally intended to fill the same “Hunter” role that the GeForce GTX 460 originally targeted, this is it.

Although the GK104 GPU’s increased shader count has a positive impact on 32-bit floating-point math, drastically outperforming the GeForce GTX 590, it’s unable to catch AMD’s Radeon HD 7950, 6990, or 7970.

Moreover, Nvidia limits 64-bit double-precision math to 1/24 of single-precision, protecting its more compute-oriented cards from being displaced by purpose-built gamer boards. The result is that GeForce GTX 680 underperforms GeForce GTX 590, 580 and to a much direr degree, the three competing boards from AMD.

AMD’s GCN architecture absolutely dominates this benchmark, forming a class entirely separate from the GeForce GTX 680 or Radeon HD 6990, which trade blows.

Using Nvidia’s latest 296.10 driver (and several earlier versions), the GeForce GTX 590 and 580 cannot complete this test using the OpenCL or DirectCompute paths.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • Hail to the new king.
    Reply
  • borden5
    oh man this's good news for consumer, hope to see a price war soon
    Reply
  • johnners2981
    Damn prices, in europe we have to pay the equivalent of $650-$700 to get one
    Reply
  • outlw6669
    Nice results, this is how the transition to 28nm should be.
    Now we just need prices to start dropping, although significant drops will probably not come until the GK110 is released :/
    Reply
  • Finally we will see prices going down (either way :-) )
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  • Scotty99
    Its a midrange card, anyone who disagrees is plain wrong. Thats not to say its a bad card, what happened here is nvidia is so far ahead of AMD in tech that the mid range card purposed to fill the 560ti in the lineup actually competed with AMD's flagship. If you dont believe me that is fine, you will see in a couple months when the actual flagship comes out, the ones with the 384 bit interface.
    Reply
  • Chainzsaw
    Wow not too bad. Looks like the 680 is actually cheaper than the 7970 right now, about 50$, and generally beats the 7970, but obviously not at everything.

    Good going Nvidia...
    Reply
  • run the test on the same speeds then lets talk...
    Reply
  • SkyWalker1726
    AMD will certainly Drop the price of the 7xxx series
    Reply
  • rantoc
    2x of thoose ordered and will be delivered tomorrow, will be a nice geeky weekend for sure =)
    Reply