Overclocking GeForce GTX 690
Beyond simply building a more capable cooler, Nvidia claims that hand-picking low-leakage GK104 GPUs helps minimize the GeForce GTX 690’s thermal output. As a result, the card slides in under a 300 W TDP. But company representatives say there is plenty of headroom left in the card for clock rates beyond the stock 915 MHz base and 1019 MHz typical GPU Boost frequency.

Using EVGA’s excellent Precision X tool, we managed to push a 150 MHz core and 25 MHz memory offset using a 20%-higher power target. Stability was marginal at those settings, though, so we nudged the voltage up from its .988 V default up to 1.025 V, which kept the card from crashing.





The resulting gains aren’t bad, ranging from a 13%+ speed-up in Battlefield 3 to a 5%+ boost in Metro 2033 at 2560x1600.
Tessellation
You can call it tradition by this point. Our examination of tessellation scaling is intended to quantify claims that both Nvidia and AMD make regarding continually-improving implementations of geometry processing. We like to use real-world metrics where possible, and HAWX 2 gives us an easy on/off toggle for applying additional vertices.



The only real take-away here is that a GeForce GTX 690 does as well as two GeForce GTX 680s in SLI, which improve on what a single GeForce GTX 680 achieves on its own. We’re not sure why the 680 bleeds off so much of its performance when you turn tessellation on, but there’s clearly a bottleneck hammering the frame rate harder than geometry.
- GeForce GTX 690 4 GB: Hands-Off The Magnesium, Pal!
- Overclocking And Tessellation Performance
- PCI Express 3.0 And What Of GK110?
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11 (DX 11)
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 (DX 11)
- Benchmark Results: Crysis 2 (DX 9 And DX 11)
- Benchmark Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (DX 9)
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 3 (DX 11)
- Benchmark Results: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (DX 11)
- Benchmark Results: Metro 2033 (DX 11)
- Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012 And LuxMark 2.0
- Noise And Temperatures
- Power Consumption
- GeForce GTX 690 4 GB: Beauty Isn’t Always Practical
6990 aren't that hard to find. Back in January before the 7000 series came out, you could easily pick one or two up. I am pretty sure in 6 month, the 690 will be easy to grab.
Also the design of this reminds me of my old leadtek 5900
http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/gffx-27/leadtek-5900lx-front.jpg
GTX 590 launch...
GTX 580 launch price: $500
GTX 590 launch price: $700
Difference: 140%
Now today GTX 690 launch...
GTX 680 launch price: $500
GTX 690 launch price: $1000
Difference: 200%
So, is it just me or is nVidia really gouging on the price here?
Why the hell else would they be charging an additional 43% more than their last dual GPU launch while using less silicon?
Come on AMD, we really need some more competition here.
The only use case for that much graphics hardware is excessively high multi monitor resolutions like 6k x 2k in 3d. AMD doesn't need to invest in new PCB designs to make a dual cpu GCN chip yet because the demand is so low.