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

Benchmark Results: Metro 2033 (DX 11)

Testing high-end graphics cards allows us to step up to High detail settings in Metro 2033. We still can’t get consistently playable frame rates at the Very High preset, and we dare not enable the DirectCompute-based depth of field filter known take a debilitating cut out of the overall frame rate.

At these settings, the GeForce GTX 680 starts strongly, finishing behind the Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590 with adaptive anti-aliasing enabled. Once 4x MSAA is turned on, however, AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 is faster.

As we work our way up to 2560x1600, AMD’s single-GPU flagship manages to deliver better performance at both anti-aliasing settings, and the Radeon HD 7950 nearly manages to match pace with the GeForce GTX  680 under 4x MSAA.

Did you think you’d see a day when the GeForce GTX 580 would be the anchor on a chart of eight high-end graphics cards? Crazy.

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