ZOTAC GTX680 2GB 'Kepler' Review

Waiting for Kepler? The wait is over! Join us as we give ZOTAC’s GTX680 the Vortez treatment and compare it against AMD’s HD7970. Who is the performance king? Read on…

Product on Review: ZOTAC GTX680 2GB GDDR5
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ZOTAC
Street Price: £409.99

In recent years, NVIDIA have consistently held the crown for the ‘fastest GPU on the planet’ but they lost that claim at the turn of 2011/12 with the phenomenal AMD HD7970. The enthusiast market however we not going to jump ship because the much hyped ‘Kepler’ (NVIDIA’s codename for the latest core) was on the horizon. Many people began to get frustrated because 3 months on and there was still no sign of a reply from NVIDIA to the HD7970. Then all of a sudden, NVIDIA unleash the GTX680, no paper launch and very little notice, even to the press who are held to none disclosure agreements!

We have today the ZOTAC GTX680 2GB GDDR5 It’s a full fat retail edition of the Kepler core GTX680 with the usual bells and whistles that come as standard with a ZOTAC product; all but one. The card we have for review is a reference design with reference clockspeeds which is a rarity for ZOTAC! This however makes for an ideal starting point and foundation by which to compare both today’s high end cards and last generation GTX5 series cards.

Kepler is the successor to the Fermi range of graphics cards. It is touted as the worlds fastest GPU but NVIDIA also suggest it is the worlds most power efficient – a bold claim indeed considering how efficient (and fast) the HD7970 is. Speed and power however are not all that Kepler has in store.

Note how I said above this card doesn’t come pre-overclocked? Well in truth that is a lie as every GTX680 will arrive ‘overclocked’ thanks to the new power efficiency process NVIDIA call GPU Boost. We will cover this in greater details later but briefly this comprises of the GPU auto overclocking itself depending on the amount of stress that’s being placed upon it. Image quality has also been improved thanks to FXAA and TXAA.

NVIDIA then are not putting all their eggs in the speed basket. Instead they are hoping to improve all areas of PC gaming and if the hype surrounding Kepler is to be believed, you would be forgiven for thinking NVIDIA’s latest GPU is nothing short of exquisite. We will reserve our judgement until later so for now here is what ZOTAC had to say about NVIDIA’s latest offering:

Experience game-changing performance with the ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 680 powered by a powerful new GeForce® architecture that redefines smooth, seamless and lifelike gaming. The ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 680 raises the performance bar with new NVIDIA® GPU Boost technology that maximizes clock speeds on the fly for maximum performance in every gaming scenario.

New NVIDIA® Adaptive Vertical Sync technology adapts the monitor’s vertical-sync dynamically to current frame rates for maximum gaming smoothness and playability with the ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 680. Take your gaming experience to the next level with NVIDIA® Surround™ technology for an unmatched immersive gaming experience with a single ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 680 graphics card and triple displays..

Specification

Before we get down and dirty with the new Kepler core, let’s take a quick overview of the GTX680’s specification:

Model ZT-60601-10P

Interface
PCI Express 3.0* x16 (Compatible with 1.1)
Chipset Manufacturer NVIDIA®
GPU GeForce® GTX 680
Core clock 1006 MHz (base) – 1058 MHz (boost)
Stream Processors 1536
Shader Clock 2012 MHz

Memory
Memory Clock 6008 MHz
Memory Size 2 GB
Memory Interface 256-bit
Memory Type DDR5

3D API
DirectX DirectX® 11
OpenGL OpenGL® 4.2

Ports
DVI 2 (DVI-I & DVI-D)
VGA (With included DVI-to-VGA adapter)

General
Tuner None
RAMDAC 400 MHz
Max Resolution 2560 x 1600
RoHS Compliant Yes
SLI Supported Yes (3-way)
Cooler With fan (dual-slot)
Dual-Link DVI Supported Yes
Windows® 7 Capability Certified for Windows® 7 with DirectCompute support

Packaging
Driver Disk
User Manual
DVI-to-VGA adapter
2 x Dual MOLEX to 6-pin PCIe power cable
TrackMania 2 Canyon 3-Day Game Pass
Game Bundle ZOTAC Assassin’s Creed® 3-Game Pack

Comparison

Firstly, comparing the GTX680 with it’s forbear, the GTX580 we see that there are some significant changes. Immediately identifiable are the amount of stream processors which have tripled. from 512 to 1536. The ROPs have however dropped 25% but to compensate the core and memory clockspeeds have been massively increased, with the GTX680 being the clocked slightly above the 1GHz mark.

The battle everyone wants to see though is the GTX680 vs HD7970 and comparing the two cards against one another is a good place to start. On paper at least, the GTX680 appears to have the slight upper hand. Sacrificing a gigabyte of GDDR5 and running with the 256-bit interface, the GTX680 cannot hope to compete in total bandwidth available losing out to both the HD7970 and HD7950 by a fair margin despite having a much higher memory overclock. The tables are however turned when we study the texture fillrate where the GTX680 comes out on top.

One area where NVIDIA are shouting from the rooftops is the power consumption area. with a max power draw of 195W compared to 250W of the HD7970, the GTX680 should save a few more yards of the Brazillian rainforests (and of course cut your electricity bill) than the HD7970.

Price wise there is little to choose between them. The GTX680 is a little more expensive yet only because of the recent price drops of the HD7900 series. At launch, the HD7970 was significantly more expensive.

Overall, looking at the specifications you would be forgiven for thinking that Kepler is not the GPU everyone was hoping for. Sure it has faster clockspeeds but how does that transpire to performance when the core hardware (stream processor count, memory size) is not as impressive as AMD’s?

It’s time to take a look at Kepler and see what trickery the NVIDIA techs have in store for us…

Kepler Architecture

It was almost two years to the day that we saw the introduction of NVIDIA’s Fermi, NVIDIA’s previous architectural change. The GF100 featured 512 stream processors in a 16×32 format built by TSMC in a 40nm process. Sporting OpenGL 4.0 and DirectX 11, enthusiasts climbed over each other to get the latest and greatest GPU from NVIDIA. While the performance was there, power efficiency was very poor with the cards consuming lots of power and running very hot.

Enter the 5 series 8 months later and many would say the GTX580 was the card the GTX480 should have been. It was more powerful thanks to the fully unlocked memory controller (6x64bit), ran cooler and thus became a firm favourite among the high end GPU market.

For a little over a year the GTX580 enjoyed sitting atop of the GPU pile (save for dual GPU variants) and it wasn’t until the AMD HD7970 emerged in December 2011 that the GTX580 lost it’s performance crown. NVIDIA however had not been resting on their laurels…

GTX680 GPU
The successor to Fermi is codenamed Kepler. Listening to feedback of Fermi from gamers around the world, NVIDIA sought to create a graphics card that was not only the best money could buy in terms of performance but crucially it had to run cool and quiet to make for a power efficient model. Kepler addresses these issues in two ways, GPU Boost which we will discuss further in our overclocking section of the review and a redesigned streaming multiprocessor.

Kepler Core
The GTX680 is equipped with a GK104 core which NVIDIA claim is their highest and most power efficient GPU to date. Fabricated on the 28nm process, every component was designed with power efficiency in mind to ensure the GPU gave the best performance-per-watt possible.

While the 28nm manufacturing process holds the bulk of the power saving features, the way the new architecture works is also key to furthering Kepler’s power reduction. SMX, an evolution of the SM from Fermi is NVIDIA’s new streaming multiprocessor:

The SMX now runs at the graphics closk speed rather than 2x that speed as previously but because the GK104 has 1536 CUDA cores (8xSMX), over Fermi’s (GF110) 512 CUDA cores (16xSM), Kepler allows the GTX680 to operate at twice the performance per watt measurement compared to the GTX580.

The clock throughput of FMA2, SFU and texture operations have all been significantly increased and while some operations still retain the same speed as the GTX580, the GTX680’s much higher core clockspeed ensures a substantial increase for all GPU operations.

To feed the new SMX, each unit has four warp schedulers, each capable of firing off two instructions per warp, every clock. With a redesigned scheduling function, the GTX680 is a lot less complex and much more streamlined allowing the compiler to determine which instructions will be issued and can provide this information direct to the hardware block rather than going around the houses using Multi-port decode and a register scoreboard along with the dependency check before the information gets issued. This method is both quicker and more importantly, more power efficient.

Perhaps the biggest change to the processor core is the omission of the old Shader Clock. The shader clock was getting tired as it was part of the old Tesla architecture which was implemented as an area optimisation. Because of the way Kepler executes instructions at a much more streamlined manner and at a higher clock rate, fewer copies of the execution unit need be made.

Another improvement over Fermi with the introduction of SMX is the redesigned Polymorph engine (2.0). The Polymorph engine takes card of the tessellation workload of the GTX680. The design of the new Polymorph engine is to ensure that the tessellation we see on screen has little (as possible) impact on the rendering performance. What you may find bizarre though is that NVIDIA have cut the Polymorph engine count in half to 8 from Fermi’s 16 yet claim it is almost twice as quick. This is thanks to the improved core an memory clockpeed.

Overall then, it seems NVIDIA have outdone themselves. Higher clockspeeds on both core and memory, 3x the amount of stream processors yet streamlined by eliminating the shader clock to cut the amount of power consumption without compromising overall performance.

The story doesn’t end there though as there are a whole host of features the new GPU has to offer…

Features

DirectX 11
The first fully Microsoft DirectX® 11-compatible GPUs in their class, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series are designed to deliver unbelievable HD gaming performance for the latest games and DirectX® 11 applications so you can dominate the competition.

HDMI Support
MSI graphics cards offer the HDMI functionality to provide access to premium digital content. HDMI enables gaming enthusiasts to seamlessly connect to their LCD monitor to bring the ultimate multimedia experience. (Only 1 single HDMI cable is required while streaming audio/video data to flat-panel display devices, such as Plasma/LCD TVs, or projector.)

NVIDIA 3D Vision
NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ technology is a combination of Graphics Processor Units (GPU), specialized 3D glasses, software, and certified displays and projectors that deliver an immersive 3D experience on your PC or workstation. For a complete list of system requirements for NVIDIA 3D Vision Technology

NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround
NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround expands your field of view across three 3D monitors for Breathtaking panoramic gaming. At an ultra-wide resolution of 5760×1080, games like Battlefield Bad Company 2 have to be played to be believed.

CUDA
CUDA is NVIDIA’s parallel computing architecture that enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the GPU to speed up the most demanding tasks you can run on your PC.

SLI
NVIDIA SLI technology links multiple GeForce GPUs together for dramatically improved graphics performance. With over 1000 supported applications and used by over 94% of multi-GPU PCs on Steam, SLI is the technology of choice for gamers who demand the very best.

NVIDIA PureVideo
Blu-ray and HD DVD movies are bringing a new level of movie-viewing experience; with high-definition image quality far surpassing standard-definition DVDs. NVIDIA PureVideo™ HD2 technology provides unsurpassed Blu-ray and HD DVD movie picture quality.

Dual Link DVI
Dual-link DVI convertible output supports Video/Audio signal integration through DVI to HDMI interface, which drivers resolution of a digital display up to 1920×1200 or higher.

PhysiX
PhysX™ is designed specifically for hardware acceleration by powerful processors with hundreds of cores. Combined with the tremendous parallel processing capability of the GPU, PhysX™ will provide an exponential increase in physics processing power and will take gaming to a new level delivering rich, immersive physical gaming environments

Packaging & Accessories

Box Front

The front of the box is discrete and rather than featuring a window cut-out which are familiar with on ZOTAC products, the GTX680 features a very smart carbon/brushed aluminium effect outer sleeve with the product title and ZOTAC ‘It’s time to play’ phrase adorned across the front.

Box Rear

As is the norm, the rear of the package gives us a run down of the features of the GTX680 in English with multilingual contents towards the base. The left and right sides of the package inform us of the minimum system requirements and specifications.

Inner Packaging

After removing hte outer sleeve we are greeted with a very smart looking glossy black box, inside which is the main product along with accessories which are held tightly in place by a foam frame.

Accessories

As all GTX680 models are reference at the products launch, each manufacturer will be clambering for your custom by including a good range of accessories. The ZOTAC offering is no different as they are tempting potential buyers with not one but three games from the Assassins Creed range! Also included are the usual manual, driver/utility disk and a couple of twin molex to PCIe 6pin power adapters.

All in all a very good product package with plenty included to get you on your way. I especially appreciated that ZOTAC had gone the extra mile by including the Assassins Creed family of games which is rare considering many manufacturers do not include a single game, let alone three!

Let’s move on to the graphics card…

First Look

GTX680

Surprisingly, the graphics card is much smaller than anticipated measuring just 25.5cm long which is smaller than both a GTX580 and HD7970, matching a GTX470 in length which is quite a feat when you consider graphics cards seem to be getting bigger with every launch. ZOTACs example features the reference cooler with their own sticker atop.

Comparison

Compared to other cards on test, the GTX680 is a fair bit smaller than the HD7970 (top) which is sure to delight those who work with a small enclosure. The HD7870 (bottom) is a little smaller but as we will see later in the review, significantly less powerful.

Card Rear

Flipping the card over we see that the GTX680 comes with a black PCB which is made in China. It is interesting to note there is a blue print for a backplate on the core area yet none is fitted.

Card Profile

The side of the card is adorned with a ‘GeForce GTX’ coloured in NVIDIA’s own colour. This is not removable as it is embossed into the plastic cooling shroud.

I/O Backplate

The backplate area features a HDMI port, twin DVI ports and a single DisplayPort. On top of these ports is a vented area which is relatively small compared to most GPU’s and considering this card is a closed unit, meaning this is the only area by which to exhaust how air, NVIDIA appear confident this card will run cool.

SLI

Being a flagship card, the GTX680 is SLI compatible allowing the end user to link multiple GTX680’s together if one wasn’t enough!

Power Ports

One of the oddities seen in pre-release photos was the strange implementation of PCIe power ports. A graphics card will normally either have the ports sitting adjacent to one another at the end or side of the card. The GTX680 however is the first card to have one sitting on top of the other. While this may look odd it works very well and should keep cables a little tidier should they be attached from above or below the card.

It was also nice to see NVIDIA did not require an 8pin power port with the GTX680 making do with twin 6pin PCI ports. This equates to a theoretical maximum of 225W (75+75+75) however NVIDIA claim a max power draw of 195W. To power this card ZOTAC recommend a PSU with an minimum output of 550W with 38A being available on the 12V rail.

Let’s strip the card back to the bare essentials shall we?

Closer Look

GTX680 Cooler

The main cooler was relatively easy to remove providing you have a Torx screwdriver. Rather than using the normal Philips head screws, NVIDIA have made things a little more tricky by using Torx head which are more robust and less easier to strip than Philips but many I fear will not have a Torx screwdriver. The main core unit and I/O area has the familiar Philips head screws which when removed allowed the cooler to come away from the PCB with relative ease.

Disassembly

Taking an in-depth look at the cooler we see that it is made up of three parts, the plastic shroud, aluminium midplate and aluminium and copper heatsink array. The shroud retains the centrifugal fan of previous designs which sucks air in directly and the forces this cool air through the aluminium finned heatsink to be exhausted at the I/O area of the card.

Heatsink

The heatsink is made up of aluminium fins soldered to an thick staggered aluminium plate. Attached to this is a machined block of copper which will make direct contact to the core. Our sample had perfect contact to the core and thus the Thermal interface material would not need to be replaced.

GTX680 Naked

As with most modern day GPU’s, the layout of the GTX680 is familiar in that the main core is framed by the (8x256MB) memory modules. Adjacent to this is the VRM module which is very different from what we are used to.

GTX680 VRM

The card operates on a 4+2 phase design. Note that there is also a redundant phase for the core which could hint at a more powerful reference card being imminent? Also worthy of note is the optional 6pin PCIe power port for additional 12v power which again could be used for future applications or perhaps it is just a throwback of an older PCB design.

Between the memory and GPU VRM is the memory controller PWM with Power sense IC’s adjacent to and above the rows of solid capacitors. These little beasties are the power limiters for the card. So where is the GPU PWM?

GTX680 GPU Power VRM

Strangely, NVIDIA have soldered this unit to the rear of the card rather than hiding it beneath the GPU cooler. This 5-phase controller hails from Richtek with a product number of RT8802A and controls the VID of the GPU.

Hynix Memory

Thankfully the GTX680 has included HYNIX memory into its armoury. With a product code of H5GQ2H24MFA R0C we know that this memory is capable of some fantastic results rated at 1.6v to run at 6Gbps so hopefully there will be some overclocking to be had there.

Kepler Core

Finally we reach the GK104 core. We have already waxed lyrical about the technological advances made so we won’t be going into detail here again. I will however say that NVIDIA are no longer implementing the integrated heatspreader seen with previous generation, instead opting for the exposed core allowing the heatsink to make direct contact with the core to aid heat dissipation.

Test Setup

With the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X58 setup to the new X79 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to 4.5GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB of ram on board there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

Some of the components for our test bench were kindly donated by CORSAIR who provided the majority of components without whom we would not have been able to bring you this review so a big thanks to them.

Graphics cards on test:

ZOTAC GTX680 2GB GDDR5

AMD HD7870 2GB GDDR5
Zotac GTX580 AMP2! 3GB GDDR5
XFX R7970 Black Edition 3GB GDDR5
XFX R7770 Black Edition ‘S’ 1GB GDDR5
AMD HD7750 1GB GDDR5
AMD HD7770 1GB GDDR5
HIS HD7970 3GB GDDR5
XFX DD Radeon R7950 3072MB GDDR5
PowerColor PCS+ Radeon HD7950 3072MB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD7950 3072MB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD7970 3072MB GDDR5
ZOTAC GTX570 AMP! 1280MB GDDR5
NVIDIA GTX570 1280MB GDDR5
MSI GTX560Ti-448 Twin Frozr III 1280MB GDDR5
MSI GTX560Ti-384 Twin Frozr III 2GB GDDR5
AMD HD6990 4GB GDDR5

For this review we will be using the very latest CAT 11.12 drivers.

Motherboard: MSI X79 Big Bang X-Power II
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive – Hitachi SATA II 250GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Cooler – Corsair H100

Benchmarks
We have also updated our range of benchmarks to include the following games which will give the graphics cards a challenge and sort the wheat from the chaff. Each benchmark will be run at both stock and maximum overclock settings and utilise 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions along with AA at various levels (application dependent):

Battlefield 3
Crysis 2
Crysis Warhead
Metro 2033
Batman: Arkham City
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
DiRT 3
Futuremark 3DMark 2011
Unigine: Heaven 2.5

Let’s see how today’s cards performed…

Overclocking the GTX680 (GPU Boost)

GPU Boost
Note how I said earlier that all GTX680’s will arrive pre-overclocked? While there is of course a reference clockspeed of 1006 MHz, GPU Boost does exactly what it says on the tin, it boosts the clockspeed to a value determined by the power limitation of the GPU.

Reference Clockspeeds

NVIDIA set out to create the GTX680 with power efficiency in mind so regardless of what overclock you set, the clockspeed may never reach those levels as the clockspeed will effectively be throttled back due to the power limitations in place. The technology is similar to Intel’s Turbo boost in that the clockspeed is governed by the power efficiency of the GPU. If it goes over this limit, the GPU will down clock the card until the power threshold is no longer exceeded.

How does it work?

Think of GPU Boost as a reverse of when the card enters an idle state. Because in an idle state, the graphics card downclocks as with previous generations, when the card is under immense strain it is given a boost over stock clockspeed to address the additional performance requirement.

With a TDP (Thermal Design Point) of 195W the GTX680 might have some headroom available if say a game uses just 150W of GPU power, what the clever GPU boost does is allow this additional power to be utilised by automatically overclocking the card for you.

Rather than using a set profile with every application being different, Kepler uses real time monitoring to determine what clockspeed should be applied. Typically this means the maximum ‘boost’ clockspeed will be used in any given 3D application. So the stock clockspeed of 1006MHz would increase to 1058MHz when under stress. This figure however is not linear, it will, as stated above, depend greatly on the scenario in the game, it could be a little higher or lower.

Overclocking
With the GPU Boost feature you would be forgiven for thinking overclocking NVIDIA GPU’s yourself is a thing of the past but you would be wrong. It just got a little more complicated that’s all.

As described above, there is a maximum power threshold which determines what clockspeed both the memory and core can run at. What GPU overclocking tools are now implementing is a way to effectively unlock that power threshold. ZOTAC themselves are readying their revised Firestorm utility to include this feature however at the time of writing it was unavailable so we have used EVGA’s Precision X tool to show you what we achieved:

The tool may look a little complex but it is surprisingly easy to use. First you will want to set the power target of the card which in our case was 132% or 257.4W given that the TDP for the GTX680 is 195W. With the maximum power target set we then adjusted the GPU and memory clock offsets until we encountered stability issues.

We eventually attained a huge 1260MHz (GPU Boosted from 1194MHz) on the core which was quite phenomenal although this clockspeed did vary as the load on the card changed. Memory clockspeed also got boosted by 55MHz to 1555Mhz. We did get higher clockspeeds than this but sadly they were not 100% rock solid stable so we had to back off slightly to achieve 24/7 stability.

So then, while overclocking the GTX680 is perhaps a little more involved than previous, the results speak for themselves. Let’s see how these results affected power consumption of the GPU…

Power consumption & Temperatures

Power Consumption

To test for power consumption we do not use anything too technical, just a wall meter which measures the total system power draw minus the monitor.

Clearly the GTX680 is still a power hungry card however NVIDIA have massively reduced the power consumption when compared to the GTX580 by over 100W in typical gaming scenarios. The reference clocked card also consumed less power than the GTX570 which is a fantastic achievement, especially when you consider just how much more powerful the GTX680 is.

Job done on power consumption – how about temperatures?

Temperature

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we ran Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained.

What NVIDIA have created here is one hell of an efficient GPU. Being a very powerful card usually translates to much of this power being given off as heat however the GTX680 still manages to keep temperatures well below 70c. While there have certainly been improvements made to the cooler (notably noise reduction), the cooler is not that radically different from the previous generations so the temperatures you see above hail from the power efficiency of the new Kepler core. Even when overclocked the card did not exceed 70c which is quite an amazing achievement.

The GTX680 is clearly a very efficient design so that ticks one of the two boxes on NVIDIA’s remit. Let’s see how the most important aspect of the GTX680 fairs when we give the card a thorough workout with our suite of demanding benchmarks…

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next instalment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.

Crysis 2

Crytek took an internet beating from its loyal fans due to the fact that they pandered to the console masses and dumbed down the graphics to DirectX 9. Fortunately, fans of the PC version of Crysis managed to force Cryteks hand and they have since developed a DX11 patch and have also enhanced the textures with added tesselation. It is for this reason that we have decided to include it in our suite of benchmarks.

To test the cards we used the Crysis 2 benchmark courtesy of Adrenaline with both the 1.9 patch, DX11 update and Hi-res texture pack. Settings were manually placed to Ultra, DX11 and tessellation enabled with the Central Park map being run 3 times per resolution benchmark test.

Crysis Warhead

Following the success of Crysis, the stand alone expansion “Warhead” was hotly anticipated to bring more game play, more weapons, improved visuals whilst maintaining better performance, the latter being what gamers wanted most. After all how many people upgraded their rigs just to play this game… In the game, you play as the upbeat Brit Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes, chasing down a Korean nuclear warhead. Throw in some ice shooting aliens and we’re bound to have a great game. It sure delivered.

Testing was done using Framebuffer’s Crysis Warhead benchmarking tool. The tests were configured to DirectX 10 at Enthusiast levels. Each test on the Ambush map was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.

Batman: Arkham City

Batman: Arkham City builds upon the intense, atmospheric foundation of Batman: Arkham Asylum, sending players soaring into Arkham City, the new maximum security “home” for all of Gotham City’s thugs, gangsters and insane criminal masterminds. Set inside the heavily fortified walls of a sprawling district in the heart of Gotham City, this highly anticipated sequel introduces a brand-new story that draws together a new all-star cast of classic characters and murderous villains from the Batman universe, as well as a vast range of new and enhanced gameplay features to deliver the ultimate experience as the Dark Knight.

The results below were obtained from the builtin benchmark utility from the game. All the settings were set to

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim is not a direct successor to the very popular Oblivion. Instead it takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The non-linear playing that made the Elder Scrolls such a popular series does however make a return along with the beautiful scenery the encompasses the world of Skyrim.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.

DiRT 3

As players race to elevate their global standing, DiRT 3 is back delivering mud, sweat and gears world over: from the intense weather-beaten rally stages of Europe, Africa and the US, to executing performance driving showcases and career challenges where car control is pushed to spectacular limits.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available and DirectX 11 was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Metro 2033

Based on the novel by the same name, Metro 2033 is a first person shooter with elements of survival horror. As Artyom, you trawl through the mutant infested metro systems of post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game delivers presents a grim ambience that reflects on the overall atmosphere of the underground setting. Metro 2033 uses the setting as a back drop to showcase some of the best visuals of any games out now, making it the ideal benchmark for those looking for the best graphics card.

The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Metro 2033, configuring the settings to High and making use of DirectX 11. The frontline scene was looped 3 times for each configuration. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Futuremark: 3DMark 2011

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark. Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. The benchmark was run in both Performance and Extreme presets.

Unigine: Heaven 2.5

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine™ engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Conclusion

We’ve seen some big leaps in GPU rendering performance with most every NVIDIA GPU revision. Indeed AMD have often been found wanting with their products of late which had fallen well behind in the race to become the fastest GPU on the planet. I could end the review by saying that NVIDIA have reclaimed the performance crown once again however I feel that would be short changing you, the potential buyer of this GPU.

You see, NVIDIA have enjoyed at least a couple of years of victory after victory, for the most part outpacing their AMD/ATI counterparts. While we have shown today’s sample to be much the same, the performance gap is much smaller than it once had been. Were it not for a nagging thought in my sub conscious I would have absolutely no hesitation in proclaiming the GTX680 to be without a shadow of a doubt the single best graphics card on the planet. That nagging thought has plagued me throughout this review – the GTX680 could have been so much more.

Yes it is a blisteringly fast graphics card, for the most part outpacing the HD7970 on the vast majority of occasions. It does this while running cooler than the AMD competition and using less power than it’s forbear. It’s also much quieter. Clearly NVIDIA have made some great strides with their power efficiency drive and for that they deserve heaps of praise. Yet I cannot help feel though that there is much more potential in Kepler than has yet been realised.

The 2GB of GDDR5 while adequate for today’s gaming requirements, I do worry about tomorrows applications. I would also have liked to have seen a bigger jump in performance, such that we saw with the HD7970. You may think I’m just being greedy or that I have been washed away with the long wait and hype surrounding Kepler. That could well be the case on both counts but it would also be fair to suggest that NVIDIA have only done ‘just enough’ to reclaim the performance crown an not taken AMD apart like we have seen in the past. It appears that NVIDIA are waiting for something, holding back the true potential of Kepler until they are forced to play their hand and unleash the beast within.

Regardless, it can be no denying that the GTX680 and more to the point ZOTAC’s interpretation of the card is one mighty GPU package. It cut through everything we could throw at it, falling second only to the dual cored HD6990 (on occasions it even beat this!). I was thoroughly impressed with how quiet the card was and also the drop in power consumption. NVIDIA then have certainly fullfilled their quest to create a power efficient card capable of retaking the performance crown. So with this in mind it is deserving of an award. I dearly wanted to give this our premium, top of the class platinum award but feel this needs to be reserved for what may be on the horizon as we wait with anticipation (again) to see how NVIDIA will counter the impending arrival of the HD7990.

So our Gold award is bestowed on the ZOTAC GTX680 – a worthy award which matches the performance crown which sits upon its head.

Pros:
– Great Overclocking Performance
– Power efficient
– Very cool running
– Low Noise
– Excellent overall package
– Small dimensions

Cons:
– More expensive (slightly) than the competition