nVidia GTX680 gets Editors Choice from PC Mag

[TwinSnakes007]

nVidia GTX 680

Pros
Amazingly power efficient. Excellent performance. Reduced profile. Supports four monitors, 3D Vision Surround on one card. Requires only six-pin PCIe power connectors.

Cons
Not always appreciably faster than competing AMD card. Blocks an expansion slot. Requires a hefty power supply.

Bottom Line
Nvidia has introduced some impressive innovations in its new single-GPU flagship card, the GeForce GTX 680. Hard-core PC gamers shouldn’t expect down-the-board AMD-crushing frame rates, but reduced power bills are a distinct possibility.

[ActionArt]

It'll be interesting to see if they decided to continue screwing us with their little OpenGL tricks. Probably not.

[mattmos]

On the anandtech review the ray-tracing is the one benchmark where the card fails miserably. Worse than a gtx570. I have a horrible suspicion they're continuing the opengl hamstringing...

[ActionArt]

Ya, it's probably even worse. Heaven forbid you should want to raytrace anything. Better buy a $6000 Quadro/SnakeOil special for that.

I didn't used to but I'm really starting to hate Nvidia as a company. I may have bought my last card from them.

[McNistor]

It'll be interesting to see if they decided to continue screwing us with their little OpenGL tricks. Probably not.

What OpenGL tricks?

Worse than a gtx570. I have a horrible suspicion they're continuing the opengl hamstringing...

What hamstringing are they doing, what are you talking about?

Enlighten me people, I'm going to make a video card upgrade.

edit: thanks origin

[origin]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-review-benchmark,3161-15.html

This time around, at the event introducing GeForce GTX 680 to press from around the world, the company refused to discuss compute, joking that it took a lot of heat for pushing the subject with Fermi and didn’t want to go there again.

The more complete story is that it doesn’t want to go there…yet. Sandra 2012 just showed us that the GeForce GTX 680 trails AMD’s Radeon HD 7900 cards in 32-bit math. And it gets absolutely decimated in 64-bit floating-point operations, as Nvidia purposely protects its profitable professional graphics business by artificially capping perfrmance.

[ActionArt]

What OpenGL tricks?

The one where they purposely castrate GTX cards so they suck on OpenGL content creation packages like SI I'm afraid.

Trying to force you to buy a Quadro at 10x the price for nothing at all (just flipping a switch). That's why 400 and 500 and now 600 series are slower than old 8800's! The last good series seems to have been the 200's.

Very dirty business.

More here: http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php? ... #msg296114

[McNistor]

WOW!!! Talking about corporate greed and lack of fairness.

So is Radeon a viable alternative?

[Hirazi Blue]

Trying to force you to buy a Quadro at 10x the price for nothing at all (just flipping a switch).

I obviously don't know, what prices are like "over there" (I don't even know exactly where "over there" is), but looking at the Dutch prices ("over here") this seems to be a "slight" exaggeration. Quadros being way overpriced seems to have become an urban myth. They are overpriced, mind, but not necessarily way overpriced or 10 times as expensive...
;)

[McNistor]

Even so, if they really do castrate their gaming cards just to sell the more (insert number) expensive cards is as bad as it can get. I don't care if they're x1.1 more expensive or x10.

[Hirazi Blue]

Agreed, but that was not the point I was trying to make. The "opengl crippling" might be considered a somewhat "heinous" act, but then again, who can blame a corporation from trying to make the most money out of any given situation, especially since Quadros are the only cards nVidia sell themselves AFAIK? (Rhetorical question, no need to answer...)
;)

[ActionArt]

Well, as an example, my current GTX 470 sold for around $450.

A quadro 5000 which has LESS cores (448 vs 352) sells for around $6000.

http://www.sharbor.com/products/PNYN5300100.html

Actually more than 10X so I don't think I was exaggerating too much...

And according to several folks on the mailing list, they're even worse reliability (current batch) so I'm not sure what the price is for.

Of course corporations are free to do what they like but as a customer I don't have to like it. I wouldn't mind so much if there was any real value to be had but to get LESS for such an outrageous price is just ridiculous. I really despise their decision to do something like this.

[Hirazi Blue]

Yes, you're obviously right. I myself was comparing Geforce prices with the so-called "mid-end" Quadro 4000 and that's a whole different story (as far as affordability goes).

[luceric]

Well, as an example, my current GTX 470 sold for around $450.

A quadro 5000 which has LESS cores (448 vs 352) sells for around $6000.

http://www.sharbor.com/products/PNYN5300100.html

Not only is that a shady web site with a price out of whack with other sites, that's a rare version of the card with Break-out-box and video sync connections for video output meant for the broadcast market and in no way equivalent to the GeForce card you compare it with.

Quadro 5000 from HP, through resellers, sells for 1,800$ and about half that price if you buy with your HP workstation. http://dv411.com/quadro5000hp.html It's more expensive direct from HP without a corporate account http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product/sku/1 ... no/WS096AT

Most people buy Quadros with a new PC and you get the Quadro for the OEM price. Buying a boxed Quadro is crazy. Quadro 5000 (2GB) with a corporate account is about 800$.

All of this is kind of normal because Quadro are cards targetted at business, and manufactured directly by nVidia. The gaming cards are not manufactured by nVidia and they have much lower build quality and higher production volume (which means lower price per units)

[ActionArt]

Yes, that sells for around $800 (double my GTX470) and has HALF the cores. So the value is around 1/4, not bad, for a nice shiny Quadro sticker

OK, I'll stop ranting now, I'll just go check out a few ATI's like I should and see if that's workable.

[ActionArt]

According to this that high priced "quality testing and manufacturing" hasn't panned out so well...

As for quadros not having variance within the line, I assume you never used Mari much, or anything else that truly stresses the CUDA cores and the memory paging.

Mari (and to a lesser extent mudbox) have shown in several places that only one out of three quadros is really up to what it's declared to be. My girlfriend (a surfacing artist/texture painter) has just had 3 replaced in 3 weeks, and only the fourth has made it past day 5.

Ironically, the approved GF cards for Mari don't have the same variance, and NONE of those (only two artists have a quadro) has insofar needed replacing.