Anyone Know When The Next Gen Nvidia Cards Are Being Released

[j.o.s.h.1408]

At what?

Why? Because its only 500MB over your 480?

Move along!

here is one example:

Here's some numbers for you from Skyrim, just wandering outside my house and taking the max;

0xAA/High Shadows - 1375MB
0xAA/Ultra Shadows - 1640MB
2xAA/Ultra Shadows - 1750MB
4xAA/Ultra Shadows - 1875MB
8XAA/High shadows - 1905MB
8xAA/Ultra Shadows - 2075MB

It must be all the texture mods and the higher uGrids setting that makes it quite high even with no AA and high shadows. There's definitely a bigger drop to be gained by going with the lite version of the SkyrimHD mod as I had to use that to get under 1000MB with the 5850s.

bf3 is another. basically any game that has cutting edge high HD textures, 2gb cards will struggle.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OcUK has hinted that their cheapest GTX680 will be around £418.

[Terbinator]

here is one example:




bf3 is another. basically any game that has cutting edge high HD textures, 2gb cards will struggle.

I've just read that hilariously dubious comment on OCUK. Unless you're purposefully going out of your way to bloat Skyrim it will not use over 2GB. I've got the HD textures along with other graphical ones and the game hovers around 1.3GB @ 1080p/8xMSAA.

BF3 is another one. You do not need more than 2GB for BF3 - only in very rare circumstances have i seen it go up to 1.5GB usage, the truth being you're shader limited long before RAM in BF3.

[Terbinator]

OcUK has hinted that their cheapest GTX680 will be around £418.

£15-£20 cheaper at Aria then.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

I've just read that hilariously dubious comment on OCUK. Unless you're purposefully going out of your way to bloat Skyrim it will not use over 2GB. I've got the HD textures along with other graphical ones and the game hovers around 1.3GB @ 1080p/8xMSAA.

BF3 is another one. You do not need more than 2GB for BF3 - only in very rare circumstances have i seen it go up to 1.5GB usage, the truth being you're shader limited long before RAM in BF3.

thats not from ocuk LOL. its on anotehr forum where some of u lot are members in there LOL so i was very shocked u lot diddnt know that vram does make a difference on newer titles

[Terbinator]

thats not from ocuk LOL. its on anotehr forum where some of u lot are members in there LOL so i was very shocked u lot diddnt know that vram does make a difference on newer titles

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...&postcount=222

Either way, its still a skewed comment, as is the '2GB isn't enough' notion.

[Djini]

OcUK has hinted that their cheapest GTX680 will be around £418.

So there's virtually no difference in cost, performance, and noise/power consumption between the GTX680 and the 7970.

The GTX has only 2GB but has PhysX, the 7970 has 3GB but no PhysX... Hmm... Tricky choice...

[watercooled]

Don't forget VCE with AMD cards.

Just to further complicate things.

[kalniel]

Don't forget VCE with AMD cards.

Just to further complicate things.

When AMD finish it

Ditto adaptive Vsync - pretty sure I'd submitted that as a suggestion to both sets of driver teams a while back. Given archaic GPUs in consoles can do it I wouldn't be surprised if AMD finally get around to it as well (and with more control than nVidia) with just driver updates. But still, nice to see on nVidia, especially for future mid-range cards.

2GB is probably limiting for resolutions much higher than 1080p and some extreme games - shogan 2 Ultra for example. But that's very much the exception. Id's Tech 5 would probably love more as well, though interesting to see that AMD's PRT functions do something similar in hardware, so if that could be leveraged (which it realistically won't be - they had tessellation since goodness knows when for example), then that'd swing those kind of techniques back to AMD.

[Phage]

So there's virtually no difference in cost, performance, and noise/power consumption between the GTX680 and the 7970.

How did you get that ? All of the spec I have seen so far puts the 680 ~15-20% faster than the 7970. Did I miss something ?

[kalniel]

How did you get that ? All of the spec I have seen so far puts the 680 ~15-20% faster than the 7970. Did I miss something ?

I think hoping for a universal 15-20% faster is a bit much. It looks more like it trades blows with the 7970 depending on the game and the chosen settings. At common resolutions like 1080p, and on games that have a dx11 codepath, especially those with nVidia help/physX it seems to do very well. At higher resolutions and in some other games it will probably do less well. So as usual you have to chose based on what use you will put it to.

You could take the view that it's nVidia skewing things.. I don't actually feel like that at the moment. There are going to be some reviewers who skew things, and it'll take a bit of work to figure that out, but in other cases I honestly thing it's nVidia really targeting some of the most common settings and optimising the experience for them.

[Phage]

I did assume that titles with Physx were all about the NV. But at 1080p in most of the games shown in those THG slides, the 680 was faster by quite a way, and it wasn't until you hit multi-monitor or at least U2711 levels that the 7970 started to catch up.

[kalniel]

I did assume that titles with Physx were all about the NV. But at 1080p in most of the games shown in those THG slides, the 680 was faster by quite a way, and it wasn't until you hit multi-monitor or at least U2711 levels that the 7970 started to catch up.

That was Tom's. I've no doubt some other reviews will be the same. You have to look at the policy of the site, and what games they choose etc.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

[h] do the best gpu reviews IMO as they are not canned benchmarks and record low, average and highest fps on each game.

They also do proper apples to apples test on same exact game settings and res to see whats going oin

[Phage]

Are you suggesting that THG may not subscribe to the highest ideals of professional jounalism ?

[kalniel]

[h] do the best gpu reviews IMO as they are not canned benchmarks and record low, average and highest fps on each game.

They also do proper apples to apples test on same exact game settings and res to see whats going oin

It's always good to look at a range. I like Tech Reports frame rate charts and 99th percentile graphs for example (as they help tease out how smooth a game is, including microstutter, not just average frame rate or min/max which might be erroneous events), but wouldn't rely on them in isolation. [H] do similar, but in rather less (useful) detail, though the subjective playable settings are useful. Anandtech are good at teasing out architectural differences and insights from their test range. Hexus don't have the same sort of resources so benchmark choice isn't so good, but they score highly with me in the user interaction in giving us additional details and performing more tests etc. on request.