Reviews - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB graphics card

[shaithis]

IMO, the discrete market isn't going anywhere. Yes, it will shrink a little......but not by much.

The problem (if it is a problem) is that there just isn't enough room on a CPU die......and no matter how many more die-shrinks the fabs work out, the GPU dies are still larger and don't have a CPU in them......meaning they will always be a lot faster.....at least until they are happy making CPU/APU dies the same size (or arguably larger) then current GPU dies.......I really cannot see it happening any time in the next 10 years at least.....especially now that power-hungry discrete cards have found a place outside of gaming.

[Butuz]

Value is a measurement of cost VS merit.

Price has nothing to do with whether it is value or not. Price in combination with merit = its value. (and merit is in the eye of the beholder frankly)

What I don't get is that people have been rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishing upwards of £500 on graphics cards for years thanks to the invention of SLI. Yet all of a sudden rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishing it on one card seems to be a big isue?

When people post a pic of their 4x480 or 4x580 rig everyone goes "whoa cool" yet when someone will post a pic of their 690 everyone goes "aah hahaha look at this mad'un what an idiot spending £825 on a card.

I just dont get what ALL of the fuss / double standards is about?

Butuz

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The inherent issue with drip fed improvements it means the base performance level of discrete cards will not increase hugely - so will games companies want to alienate most of their users?? In most cases they won't,so this is why the progression of PC games is not fast as it used to be.

It makes me think,even if the next generation of consoles are not that great in hardware still,the improved fidelity will push more people onto them.

The IGPs are improving and this is the one thing will nudge the PC games market a bit,by meaning a higher performance baseline level of graphics.

Remember,laptops are one of the major markets which has been ignored by PC gaming. As these get more viable,more companies will look at the performance of these simply to get a higher installed user base.

Even with Crysis,a whole range of Nvidia and AMD affordable cards were launched which enabled people with lower budgets to run the game reasonably well.

This is not happening now.

[HalloweenJack]

asus gtx 690 pre order at £899.99!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Value is a measurement of cost VS merit.

Price has nothing to do with whether it is value or not. Price in combination with merit = its value. (and merit is in the eye of the beholder frankly)

What I don't get is that people have been rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishing upwards of £500 on graphics cards for years thanks to the invention of SLI. Yet all of a sudden rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishing it on one card seems to be a big isue?

When people post a pic of their 4x480 or 4x580 rig everyone goes "whoa cool" yet when someone will post a pic of their 690 everyone goes "aah hahaha look at this mad'un what an idiot spending £825 on a card.

I just dont get what ALL of the fuss / double standards is about?


Butuz

Double stds for what?? Maybe in your mind - I updated the GTX680 threads on both OcUK and Hexus for yonks(in fact most of the updates,so that tactic is NOT going to work with me).

Your excuses for the price are hilarious. Both the GTX590 and HD6990 were well under £600 at launch:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...-rated/?page=2

Both these cards were not considered great value at launch either.

Yet two HD6970 2GB cards cost more than an HD6990 and the GTX590 was closer to a pair of GTX570 cards in price despite having more VRAM and slightly faster CPUs.

Yet,you think that paying over 40% more is OK value??

Now,it explains why the graphics card pricing and performance increases for the price are the way they have been the last few years.

It has gone from £300 being expensive for a single card,to £400 being OK value for a single card,£550 being expensive for dual GPU card to £800(or more) being good value.

Cool,so when either company releases the £999 dual GPU reference card,it will be great value.

Perhaps,we can start the entry level cards at £350 now onwards.

asus gtx 690 pre order at £899.99!

Thats excellent value for money. Thats £100 more than OcUK were hinting.

[Butuz]

Even with Crysis,a whole range of Nvidia and AMD affordable cards were launched which enabled people with lower budgets to run the game reasonably well.

This is not happening now.

Rofl. Dude Crysis is the main reason that GFX cards went bonkers in the first place. Let's release a game thats almost unplayable on an entry level GFX card.

People had to go 4 way SLI on £250+ each cards in order to run it at 1680 with details on. Crysis spawned the mad SLI "i've got 1k worth of SLi in my rig" generation that your so h8ing at right now (which also seems to be becoming more and more commonplace now) and that in turn pushed more high performance cards to filter downwards.

Don't blame Nvidia for releasing an £800+ card. Blame Crysis.

Butuz

[HalloweenJack]

so you would rather have crappy DX9 console ports? then lets not bother with high end kit at all


without games pushing the edge , we would be using xbox type hardware in our pc`s....

[shaithis]

Butuz: You do realise the 680 is not a proper high-end chip don't you? It should be 200-250ukp......not 400+

A lot of us have debated the value of the 680.......and the 690 is basically 680x2 in price and design......so as questionable in value as the 680 it is based on.

AMD have already slashed the prices of 7xxx series cards and are offering 3 games with the higher models.......so how much were they making per card before? I feel nVidia are milking it even more.

If we weren't in the middle of a horrendous recession, I might have been able to have some appreciation for their audacious business tactic........

[HalloweenJack]

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=49829


aria have them for £780 oO!!

[Fraz]

Is it the pre-overclocked VTX HD7970??

It might well have been if I hadn't found Pixmania doing a stock one for £330. Scan's OC'd VTX 7970 was £50 more expensive and went out of stock.

Since overclocking them via software is a breeze anyway, I wasn't too bothered about it be pre-overclocked. Shame that the guy who maintains the Radeon Bios Editor is throwing in the towel as far as the 7-series goes though... it would've been nice to put whatever stable overclock I find permanently in one of the BIOSes.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Rofl. Dude Crysis is the main reason that GFX cards went bonkers in the first place. Let's release a game thats almost unplayable on an entry level GFX card.

People had to go 4 way SLI on £250+ each cards in order to run it at 1680 with details on. Crysis spawned the mad SLI "i've got 1k worth of SLi in my rig" generation that your so h8ing at right now (which also seems to be becoming more and more commonplace now) and that in turn pushed more high performance cards to filter downwards.

Crysis was released in November 2007.

The 8800GT and 8800GTS 512MB had almost the same performance as the 8800GTX at the common resolutions of 1680X1050 and 1920x1080/1200 and how much did these cost?? Well under £250,with 8800GTS 512MB cards available for around £220 at launch and 8800GT 512MB cards around £170 to £180.

Its quite funny that these very cards have lasted for so long in PC gaming terms too,isn't it??

These were released in mid-December 2007 after Crysis was released.

With better drivers,a lot of cards like the 8800GT and 8800GTS 512MB could run the game far better. It took months. Initial driver support for the game sucked.

The people who really had issues were those editing the config files manually and upping the settings even higher.

Don't blame Nvidia for releasing an £800+ card. Blame Nvidia.

Butuz

Nvidia priced it that level.

They are only doing to this mantain a status quo of prices.

Lets say the HD7990 is 25% slower overall,what is the chance if a GTX690 is £800,it will be £600??

They are just leaving room in their lineups,so not to push each other too much.

Look at the prices of the HD6900 and GTX570/GTX580 series which hardly budged for over a year.

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=49829


aria have them for £780 oO!!

Uber value!!

[HalloweenJack]

can see aria raising the price to the same as everyone else - but if they can sell it at £100 less and still make money - we know just how much markup the other etailers are earning on them

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Butuz: You do realise the 680 is not a proper high-end chip don't you? It should be 200-250ukp......not 400+

A lot of us have debated the value of the 680.......and the 690 is basically 680x2 in price and design......so as questionable in value as the 680 it is based on.

AMD have already slashed the prices of 7xxx series cards and are offering 3 games with the higher models.......so how much were they making per card before? I feel nVidia are milking it even more.

If we weren't in the middle of a horrendous recession, I might have been able to have some appreciation for their audacious business tactic........

You are going like this a lot:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-news/2...ml#post2433921

[Biscuit]

I was going to reply but moose is on a rampage and im scared...

[Carr0t]

If the 680 retails at the same price as the 580 did (from that chart) how come the 690 (2 680s on one card) is so much more expensive than the 590 (2 580s on one card) was?

[Tunnah]

If the 680 retails at the same price as the 580 did (from that chart) how come the 690 (2 680s on one card) is so much more expensive than the 590 (2 580s on one card) was?

It's not as black and white as that, you have to take into account the engineering work, not to mention the lower profits from doing a product in lower quantities

Just a note, it's mentioned that the HDMI port is done away with as it's only capable of 1080p but I thought the kepler series uses a 1.4a HDMI standard which can drive a 4K resolution ?

I mean even if it's 1.3a that can still do 2560x1600, you have to go back to 1.0 to max 1080p.

Would be nice to have confirmed because interested in the Toshiba 4K screen and the only way of running it is via HDMI, as DVI-D is 2560x1600 max, so HDMI is a must.