Reviews - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB graphics card

[HEXUS]

Make way for the champ.

Read more.

[Terbinator]

Lol at Oppenheimer reference.

[ksdp37]

I don't have enough arms and legs to give up to pay for one of those. Seriously £850- £900?

They really take us for a bunch of mugs, although I would have been one of them if I was super rich!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

£825?? This is the most expensive reference consumer graphics card made in the last decade,outside of thise E-PEEN edition cards which at least were rare(at least these were low production run jobs).

Wait until next year - £1000 cards will be acceptable. I like how the acceptable level of pricing graphics cards,is now increasing(way past inflation) every year.

What I find funny,if you go back a few years,well actually,2009, even £300 cards were considered overpriced.

[Badbonji]

I find it surprising how much less power it uses than two cards in SLI - performance is very close too, although you could call it overkill at 1080P! Probably why it is close to the cost of two seperate cards.

[Terbinator]

£825?? This is the most expensive reference consumer graphics card made in the last decade,outside of thise E-PEEN edition cards which at least were rare(at least these were low production run jobs).

Wait until next year - £1000 cards will be acceptable. I like how the acceptable level of pricing graphics cards,is now increasing(way past inflation) every year.

What I find funny,if you go back a few years,well actually,2009, even £300 cards were considered overpriced.

The Guru3D article says these are a limited run.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Guru3D article says these are a limited run.

Just like the reference GTX590 or many of the dual GPU cards of recent years??

Look at even more limited edition cards like the GTX590 MARS:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...rs-ii/?page=14

It is more like Danger! Will Robinson! when reference cards are starting to hit price levels which you would think are more common of E-PEEN level limited flash edition cards.


From Anandtech:

"Wrapping things up, there is one question left I feel like we still don’t have a good answer to: how much RAM a $999 card should have. NVIDIA went with a true equal for the GTX 680 SLI, right down to the 2GB of VRAM per GPU. Looking back at what happened to the Radeon HD 5970 and its 1GB of VRAM per GPU – we can’t even run our 5760x1200 benchmarks on it, let alone a couple of 2560x1600 benchmarks – I’m left uneasy. None of our benchmarks today seem to require more than 2GB of VRAM, but that much VRAM has been common in high-end cards since late 2010; the day will come when 2GB isn’t enough, and I'm left to wonder when. A GTX 690 with 4GB of VRAM per GPU would be practically future-proof, but with 2GB of VRAM NVIDIA is going to be cutting it close."

That is his summing up.

[darrensen]

Holy bejesus £900!!!!

[Terbinator]

Just like the GTX590 or many of the dual GPU cards of recent years??

Maybe long enough to cover the gap to the 'real' GK.

Need moar new stuff to read reviews of!

[Jonatron]

So that's what the crowbar was for...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Maybe long enough to cover the gap to the 'real' GK.

Need moar new stuff to read reviews of!

Probably.

I am increasingly getting the feeling it makes more and more sense to skip the first generation on a new process and then move onto the refresh generation(at least the old generation will be reduced in price too).

It wouldn't surprise me if Nvidia released a GTX685 with two GTX670 cards for "only" £600.

It seems the days of 2007 to 2009 seem to be behind us now.

[Fraz]

the day will come when 2GB isn’t

Yeah, I think 2GB per GPU is a mistake, even on the 680, let alone the 690. It's basically what made me choose a 7970 over a a 680... well, that and the fact that it only cost me £330, and has better support for multiple-resolution multi-monitor setups.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah, I think 2GB per GPU is a mistake, even on the 680, let alone the 690. It's basically what made me choose a 7970 over a a 680... well, that and the fact that it only cost me £330, and has better support for multiple-resolution multi-monitor setups.

Is it the pre-overclocked VTX HD7970??

[Terbinator]

OTOH: I don't mind if they (both companies) take the ATI 4xxx series approach of an X2 being the highest-end offering, assuming scaling falls in-line like it should.

[Butuz]

Actually. It's not bad value really. If your in the market for 680SLI (and lets face it many people seem to be) the 690 saves you £50 odd AND saves you 100 watts out of the wall AND saves you a PCIe slot. Really there is no bad side. The only bad side may be supply can't keep up with demand but thats the same for the 680 at the mo either way.

It's impressive what Nvidia have done with the lower power consumption VS almost no performance loss. Well I'm impressed anyway. Everyone else seems to be just h8in for the sake of it without really working out any reason why.

Butuz

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Actually. It's not bad value really. If your in the market for 680SLI (and lets face it many people seem to be) the 690 saves you £50 odd AND saves you 100 watts out of the wall AND saves you a PCIe slot. Really there is no bad side. The only bad side may be supply can't keep up with demand but thats the same for the 680 at the mo either way.

It's impressive what Nvidia have done with the lower power consumption VS almost no performance loss. Well I'm impressed anyway. Everyone else seems to be just h8in for the sake of it without really working out any reason why.

Butuz

2012,when £800+ graphics cards are considered "value" - no wonder card prices are going upwards and upwards now. What you don't realise is how long the discrete market is going to last at this rate in the face of consoles and improving IGPs.

What we should be pushing companies is to improve performance in the sub £250 market where most sales are located in. Better cards in this price range is what will push forward PC games development the most,not the smaller percentage of high end sales.

This is the most important market for PC gamers.

Remember when Crysis game out?? The 8800GT,8800GTS 512MB and the AMD competition were released. It brought fantastic value for money. Now with BF3 the opposite is happening.

Basically,the market has stagnated in the last few years.