Hardware Discussions

[FiSH]

Man, this stuff ain't cheap!!!!  Looks to me like the only one worth cashing in my two 560ti's for is the 680 and I'd still have to toss in an extra $200.

[dolynick]

6.4 billion transistors! Holy crap...

-dolynick

[jacobvandy]

Yeah, that would be why it's so expensive. I'mma have to get a hold of Brandon to make sure I get some of these for review...

[dolynick]

$400 USD for the 660ti seems a bit steep. The 560ti was sort of the bang for the buck card when it came out. Great performance and pricing that was fairly reasonable (~$300-$350 CDN range). At $400 they've put it more in the high-end price point and made it less acccessible and value oriented.

It does make sense to price it there if it, in fact ~10% faster than the 7950. You're delivering more speed for $50 less. I can understand why they've done that. My reservation is more that the the cream of the crop in the mid-range seems to be moving up in cost.

If those performance estimates are accurate, NVidia has done fairly well this generation. GTX 580 performance for $319, a good $130-$200 cheaper. That is progress when you look at it in that regard. For some reason though, I look at the various pricing and think to myself "$50 less" would make much happier.  I don't feel the need to spend $319 USD to replace my 2-generations-old GTX 480 with something that really isn't much faster... and quite a bit more if I really want a meaningful upgrade.

-dolynick

[jacobvandy]

You act like they have some kind of rhyme or reason to their naming schemes, lol. Looks like the 660 will be their initial "midrange" offering, then even cheaper ones will come later. I'm guessing the 650Ti will probably offer the best balance of price/performance this time.

[chriscoates81]

So now the question is does pcie 3.0 get bottlenecked on a 2.0 motherboard?

[dolynick]

Recent tests at Anandtech showed that PCIE 3.0 only really benefits GPU processing like CUDA, etc. It didn't really make much difference in games. At least not using the latest AMD/ATI cards that support it.

-dolynick

[ZeroGuardian]

That information can't be accurate... Nvidia has already announced that their next gen GPUs the CPU and Shader clocks will no longer be seperate. So I'm taking all this with a huge whooping bagful of salt.

[Stalker_Loner]

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dolynick wrote:
Recent tests at Anandtech showed that PCIE 3.0 only really benefits GPU processing like CUDA, etc. It didn't really make much difference in games. At least not using the latest AMD/ATI cards that support it.

-dolynick

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This is the main reason I didn't bother waiting for Ivy Bridge/HD 7xxx series to drop in price. I figured the new tech wouldn't be taking advantage of the new bus like it will eventually. 

As far as the pricing of the new cards, it seems accurate assuming the performance marks are true. Remember that the mid-high range cards are claiming to be faster than a $550+ card (HD 7970, 20% in the case of the GTX 670, for $50 less). Nothing is set in stone as well. 

[FiSH]

If those charts are not off base, the 670 with a 20% boost in performance over the 7970 would come pretty damn close to, if not match, the 590's performance, making it the clear winner bang for buck being that the 590 is going for $700+ right now.  That's $200 less for about the same performance if the 690 does debut at $499 per the charts and if the 590 doesn't see a significant price drop.  And still, you could get two 650ti's for the same price of a 670.  Surely the 650ti in SLI would outperform a single 670.

I'm thinking out loud with a budget of $500 for these babies once I add to what I could sell my two 560ti SC's on eBay.  Seems like two 650ti's would be the way to go.  

Your thoughts?

[Stalker_Loner]

Assuming the charts are fairly accurate, I'd say why not? Unless of course AMD replies with cheapers, more powerful cards within the same time frame. They have released their HD 7950's already, so who knows. And considering it seems like they are leaning more towards focusing on graphics, they may just pull something out by then! But really, a mid-range next-gen card competing with a card considerably more expensive looks like an attractive option. 

[jacobvandy]

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FiSH wrote:

If those charts are not off base, the 670 with a 20% boost in performance over the 7970 would come pretty damn close to, if not match, the 590's performance, making it the clear winner bang for buck being that the 590 is going for $700+ right now.  That's $200 less for about the same performance if the 690 does debut at $499 per the charts and if the 590 doesn't see a significant price drop.  And still, you could get two 650ti's for the same price of a 670.  Surely the 650ti in SLI would outperform a single 670.

I'm thinking out loud with a budget of $500 for these babies once I add to what I could sell my two 560ti SC's on eBay.  Seems like two 650ti's would be the way to go.  

Your thoughts?

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You kind of defeated your own argument for the 670 being the best bang for the buck right there, lol. If 650Ti SLI is better than a 670, for the same price ($500 vs $250+$250), then one 650Ti would have more performance per dollar than a 670.

[chriscoates81]

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FiSH wrote:

If those charts are not off base, the 670 with a 20% boost in performance over the 7970 would come pretty damn close to, if not match, the 590's performance, making it the clear winner bang for buck being that the 590 is going for $700+ right now.  That's $200 less for about the same performance if the 690 does debut at $499 per the charts and if the 590 doesn't see a significant price drop.  And still, you could get two 650ti's for the same price of a 670.  Surely the 650ti in SLI would outperform a single 670.

I'm thinking out loud with a budget of $500 for these babies once I add to what I could sell my two 560ti SC's on eBay.  Seems like two 650ti's would be the way to go.  

Your thoughts?

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I'm thinking something similar, i think that with the release of games like bf3 and skyrim, large amounts of vram are going to become the norm. I might try and swing 2 660's if i get the go ahead and depending on if stuff sells. Did you have any bsods with your 560's?

[Egglick]

If that's remotely close to what the real prices will be, they can get bent.  I wouldn't even recommend a single one of these cards at those prices.  AMD is a good $150 high at the moment too.  So with a mid-April launch date, we're probably looking at July before prices become reasonable due to competition.

[mclaren_man]

None of these cards should have less than 2gb of memory, except for the cheapest one. Not sure why they opted to give the slowest model more memory than most of the other cards. Seeing how lots of memory is important at higher resolutions, I'm not sure what Nvidia was thinking here. For a $400 card 1.5gb is unacceptable, especially when AMD is outfitting their newest cards with 3gb. I'm curious how this will affect performance in those memory intensive games.

It's going to be interesting to see what the power draw from these cards will be like. I'm going to hold out from buying anything until then.

[jacobvandy]

That might be a tactic to get people to buy their low-end card over other ones. People see 2GB of memory and think it's better than one with 1GB or 1.5GB, even though it's slower RAM on a slower GPU.

[Egglick]

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mclaren_man wrote:

None of these cards should have less than 2gb of memory, except for the cheapest one. Not sure why they opted to give the slowest model more memory than most of the other cards. Seeing how lots of memory is important at higher resolutions, I'm not sure what Nvidia was thinking here. For a $400 card 1.5gb is unacceptable, especially when AMD is outfitting their newest cards with 3gb. I'm curious how this will affect performance in those memory intensive games.

It's going to be interesting to see what the power draw from these cards will be like. I'm going to hold out from buying anything until then.

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The memory amount has to be a multiple of the bus width, for example, a 192 or 384-bit card could have 768, 1536, 3072.  I'm not sure if the amount always has to double, but I've never seen them do half-steps.   I assume they decided that 3072 was too expensive for that card.  Likewise, a 224 or 448-bit card can have 896, 1792, 3584, etc.

[FiSH]

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jacobvandy wrote:

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FiSH wrote:

If those charts are not off base, the 670 with a 20% boost in performance over the 7970 would come pretty damn close to, if not match, the 590's performance, making it the clear winner bang for buck being that the 590 is going for $700+ right now.  That's $200 less for about the same performance if the 690 does debut at $499 per the charts and if the 590 doesn't see a significant price drop.  And still, you could get two 650ti's for the same price of a 670.  Surely the 650ti in SLI would outperform a single 670.

I'm thinking out loud with a budget of $500 for these babies once I add to what I could sell my two 560ti SC's on eBay.  Seems like two 650ti's would be the way to go.  

Your thoughts?

---

You kind of defeated your own argument for the 670 being the best bang for the buck right there, lol. If 650Ti SLI is better than a 670, for the same price ($500 vs $250+$250), then one 650Ti would have more performance per dollar than a 670.

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Not an argument.  Just kinda thinking as I wrote.

[mclaren_man]

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Egglick wrote:

The memory amount has to be a multiple of the bus width, for example, a 192 or 384-bit card could have 768, 1536, 3072.  I'm not sure if the amount always has to double, but I've never seen them do half-steps.   I assume they decided that 3072 was too expensive for that card.  Likewise, a 224 or 448-bit card can have 896, 1792, 3584, etc.

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Good to know. And if it's too expensive to outfit the higher end cards with more memory, then how is AMD getting away with it? I'm guessing the smaller bus width helps keep the cost down, so they can squeeze in more memory?

And in regards to Jacob's comment. Personally, I'd never go for a low end card with a ton of memory, because I know it's not going to make much difference, except for maybe in Photoshop. But in games, a high end card is likely to benefit from the extra memory at those extreme resolutions with high res textures. Just an observation from what I've seen.

[chriscoates81]

I'd like to see games have a reccomended vram allouwance as well.

[Synchronous Failure]

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mclaren_man wrote:

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Egglick wrote:

The memory amount has to be a multiple of the bus width, for example, a 192 or 384-bit card could have 768, 1536, 3072.  I'm not sure if the amount always has to double, but I've never seen them do half-steps.   I assume they decided that 3072 was too expensive for that card.  Likewise, a 224 or 448-bit card can have 896, 1792, 3584, etc.

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Good to know. And if it's too expensive to outfit the higher end cards with more memory, then how is AMD getting away with it? I'm guessing the smaller bus width helps keep the cost down, so they can squeeze in more memory?

And in regards to Jacob's comment. Personally, I'd never go for a low end card with a ton of memory, because I know it's not going to make much difference, except for maybe in Photoshop. But in games, a high end card is likely to benefit from the extra memory at those extreme resolutions with high res textures. Just an observation from what I've seen.

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Yeah, I made sure to get a 3GB 580 GTX. I decided to test it to its limits by loading every conceivable high-res texture pack on Skyrim and I got the vRAM usage up to 1.9GB. Didn't stutter one bit, whereas my old 5850s with 1GB of vRAM couldn't handle Battlefield 3 (stuttering) even though graphically it could render at a consistent 40 FPS.

[FiSH]

Just out of curiosity, just how many frames can be packed into a second?

[Stalker_Loner]

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Synchronous Failure wrote:

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mclaren_man wrote:

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Egglick wrote:

The memory amount has to be a multiple of the bus width, for example, a 192 or 384-bit card could have 768, 1536, 3072.  I'm not sure if the amount always has to double, but I've never seen them do half-steps.   I assume they decided that 3072 was too expensive for that card.  Likewise, a 224 or 448-bit card can have 896, 1792, 3584, etc.

---

Good to know. And if it's too expensive to outfit the higher end cards with more memory, then how is AMD getting away with it? I'm guessing the smaller bus width helps keep the cost down, so they can squeeze in more memory?

And in regards to Jacob's comment. Personally, I'd never go for a low end card with a ton of memory, because I know it's not going to make much difference, except for maybe in Photoshop. But in games, a high end card is likely to benefit from the extra memory at those extreme resolutions with high res textures. Just an observation from what I've seen.

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Yeah, I made sure to get a 3GB 580 GTX. I decided to test it to its limits by loading every conceivable high-res texture pack on Skyrim and I got the vRAM usage up to 1.9GB. Didn't stutter one bit, whereas my old 5850s with 1GB of vRAM couldn't handle Battlefield 3 (stuttering) even though graphically it could render at a consistent 40 FPS.

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My 5870 had nasty issues with BF3, every 10-15 seconds I'd drop to 1-2 FPS for about 5 seconds, then back to normal again. Only a certain driver, something like 4-5 releases back would remove the issue. No issues to report at all now, full details, textures and 4xAA and it's gorgeous. 

I did see where they fixed a stuttering issue when AA was enabled, and I didn't think I should have to turn it off since the card should have easily handled it so that may have just been it. 

[Egglick]

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FiSH wrote:
Just out of curiosity, just how many frames can be packed into a second?

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Many hundreds more than could ever possibly be displayed. 

[sqitso]

I am finding that since I will never be running a resolution over 1920x1200/1080p... There is no reason for me to upgrade my video cards as much. I think as long as DX12 isn't out.. my litter 560ti is proving quite effective. And if frame rates do drop.. I would be better off with an SLI upgrade than anything else.

[FiSH]

Here we have the 680 (GK104) fitted against the 580 (GF110), 7970 and 7950.  The following from WCCFTech.

The chart probably puts the GK104 based GTX680 GPU to test against the GeForce GTX580 (GF110) and recently released HD7900 Series Graphic Cards. The only thing that differs from the previously released specs are the clock frequencies which are set at 1050Mhz on Core and 1425Mhz on Memory while the GK100/110 which would release later would be set at 950Mhz Core and 5Ghz Memory (effective).

The performance results look promising (if true) for a Performance Tier card which is expected to release around Q2 2012 (Late March or early in April).

Full Article

[FiSH]

Gearbox is teaming up with EVGA and Nvidia to annouce and demo their next "mind blowing" mystery title on Feb 17 at the PDXLan event.  The demo will be feature new PhysX capabilities of Nvidia's Kepler GTX 680 under the EVGA brand.

Should be interesting.