Product Listing

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 - Looking For The Knockout

By James Lu - 3 May 2012

Conclusion

Conclusion

Dual-GPU cards are a bit of a risk for manufacturers. At a very high price point, few people will be willing to fork out the money for them. Meanwhile, for your dual-GPU card to be competitive, it needs to be at least as good as what a multi-GPU setup would get you for around the same price. In the case of the GeForce GTX 690, NVIDIA set out to make it twice as good (and thus twice as expensive) as the GTX 680, and all credit to them, they've actually done a pretty good job of it. 

While it trailed behind in most categories, the difference between the GTX 690 and GTX 680 2-way SLI was fairly small, between 1-4%, which is by virtue of the small GPU base clock difference between them. We also saw that that gap can be closed fairly easily, and actually surpassed, by overclocking the card. Just take extra precaution for good case cooling as the GTX 690 will certainly need it.

At exactly twice the price of a GTX 680 (USD$999 vs. USD$499) the GTX 690 is certainly targeted at those interested in a dual GTX 680 setup. All in all, the benefits of a smaller footprint, more stable system and lower power consumption should make the GTX 690 a better choice - not to forget, the possibility of quad-SLI with two GTX 690s for the truly extreme - but unfortunately, with supplies limited, it may not be possible for everyone to get their hands on a unit.

Another tidbit of information we came to know recently was that NVIDIA had strict rules to the card vendors to not slap any of their own labels anywhere on the card. While the complexity of the cooling solution of the these ubber high-end cards are so high that most vendors just sell the reference model as-is, this extra ruling would now mean that it doesn't really matter if you choose brand A over brand B because they won't even be differentiated by fancy sticks or labels from each of the respective brands.

Is it worth USD$999? If you're planning to buy two GTX 680 cards, it certainly is.

Is AMD Down For The Count?

So has NVIDIA landed the knockout punch on AMD? Not yet. While our NVIDIA cards had the upper hand on most of our tests, AMD remained competitive throughout, and scored particularly well on the toughest test settings in our gaming benchmarks. This reflects the previous pattern we've seen of NVIDIA's GTX 680 scaling well across all tests, while AMD's Radeon HD 7970 starts to shine in more demanding situations.

Don't forget, AMD has yet to release their dual-GPU HD 7990. And now that NVIDIA has brought theirs out to play, you can expect AMD to retaliate soon. Until then, NVIDIA's claim as the best performing single graphics card will hold true.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
8.5
  • Performance 9
  • Features 8.5
  • Value 8
The Good
Competitive with GeForce GTX 680 2-way SLI
Overclockable to outgun GTX 680 2-way SLI
Solid build quality
Power efficient
The Bad
High temperature
Cooler vents hot air back to casing
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.