After lately retesting the GeForce GTX 580 8 years after its release, we idea it would be exciting to check lower back in on the GTX 680, every other old pal that became released about six years in the past as Nvidia's brand new and best graphics card and a successor to the aforementioned 580.

Before we get to the assessments and game benchmarks, permit's fast recap the specifications and a touch records about the structure this card is based on. For the ones of you now not inquisitive about the ride down memory lane, as a minimum you may experience snap shots of the photographs card in question as you scroll through...

Based at the Kepler structure, the 680's GPU turned into codenamed GK104 and marked Nvidia's transition to the 28nm method, a circulate that allowed for 3.five billion transistors to be filled right into a tiny 294mm2 die. Nvidia additionally managed to squeeze in what become on the time a huge 1536 CUDA cores, three times that of the GTX 580. Not only that but the cores have been clocked 30% better and but average the GPU ate up much less energy.

The attention become on performance with Kepler and Nvidia essentially broke its preceding Fermi structure down to the center and then rebuilt it to improve energy intake and die size. The result changed into the world's quickest pix card for gaming, at least whilst it was first released.

AMD without a doubt beat Nvidia to the punch 3 months in advance with the HD 7970 -- how times have modified in that regard. Although the GTX 680 changed into 4% less expensive at launch and presented 7% more performance in my checks, it did be afflicted by poor availability for quite a few months after launch, so nothing uncommon there.

Back then, AMD did an excellent job of maintaining Nvidia on its feet. The Radeon HD 4000 collection spurred a battle that saw the GTX 200 series receive numerous rate cuts. The HD 5000 series had complete run of the market for half a 12 months before GTX four hundred cards arrived, and as I said, in 2012 AMD turned into almost 3 months in advance with the HD 7970.

Being barely behind, it become critical for Nvidia to pop out weapons blazing and to an volume that's what the agency did. The GTX 680 changed into without query the quickest single-GPU images card money ought to purchase. Not best become it faster than the HD 7970, however it changed into additionally more green, quieter and inexpensive whilst it first launched. It might be thrilling to see how they compare nowadays.

I'm also eager to peer how the GTX 680 stacks up towards modern day GPUs in modern-day games. Representing Nvidia's antique GPU is Gainward's Phantom model, wearing the more fashionable 2GB VRAM buffer. All benchmarking has been carried out on our GPU test rig, that is made out of a Core i7-8700K clocked at 5GHz and 32GB of DDR4-3200 memory.

Let's see how the GTX 680 stacks up nowadays…

Benchmarks

When using the ultra fine preset at 1080p the GTX 680 is definitely slower than the Radeon HD 7950, even though it was a whopping eighty one% quicker than the GTX 580. No doubt the slightly larger reminiscence buffer is assisting to improve matters right here.

In Dawn of War III the GTX 680 managed to more or less in shape the HD 7950, and this intended as a end result it changed into yet again plenty quicker than the GTX 580. The 1% low end result became also respectable and clearly 2GB is the minimum frame buffer length you can escape with on this name whilst using the medium first-rate settings, so no actual surprises there.

The GTX 680 does extraordinarily well in Dirt four, taking the top spot on our graph with an outstanding 116fps on average whilst the use of the medium first-class preset, or 12% faster than the HD 7950 and 81% quicker than the GTX 580.

Moving on, For Honor shows strong performance from the GTX 680 because it once more takes the top spot being 25% quicker than the HD 7950 and 60% quicker than the GTX 580.

I located comparable outcomes when gambling Battlefront II, but the GTX 680 could manage high quality settings here, which regarded remarkable and still supplied extremely good body fees with a median of simply over 60fps.

Fortnite performs well on quite tons something and while strolling the sport using its excessive great preset the GTX 680 averaged just shy of 70fps after 10 mins of gameplay and remained nicely above 50fps always -- the frametime data changed into additionally very strong.

Like Fortnite, you may play Overwatch on pretty much some thing and right here we see that when gambling on extremely fine the GTX 680 allowed for a median of just about 90fps while frame charges stayed above 50fps at all times.

The closing recreation we're searching at is PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and it really ran quite properly. I noticed an average of 66fps with a minimum of 59fps the usage of the medium nice settings, that's a smooth and playable experience basic.

We have a few electricity consumption figures to wrap up our testing. Here the GTX 680 decreased total gadget intake via nearly 20% as compared to the GTX 580, given how plenty faster it became that is a sizeable leap forward in phrases of overall performance per watt. That stated, it nonetheless pushed gadget intake 26% higher than that of the Radeon HD 7950 and a bit over 60% better compared to the GTX 1050 Ti, so now not remarkable by using contemporary requirements it's for certain.

Matching modern-day GTX 1050 Ti

That pretty tons covers the entirety about the performance of this properly-elderly portraits card, except for overclocking, but the ones outcomes will range from card to card. There's additionally the fact that our factory overclocked take a look at version wasn't behaving when overclocked and I didn't have a heap of time to play around with it in the interim. As noted earlier, I actually have a 4GB version in the mail so I'll take a look at that out when it arrives and notice if it is inclined to play ball.

In terms of greater overall performance, you can probably count on everywhere from five to fifteen% greater frames depending on how well the cardboard overclocks. For the ones of you now not inquisitive about overclocking, the coolest information is that a standard manufacturing unit overclocked model just like the Gainward model I used should fit a manufacturing unit overclocked GTX 1050 Ti in maximum titles.

As you saw (in case you did not skip the benchmarks), the GTX 680 became just a unmarried body slower on common and frames for the 1% low result. It become also 8% faster than the HD 7950 and thirteen% faster than the vanilla GTX 1050, and it blitzed the older GTX 580 by means of a monstrous 65% margin. The GTX 580's 1536MB frame buffer is just too confined for many of cutting-edge titles and we are even seeing issues with 2GB now.

Seeing 1050 Ti-like performance from the GTX 680 is in reality acceptable and need to deal with current games at 1080p the use of decent best settings. For those bad souls who have forgotten how much the GTX 1050 Ti ought to price, I went and seemed it up: $139 is the MSRP, which would not sound proper however it's miles. However, you would be doing quite properly in case you have been to get one for $220 nowadays.

Can you store some cash and get the GTX 680 second-hand rather? Yes, if you're lucky. At eBay, we see that to date this month the cheapest GTX 680 sale ended at just over $100 and the common selling price of the sixteen playing cards offered up to now is $one hundred sixty.

You'd possibly need to do better than $one hundred sixty as that's only a 27% financial savings on a 2d-hand photos card. I'd purpose for around $one hundred twenty as a restriction on buying a used GTX 680 and if you can get a 4GB version, well obviously accomplish that. You're chances of snagging a GTX 680 today for less than $one hundred is largely zero though, so set sensible expectations.

Shopping shortcuts:

  • GeForce GTX 680 on Amazon, eBay
  • GeForce GTX 1050 Ti on Amazon, Newegg

Besides absolutely being old (and used in case you go that path), bear in mind that the GTX 680 additionally chugs a variety of energy. The GTX 1050 Ti through evaluation runs an awful lot cooler, quieter and it may not ravage your electricity deliver like an FX-9590 seeking to preserve up with one among AMD's new APUs. The smaller VRAM buffer may be an trouble at times until you control to get hold of a 4GB GTX 680, which also isn't going to be easy.