change from 5850 to 680??

[Double07]

670 looks very interesting from the so called 'reviews' that are kicking about but I might take them with a pinch of salt right now, at least until they can be confirmed on Thursday.

[Soupladel]

The one thing that doesn't appear to have been said here is that by putting a GTX680 in your current system would be a bit of a waste because you would not get the full potential out of the card with your current system.

I am not saying your current system is bad (your profile suggests a phenom 2 x4) by any stretch, but the £400+ for a GTX 680 could be better utilised elsewhere, Z77 based motherboard and a shiny ivrbirdge proccesor would improve performance to a greater degree overall, not just in games.

[dirtylarryuk]

To be honest unless you throw a 2500k at 4.7 GHZ or better at a 7950-70 or 670-680 your not going to get the best from it. Simply put 670 or 7970 with the right CPU is like 470 Sli or 5870 CF in FPS terms no MS issues either. But to get the best from them you need a OC'ed SB or IB and a SSD for many games (iops of 20k + is key more than read write speeds). So putting a 28nm GPU with older CPUs is like putting a F1 car engine on a go kart, might go faster in straight lines but corners could be a issue.

You can throw workload from CPU to GPU by playing at higher res or adding extreme AA_AF ingame effects physx etc, but to really get all the benefits SSD tech and very fast 32nm CPU's (or better) are needed.

BTW for all those who say nothing can even Push a 680 let alone a 690 Batman AA maxed with FXAA in Nvidia 3d is just the right side of playable on a single 680 (I suspect for once Physx is actually pulling cores). 2d is no issue on 680 but 3d really pushes a single 680 card and I suspect 3d x3 in surround would push a 690.


Image Quality is fantastic (I turned some of the driver 'nerfs' off for these screen grabs) but games are already pushing 680 in 3d.....





Pretty but really pushing a 680 in Nvidia 3d.